524: Scripted Stupid

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. Got some follow-up today, Brian. Okay. DeepMind has told Google that it has no idea how to make AI less toxic. Well, that's not good. No, it's not. No, it's not. DeepMind, the big honchos say, I don't know.

They did some tests and had, basically this comes around, you know, text creation, like, you know, GPT-3 and all that stuff. And it's NLP, natural language processing, not neuro-linguistic programming for you pickup artists out there, freaks.

But, yeah, they're basically saying that, yeah, we just don't know. All right. So, hold on one second. So, Google, which I think we can all agree is probably the furthest along in the AI development game, or at least, you know, they're certainly throwing the most money at it and all that sort of thing.

They can't keep any ethicists on board for AI. And now... Oh, no. It's not that they can't keep them. They kick them out. Yes, they kick them out. And now they're basically saying, we don't know how to fix this insanely bigoted system that we have created.

Okay. I mean, I see those as two different issues, honestly. I mean, just because the ethicists... I'm just saying it's not going very well over there. No, they don't really have a good track record when it comes to AI. That's my point. It's just not going very well.

In a perfect world, you know, one that I was running, I would take a look at this information and say, you know, perhaps we should stop deploying and relying on this AI so much in the world.

But we don't do that, do we? Let's think about how many billions of dollars they spent on that, right? Right. To replace humans, right? How many humans could they have hired for all those billions of dollars? Have they done the math on this? Have they actually run the numbers?

They could have hired all the humans. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Here's my favorite quote. AI may have a superhuman ability to generate toxic language, but like most bigots, it has no clue what the heck it's talking about. So AI is now your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving.

Yeah, pretty much. Okay. Pretty much. And speaking of robots and other things, so my roommate is a real estate broker. And every now and again, I get jobs to go out and take photos of homes that go up on the MLS and things like that.

So I know a little bit about the real estate market and the way I know about real estate marketing. And so I went and I shot this house the other day. And instead of staging it, she was trying out a virtual staging company.

And Brian, you can see the pictures in here, the before and afters. And those pictures cost $30 each. That's it. That's it. $30. I'll put these in the show notes so you can see them. It's going to put staging companies out of business. Staging companies are dead.

They're dead. Because I was expecting something like Microsoft Paint to come back. They look incredible. Absolutely incredible. You could show me the after picture and I would think that there is actual furniture in that place.

Yeah, they're pretty amazing. I mean, it doesn't solve the problem of like when you actually – you're not going to buy a house or an apartment without going to see it in person. So it doesn't really solve that problem. But, I mean, why bother? Why bother now? It solves the problem of getting people – because the problem with staging – I always asked her, I'm like, why do people stage a house?

She's like, people have no imagination. Yeah. So they see an empty room and they can't wrap their mind around what it would look like with furniture in it. And I'm like, okay, well, people are dumb. But I got it after some time and I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't know what to do with this room. And then I see what they did with it and I'm like, oh, my God, yeah. Because it can cost anywhere – I mean, some of these big houses, she sells these million-dollar houses, like $5, $10 million houses.

It'll cost $30,000 a month to stage it. Yep. And all you need is to get somebody in the door. So you do the virtual staging and that – because, you know, they just started opening up showings here in Los Angeles. So people are just getting back to it now.

And I saw this and I'm like, man, this is crazy. Or even if you do have somebody show up in person, you just hand them an iPad and say, look, now you can scan through six different ways you could lay out this room. Yeah, something like that. And here's the other thing. It's funny because in the old days, she would create a stack of flyers to hand out at the showings.

You can't do that with COVID anymore. So I'm like – she's like, yeah, we can't do that. So, you know, we're just kind of stuck. I'm like, well, why don't you just make a QR code and have them download the PDF? And it was like I gave her the blueprints to the wheel. She's like, oh, my God, that is the most genius thing I've ever – I'm like, it's a QR code.

People do it with menus all the time. She's like, no, my God, this is amazing. So now I'm on the hook for making fucking QR code flyers for every property. Yeah, you just gave yourself a new job. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. I'm like, oh, great.

Way to fucking go, genius. But people actually use it. We deployed one at a showing on Sunday, and people actually came and used it. And the agent that we put there – because I had him like – I'm like, tell me how many times people use these because I want to see if it's worth it for me to do it.

And he's like, three-quarters of the people actually used it, but every single person that did it was under 30. If they were over 30, they had no idea what to do with it. Right. So I thought that was pretty fun. But, yeah, talk about – this is where automation is going to kill an industry. Right.

Yeah, totally. See you later, staging companies. You're gone. Yep. We were just bashing AI a little bit, and obviously this is not AI in any way, shape, or form. But Microsoft's AI via Outlook and Office 365, now that I'm in an all-PC environment for work and I'm doing all that sort of stuff, it's actually really good.

Clippy has evolved? I'm impressed. Like, I get basically – I get a morning – or actually, yeah, it comes in very early morning email from Microsoft that has gone through my Outlook email account. And it gives me commitments and follow-ups, and it's like super accurate.

It, like, sorts through things and, like, should we put this in your calendar because you talked in this email about maybe setting up a meeting for next – it's good, man. I am so impressed. I am really impressed. I'm shocked to say it. Interesting.

Interesting. I just put a link in the show notes now because you were talking about being a Microsoft shop, and I was looking for a new PC laptop. And I was listening to This Week in Tech this week, and apparently Cory Doctorow wrote about this, too. It's called the Framework Laptop. Have you heard of this thing?

It's basically kind of a do-it-yourself laptop design where everything's kind of held together with magnets, but it's all replaceable. Talk about right-to-repair. This thing is the ultimate right-to-repair laptop. And they're pretty cool. You can even do a DIY edition where you just customize everything.

Check it out there. It's, like, it's pretty cool, and it looks nice. Yeah. I mean, I haven't tried the keyboard. It does. It really does look like a Mac. It's got a fingerprint scanner on it, the whole nine yards. But, like, the high-end version is, like, $2,000, but they start at $749 for the DIY version.

Right. But I was thinking about this. I love how they do kind of use, like, a Mac on the homepage, like, the first one that you look at has kind of like a Mac Mojave desktop pattern on it. I'm like, hmm, who are you trying to fool there, big boy? But, yeah, for the price, it looks pretty good.

So if I had to get a PC laptop, I think I might try one of these. And even, especially, if you look at where they take the keyboard off, that totally looks like a MacBook Pro keyboard. The only thing that would give it away is the Windows key. Yep. So, and we did make fun of this on a previous show, and I had to put it in follow-up because I did actually try it.

When White Claw came out with their new high-alcohol version of their carbonated beverage, they called it Surge, right in the middle of a pandemic surge. The only thing would have been worse if it would have been Corona Surge. I would have rather got COVID than have to actually drink an entire one of these.

It is the most vile, toxic substance I have ever had. And you're talking to a guy who loved White Claw for the first half of the pandemic lockdown. You know, I think maybe I might be a little biased because if I even smell that stuff, I get kind of queasy now.

But it tastes like, you know, like when you go to the liquor store, you have a different array of spirits. You have the Papa Vodka, and then you have the Belvedere Vodka. This is more of the pop-off level of vodka, which you can get for like for $3 a gallon, and club soda.

It is vile. It is disgusting. And oh my God. I would, so my review of White Claw Surge is, they should just call it White Claw Hurl. Because if you drank a whole one, that's what you're going to do. In the news.

Well, one of the things that everybody who's a Bitbro has been worrying about has happened, China has put the lockdown on crypto. And turns out, it didn't matter that much. Nope. Which is interesting. It's very interesting that it didn't really move the needle in one way or the other.

I've been reading different reports on the different scale of whale who are, some are unloading and some are buying. The mega whales are gobbling up crypto like at an insane rate. And the quote-unquote regular whales have been unloading it.

So the market is kind of stabilized on that, but like, you know, probably the Winkleify or the mega whales. So they're buying up as much of this crap as they can get. And people are just dumping it in other realms.

But I was just, I was amazed. Ether, my Ether that I bought for $250 is now down to $211. I'm keeping that little bucket because it's a really easy way for me to see how much value I've gained or lost, you know? Yeah, exactly. How's your crypto doing?

Same as always. It vacillates up and down because everything just seems to go up and then starts to come down again and then goes up. I didn't see much of anything with the news out of China either, which also surprised me. You know, stable coins are coming.

Regulation is coming in the U.S. There's no doubt about that. It's just a matter of time. Do I think it's a bad thing for the markets? No, I think it's a bad thing if you're trying to get rich quick and do pump and dump schemes and all that sort of shit. But, you know, it's going to just become a currency that is tracked like any other currency that you'll have to pay taxes on like any other currency.

It's that's where it's going. So whatever. Yeah, it's interesting that the decentralized exchanges are like went through the roof during this. Those are more of the untrackable ones. Yeah, well, that's, you know, people that are of the shiftier persuasion shifted their money to those, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, the fact that it didn't go below $40,000 I thought was very, very interesting. I figured it would have dropped to like low $30,000 on that news and it barely blinked. I think it went down to like, what, $41,000? Yeah. So, yeah, that kind of shows that it might be a little bit more, you know, fault tolerant than we thought.

Yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot of money in it now. There's a lot of normal people that have bought crypto that aren't, you know, Bitbros anymore. So that has padded the market and made it more stable. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we should have not shit on it so much when we were younger.

Oh, no. All the reasons we shat on it are still 100% valid. Oh, they're valid. But I'm just thinking maybe we should have fucking bought some back in the day. Yeah, we should have done that. That's probably should have bought some of it while shitting on it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a life lesson for us. It's like we can shit on things, but still like on the side, maybe dabble is all I'm saying.

You know, gambling money, like I always say. Just use your Vegas gambling money and you're all right. So, yeah. In news, breaking news, plans to make an Instagram experience for under 13s dubbed Instagram kids have been paused by Facebook. Facebook would like to use the time to listen to parents, experts, policymakers and regulators who have been telling them that that is a stupid fucking horrible idea for over two years now.

So, yeah, what are you going to go back and re-listen to the conversations now? You're going to hop on Clubhouse, listen to some shit. What the fuck are you going to do? We've already told you. Everybody has told you. Yeah. You even have your own research that came out from the Wall Street Journal last week that we talked about.

You have your own research. Tell yourself. Yeah. Yeah. No. Worst company ever. Worst company ever. They really are. They really are. It just continues. Every week, it's something new. So, there you go. They're finally saying they're going to scrap it. But in related news, R. Kelly will be launching his own startup aimed at underage kids.

Trapped in my closet. Anyways. Some good news coming out of California. California is making zero-emission autonomous vehicles mandatory by 2030. Okay. Autonomous vehicles. Can we make...

We don't have autonomous vehicles yet. So, there we go. Oh, God. Yes. All flying cars must be green by the year 2022. What the fuck, Newsom? We gave you... You got to stay.

Okay, look. Stop doing stupid shit. To be fair, he's already got an executive order that effectively bans the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. I guess they're just setting it up to make sure that if we do roll these things out, if they do start to work, which they won't, they've got to be clean.

So, that's good. Great. Okay. If a fictional tree falls in a fictional fucking forest, does anybody fictionally fucking care? No. And speaking of complete fiction, Samsung hopes to copy and paste the brain to 3D chip networks.

Oh, God. This pandemic has made people fucking crazy. I think people are just doing too many shrooms. That's it. They're just doing too many shrooms. I think we're seeing the long-term results of the micro-dosing in Silicon Valley. That's what I think we're starting to see. I mean, I don't know.

Samsung is technically Korean. Do they have super mushrooms in Korea? I don't know. Because I think they might. It's an interesting research and development thing, but the fact that it's actually gotten this huge press release out of it is ridiculous.

Because this is gazillions of years away. This is at least 20 years after the 20 years of 20 years of 20 years of autonomous vehicles and self-driving cars. That's all I'm saying. And Barrett wrote in, cue the anti-vax QAnon freakouts. Apple Wallet update will allow digital COVID-19 vaccination card.

And this says the latest release, iOS 15, was rolled out and allows you to store your verifiable vaccination and test results in your iPhone's health app. The company is also working on a feature that will allow your vaccination cards to be added to your Apple wallet. This feature will be released in an iOS 15 update, they say. I'm a bit confused as I've had my vaccine card in my Apple wallet since April when I got my second dose.

So that was well before iOS 15 or any soon-to-come update. I don't get it. I've had it in there in iOS 14. Yeah, me too. I'm very confused by this article. Yeah, mine comes from the city of Los Angeles.

It is the verified result. It shows you a QR code. QR code. It's in my Apple wallet. It is in my wallet. I can actually pull it up on my Apple Watch, too, in the previous version of the OS. But what the fuck? What the fuck? I'm very good.

Again, I don't understand at all. And Andy wrote in, just some drone news. Bird attacks on drones force Google to suspend home deliveries. Did you watch these? Yes. Ravens are attacking drones, passing through their territory. What was once the purview of the eagles has now moved over to the Ravens.

Never more! Never more deliveries! So, I thought that was great. We kind of knew these kind of problems were going to happen, and here we are. And in our final little bit of news, William Shatner will boldly go into space with Bezos' Blue Origin.

So, this is not confirmed. This is a TMZ thing. But supposedly, next month, he will be going up for a 15-minute joyride being filmed for a documentary. People are pointing out that that is the exact same day that he will have a brand new album dropping, Bill, which is described as an autobiographical journey in poetry and prose, music, spoken word, performance art, and philosophical exploration.

Can he take all the copies with him to space and leave them there? Please! That would be good. Shat in space! Oh, God. You know, this is one of those things where even if it's not true, now that the press is out there, I think they'll have to make it true.

Yes, I think so, too. Yeah, yeah, because everybody wants to see Shatner in space. Come on, let's go. I do. Come on. Yeah, but they have to open up the cameras this time. Not like last time. You know, they didn't show any of the video inside last time, or just a little snippet.

If Shatner goes to space, I want that shit live streamed. I want him in the fucking uniform. Exactly! Yeah. Oh, man, that would be fun. I would go on that one. I would go on that one. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. I continue down my Disney rabbit hole, and I watch The Imagineering Story, a six-part documentary about the history of Disneyland. Very cool and very interesting. I really enjoyed it. But, you know, that's me. Sex education.

I'm going to check it out. The Imagineers are amazing. Dude, it's fascinating. It was one of the most fun things I've watched recently. It was just so good. Do they cover those islands that they made in Long Beach? No, not specifically. I think it gets a passing mention, but it doesn't delve too deep into it.

They go into building all the different parks, though. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, I really want to see that. I'm a huge Imagineering fan. Yeah. It's good, good, good, good stuff. Sex education season three has dropped. It's good, good, good stuff. Okay. I'm fucking a little loopy, man.

The weather's changing here. It's getting strange. Sex education season three has dropped. I love this show. I've watched two of the episodes of season three. It's continuing on with just the best humor and just the feels and everything. It's so good. I cannot recommend it enough. But then I was looking for something to watch, and this was thrown up in front of me because, you know, I've watched the Grand Tour and I've watched Mythbusters, so it makes sense that the great escapists would come up.

And this is the Tori Bellici from Mythbusters, Richard Hammond from the Grand Tour are dropped on an island and something happens. And I couldn't even make it through the first episode. This is the most awful piece of shit I've ever seen in my entire life. My least favorite people.

I like them both. Richard Hammond I like, but yeah, but I don't like Tori. I like Tori Bellici, but you know what? Tori Bellici can't act. And if you think any of the Grand Tour was scripted, all of this is scripted, and it's scripted stupid. Okay. So it's fucking horrible.

Okay. And Foundation has dropped on Apple Plus, and I have not watched any of it yet because one of the reviews that I found just, I don't think I can do it. This is from Gizmodo. They said Foundation couldn't be filmed, and it still hasn't been.

And the one quote that I feel compelled to read, for people who know and are fans of Isaac Asimov and his work, I feel compelled to warn you that if you watch the show, you will see a scene so enraging that you will tear your TV into with your bare hands. Then you'll realize how utterly unnecessary the scene was and tear it into four.

That's good writing. Yeah, I don't know what scene they're talking about, but... I'm not sure either, and I don't think I'm going to find out. Yeah, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. I mean, so I couldn't get into the books. I'm going to try again at some point, but I couldn't get into it. So I watched the show with, you know, fairly, you know, a fairly clean brain.

Yeah, it sucked. That's about as much as I can say about it. It fucking sucked. Everything is, oh, orchestral music everywhere. It's just like, oh, God. I've heard it's beautiful and well shot, and I did speak to one friend of mine who is a big fan of the books as well, as much as me, and he said, if you consider it as something foundation-adjacent, you might find it bearable, but it is not foundation.

No, no, it's foundation-esque. Yeah, no, I watched, I powered through two episodes. It is fairly painful, I got to say, fairly painful, and I was going in clean. So I'm looking at this as just a sci-fi show, you know?

It's not something that I was looking at as, you know, whatever. What was the, oh, that one show on HBO, something Wolves with the androids? Yes, yes, that's horrible. Yeah, it's about as good as that. Ugh, okay.

Yeah. Now, Brian, I hate to hate to say this one, but I saw Dune. Mm-hmm. Now, think about what we just said about foundation. Mm-hmm. 180 degrees. Okay. It's fucking phenomenal.

Oh, good. Oh, good. Fucking phenomenal. I loved it. Abso-fucking-lutely loved it. The acting is great. The casting is great. The visuals are great. The music is great. It's even got orchestral music, but they did it right. There's nothing about Dune that I did not love.

That's awesome to hear. Well, Dune is doable. Foundation should never be made into anything. It's just not even possible. Dune is doable, and I'm happy to hear that it is only the first half of the book. So, because doing the full book into one movie is, as David Lynch found out, impossible.

So, I'm very excited. I started with David Lynch's, like, you know, seven-hour VHS version. You know, Ward Bones, the first keyboardist from 311 that used to live with us. You remember that crazy fucker. He found it and brought it over, and we watched it.

And I liked it. I liked the really long version of it. The version I saw is two and a half hours long, and it basically gets them to the Fremen. And that's it. Yeah. Good. So, I'm just, like, I'm, like, I was pissed off because I'm, like, I want to see the rest of it now, please.

But it's so fucking good. It's so good. I mean, I hope that, I hope they realize that and start shooting the continuation immediately because, you know, we want the whole story. Yeah, they better be shooting already, goddammit. So, I just, I put that in here to put your mind at ease that I think is really fucking good.

Netflix has released the Sandman first look trailer. So, this is basically the beginning of the first comic. It looks great to me. I cannot wait. I'm super excited about this, even though right now I'm listening to Act 2 of Sandman on Audible.

I've got more Sandman than I know what to do with, and they're all going to be different, which is going to be confusing. So, I don't know. But I'm happy. After 30 years, this shit's finally coming to life. I know you're not an anime fan, but the Cowboy Bebop trailer, the live-action Cowboy Bebop, looks awesome.

I was a huge Cowboy Bebop fan, and I think they're going to do it justice. The casting looks great. I'm super excited about this, and I'm especially super excited about this because I did not know it existed until two days ago. I didn't know they were making it. Okay. That's always exciting.

Yeah. All right. The second season of The Witcher will be premiering on Netflix December 17th, and they have already announced that there will be a third season. And then, blowing the entire internet's mind, they also announced that they will be doing a kids and family series based on The Witcher, which is a bit odd for something that's loaded with sex, violence, and colorful language.

Did Facebook buy The Witcher? Maybe. Or R. Kelly. I'm not sure which. Oh, God. I did log into Amazon the other night, and while you got The Great Escapists, I got Goliath Season 4.

Goliath is one of those shows where it's like, I put it on, kind of pay attention to it. I like Billy Bob in it. I think his character's cool. It usually gets a little weird, metaphysically dumb fuckery in the middle of it. But there's another season, which makes him probably, again, the highest paid person on Amazon.

Remember that? We saw that pay scale when he did Season 3, and it was just like, he got paid that much for that? I know. Maybe, you know what he's done? He's done with that vial of Angelina blood that he got. I think he's cast a spell.

Perhaps. Perhaps. So I'm looking forward to that one. And so it is the September 24th was the 30th anniversary of Nevermind by Nirvana. And so I went and I looked it up because I went to one of the very first shows when Nevermind came out because I was a big Bleach fan.

I'm still a big Bleach fan. I like Bleach better than almost anything they've ever done. And I found the show that I went to on this website that it literally is just like what the Internet was made for. It's called LiveNirvana.com.

And they track every show that they ever did. They have the set list. They have the schedule, if they have it. I mean, every detail that you could possibly have. They have the flyers in this case. They've got pictures from the show. I can't see myself in this one, but I was right up front and in the pit the whole time for this one.

And I walked away from that show with one less contact than I came in with because I got kicked in the face. But it turns out the contact was stuck behind my eyes so that I got that back the next day, which is gross as hell. But I also walked away with a quarter of the bass drum ring from the front and almost had my legs broken on that.

I wish I would have kept that. I really wish I would have kept that. But it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. So I just thought that that was fun. But this website, oh, so good. That was just such a crazy time. I remember I went to see a band called Ned's Atomic Dustbin shortly after Nevermind came out.

And we all drove down to Tijuana, Mexico, because you could drink before you were 21 and saw Ned's Atomic Dustbin playing at Iguanas, famous venue down there that we all went to all the time. And before the band came out, they played Smells Like Teen Spirit on the sound system.

And people started moshing immediately to a song before a band came out because everybody was crazed about Nirvana back then. Did you actually ever get to see Nirvana? Yeah, I saw them once in Utero tour.

In Utero? Okay. Yeah. No, because I had thought that we had seen them two weeks before the album came out because we were all surprised. Like when we were leaving, they came out of the green room and they ran out the front door and right into this massive, like, 100-foot-long limo.

We're like, oh, they got label money now. But I saw them on October 12th, so a couple weeks after. But, yeah, it's still, I mean, one of the best shows of my entire fucking life. And they played Negative Creep and I lost my collective shit. It was so much fun.

I got so beat up at that show. I was 20. So, we could, you know, we could hang in the pit back then and come out fairly unscathed. But, yeah, history. Ups and doodads. Brian, fuck Spotify.

Okay. I went to go sign back up because I wanted to watch some stuff on Hulu. You know, the only murders in the building thing and a couple other shows. And I thought, oh, I'll just, you know, pick my subscription back up where it was and then I'll get my Hulu again for free. No, they charged me for three months and did not give me Hulu.

That might explain why my Hulu login hasn't worked recently. Yeah, it's gone. They just cut it. No news, no nothing. If you're a student, you can get it. But that's the only mention I have found anywhere. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, screw you, Hulu, Spotify, all you guys.

Screw you guys. I'm going to Sweden. All right. I did find out that there are multiple timers in WatchOS now. I used them almost immediately. Perfect for barbecuing multiple items. I had corn, sausages, and burgers all going at the same time, all needing attention at different times.

It's a dream come true. That's right. That's butcherbox.com slash GOG. That's right. Butcherbox.com slash GOG. I got my box coming tomorrow. So I'm very excited. My steaks and my pork chops. The stories are awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it took them, what, to watchOS 7 or whatever, 8, whatever version it's on now?

We're on 8. Okay. Yeah. Not a hard thing to do, guys. Not a hard thing to do. Everybody else has had it. Thank you for finally doing it. But anyway, so there's new news in the Apple Epic lawsuit, which I just think is funny as shit.

So, Epic wanted back on the App Store for iOS. They wanted to get Fortnite back on there. And Apple says, slow your roll, my man. Slow your roll. We're going to wait until all the appeals are done. That's it.

So, years. It's going to take years for Fortnite to come back onto iOS. And all I'm saying is, what the fuck did you think was going to happen, Epic? Seriously? Seriously, you thought that you were going to go after the biggest company in the world, poke the bear, and then they were going to play nice because they said they might?

I'm telling you right now, Tim Cook is a fucking gangster, and you guys got what you fucking deserved. He is. That's a smart move on their part. Good on him. Yep. Yep. And I broke down, and I had to buy an Apple TV 4K this week. Mm-hmm. It comes today that the Roku app is so bad.

I cannot resume after it stops. I love my Apple TVs. They work flawlessly almost all the time. Do you have the new 4K with the new remote? Yep. Oh, good. Okay. Do you like it? I should ask that first.

Do you like the remote? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they put a ring on it, so you can actually feel it in the dark now and know where all the buttons are. Yeah, that's what happens. You put a ring on it, and you can feel it any time you want. That's what they say. That's what they say. Never really works out that way from experience.

Ask any married, man. I have a headache. Go to bed. Oh. And I, because it came into sharp relief, because I've been watching a lot of stuff on Discovery Plus, because I signed back up for Discovery Plus through my Apple TV. And we're watching Billions on Showtime all through the Apple thing, because it's easy to cancel, like I mentioned.

And I found a new show, Brian, that I thought is just the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. We got an email about this. It's called Tiny Food Fight with Mamrie Hart and Darnell Ferguson. Okay. And it looks like such a ridiculous concept.

They literally make plates that are an inch wide, using tiny utensils in a tiny kitchen, where the oven is powered by a little tea light full of sterno. It is one of my favorite shows. It is.

I mean, we started watching it, and we're like, okay, this is going to last five minutes. And we got through the whole thing. The hosts are funny. The contestants are funny. The whole process is so unbelievably ridiculous that it's just entertaining.

So if you have Discovery Plus, or you can get it on Discovery, I highly recommend checking out an episode of Tiny Food Fight. I mean, it really just, I'm even thinking about it now. It is so stupid, ridiculous. It just makes me laugh. Okay. Oh, and I did get my iPad mini.

All right. I am so glad to have this thing back in my life, Brian. I missed it so much. It is like my spouse who went off on a seven-year journey to Antarctica and finally came back after I thought she'd been dead and eaten by seals. And now she's back in my life.

I do have to say, fuck the case. I got the Apple case, the smart cover. The edges on that thing are basically made with razor blades. So if you're holding it and trying to read on it, you're, well, for me, my pinky finger basically just got eviscerated from it.

So I took a Dremel to it. I have taken it outside. I have rubbed it on the concrete to try and soften it up. And nothing is actually working. So I just bought a different case. But don't waste your money on that case. I did order Paperlike for it, though.

If the Paperlike screen protector that makes the pencil actually feel like you're writing on paper, Paperlike is my go-to for any iPad. It's in preorder now, so as soon as they're done, they'll ship. But if you have an iPad and you use the pencil, Paperlike, Paperlike.com, amazing.

So, so far, I love this thing like it's, you know, a family member. Mini is my favorite form factor. It is pretty amazing. Do you have the jelly scrolling problems that some people are reporting where one side of the screen scrolls at a different rate than the other? Not at all.

I have got no problems with this thing. Excellent. Yeah, I think that might be a hardware problem because I read on it all day. I'm scrolling incessantly because I've got, I mean, this is like my consumption device. I go through hundreds of articles a day in Reader.

I'm actually reading the new Darren Brown book on it in my Kindle. I have not noticed a single problem with scrolling at all. Very cool. At the library. So, Brian, a friend of mine, Jamie J., he wrote a book.

Okay. Your friend wrote a book. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. Your friend wrote a book the other week. So, I thought, you know what? My friend wrote a book. So, I'm going to throw it in here. It's called Quit Repeating Yourself. How Today's Leaders Are Using Systems and Processes to Grow Their Business the Right Way. Jamie runs Bottleneck.online.

So, they are a distant assistant company. Not a virtual assistant, but a distant assistant. And I've worked with his people. You know who else has a distant assistant? Who? R. Kelly. Well, Jamie's are better. I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. I've worked with his people for a long time, and they are phenomenal. And they become part of your family. They do it the right way. It's not just like you go from a pool of people. They match people with the companies that they're going to work for. And it's a really cool business.

And he finally wrote a book. So, it's a veteran-owned business, and Jamie's a really cool guy. So, go check out the book. I'm sure it's fantastic. I just got my signed copy in the mail yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet. But, yeah, Quit Repeating Yourself by Jamie J.

It's spelled Jaime. So, I don't know why he goes by Jamie. But I had a stepdad named Jaime. He was the one that almost killed me on Christmas Eve with a golf club that we called the sheriffs on in Orlando, Florida. And he spent the night in jail. Yeah. So, I've got a long issue with people named Jaime.

But that's why I call him Jamie. Weird things are bubbling up in this episode. I know, man. I'm just saying. Yep. I put this one in here for you. I haven't read it yet, but I did buy it this morning. The audio book, Brandon Sanderson's Skyward. So, Brandon Sanderson wrote one of our favorite series back in the day.

And most of his stuff is all this fantasy crap, which I don't like. This is sci-fi. It's in space. I'm like, okay. As long as there's a spaceship, man, you can write all the fantasy crap you want. As long as you just set it in space, I'm good. So, I'm going to check this one out, but I wanted to throw it out here.

It's called Skyward. There's two books out already, and they just released a short story. And that's how I found out about it because Goodreads came today and said, Sunreach Skyward 2.1 by Brandon Sanderson. And I'm like, okay, Goodreads, can I have a chat with you? Because his first book came out in 2018, and I know I have followed Brandon on Goodreads probably since 2015 or 2016.

And this is the first I'm hearing about it, so Goodreads. Get your shit together, please. I think that ship has sailed. Brian, you used to own a Mini, didn't you? I did. I love that car.

You had a Countryman, right? I did. Yeah. I remember because you came over, and we put something in it that wouldn't fit in my friend's Hummer. You had so much space in that. Well, Brian, I'm glad you don't have a Mini anymore because I don't know if you've seen what they have done with the turn signals on the new Mini.

I looked at the article. They put arrows on them that go the wrong way. Yeah. You have to see this. You can click on the link in the show notes, open it up, and just watch the video because it is so un-fucking-believably stupid.

I almost have no words, but I do. But it's because it's un-fucking-believably stupid. It's dumb. And, you know, I love the Mini so much that we have actually been talking about selling the BMW because we live in an old city that isn't exactly built for large cars like our BMW X3.

And getting another Mini, and I hope they fix this before that happens because I cannot in good conscience buy a car that does this. What the f- I mean, can you explain to me what- how this got through committee? How did this get through committee? They only looked at the back of the car through a mirror.

Brick-a-brick. So, you know, we've talked a lot about that one particular episode of the West Wing where they bring in the different projection of the map and they spend almost the entire episode being blown away by the fact that the world does not look the way that we think that the world does.

One of my favorite episodes of the West Wing, I basically found an entire page full of maps that will blow your mind and confuse you. I love it. I love it that it's at thisiswhyimsingle.com. Yeah.

I no longer judge domain names or where things are at on the web anymore because we could just do 582 episodes on that. But so, yeah, it's there, whatever. But, I mean, I just scrolled through this and, yes, of course, it's clickbaity and the writing's shit on it.

But look at these maps and your brain will start to hurt. I hate you for putting this in here. I really do. I spent a lot of time looking at this yesterday and I'm like, fuck. Right?

That's it. We do not live- we live in the matrix. We do not live in the world that we think we live in. We do not. We just do not. Oh. I still say that everything changed with the Berenstain Bears. I tell you, something went wrong.

But the best headline of the week award goes to this one at futurism.com. Scientists intrigued by strange blobs on Uranus. I know it's pronounced Uranus, but come on, it's Uranus. And the subtitle is, the blobs are mushy and filled with gas.

They usually are. Yes. Futurism.com. You win this week in headlines. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner is with us today.

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. And Dave, I learned a lot about you this week on your show.

You did an interview show. Yeah, we have a show called Career Notes, which is a short little interview show that we run. And they turned the microphones on me this week. Bastards! Yeah. Because you weren't on enough shows. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it was a little strange. My colleague, Rick Howard, did the questioning. And this is one of those shows where you don't hear any of the questions. So I typically do the interviewing for this show. But of course, that wouldn't work for myself.

Although maybe it would. I don't know. It probably would. Yes. You certainly wouldn't need editorial approval. Right. This is Dave Bidner with Dave Bidner. Yeah. To Rick's credit, he came at me with a lot of unexpected questions. And I think it yielded a lot of interesting answers.

And of course, the editorial team stitched it all together and made it sound like something coherent. So I'm happy for that. It basically shit NPR. It just oozed NPR. Right. And then I went in my head.

I'm like, oh, this is kind of like, you know, behind the actor's studio. Or no, inside the actor's studio. And then I went to, you know, VH1's Behind the Music. And then I'm thinking in just some strange, random, you know, just crazy dream that I was having.

I'm like, man, we should have made a show called A Hand in My Ass and other stories from the Muppet side of the things. It's like, you know, just bit players, bit Muppets that you only see once or twice in a show. The guy that throws the fish. And it's their stories. Yeah. Lou Zealand. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Of course you knew his name. Of course. Of course. Well. I mean, not even a pause. Not a, oh yeah, what was that guy's name? Nope. Right there. That's Lou Zealand. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe that's something we should do is we should, we should, we should, we should make that sometime.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I know, I know some people that know some Muppets, so I can probably get us in. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. And my friend Gigi did the, what was it called? Jim Henson's Creature Shop. She hosted that. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.

With Brian Henson. Yeah. That was a good show. I've told the story about how Brian Henson hates me on this show before, so I'll skip that one. Right. We might be able to end around it. And Brian Henson was married to the gal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, right?

That I don't know. Yes. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think so. So tip of the hat to Brian Henson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just know he shops at Barney's and he thinks I can't afford his pants. Ah. No, he's probably right.

Yeah. No, it's actually not, but that's okay. Yeah. But I do have to say that I started watching Only Murders in the Building based on your recommendation, Dave. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like the show, but...

Okay. Fair enough. But I have to say, this is Martin Short's best performance I've ever seen. I actually, he's my favorite character in the show. After everything we said last week, Martin Short is my favorite character in the show. I hate Steve Martin in this. I think he's doing a fantastic job.

Yeah. I've only watched two episodes, but I think he humanizes the whole thing and it's very funny. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, ah, shit. I like Martin Short. Yeah. I have to say, you know, I am a huge Steve Martin fan and have been from the very beginning, you know, the wild and crazy guy days.

I think of the things he does, his acting is not at the top of my list of things that I enjoy from him. Yes. I think he's fine, but I think the problem I have with Steve Martin is that I can see him working. Right?

Yeah. It feels forced. Yeah. A little bit. A little bit. So, and I've, and I, that's just been part of his work, I think, for many of his films. I don't think it was so much in The Jerk because The Jerk was so, such a broad character.

But you think about really good movies like Parenthood that he's in, and I think the same thing applies where he's, I enjoy his performance, but I can see him working and that takes me out of it just a little bit. Daddy, what's a rack? A country. Hubba hubba.

No, but it's, I think Selena Gomez is good in it too. I just don't like the story so much. I'm only on episode two. I'm going to, I'm going to power through a little bit more of it, but. Yeah. Well, make sure you get to the episode with Sting and see if that wins you over. Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to. I've got, I had to go see my friend Sven because as we will discuss in, or as we've already discussed, sorry, the continuum eludes me today in apps and doodads, Spotify fucked me because they don't give you Hulu anymore for free.

So. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I, I, now I have three months of Spotify and no Hulu. So I had to go see my, my secrets friend Sven and get the, get the episodes, but fair enough. Yeah. It seems like it's doing well. People are, people are like it.

It's the buzzy show right now. Yeah. I do have to say in episode one, the cop, the, that black chick cop was really funny. It's like, Oh, you fucking true crime people get out of my way. She comes up again later in the run. So you'll get to enjoy some more from her.

Yeah. She's quite good. All right. Let's bring it back to Star Wars, shall we? Because there is some new Star Wars that has been. Let's, let's bring the security segment back to Star Wars. Yes, exactly. Where it belongs. Yes. The, the, the Disney gods have seen fit to bestow us with some more Star Wars.

This is called Star Wars visions. They went around to some of the top anime studios in the world and said, have at it. And the nice thing about it is they basically said, just do whatever you want. It doesn't have to fit in with our bullshit cannon that we've established. And boy, did they, I don't know if you've watched any of these, Dave.

I'm not really a big anime fan. I know, you know, I should be given I'm a nerd and everything else I like never got into anime. I did enjoy these, but because it was Star Wars. Yeah. I'd say I'm in the same category.

Most of what I know about anime comes from growing up watching Speed Racer and which I'm sure there are listeners who just spit out their coffee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, but my, actually my youngest, my youngest son, Jack enjoys anime.

So we've been watching some of those movies together and I've been enjoying them very much. So we started watching these and I watched the first one and I thought it was quite good. Um, so I'm looking forward to watching some more of them. I like this sort of thing. I, I like that it, it, I like that, um, you know, Lucasfilm was always really loose with letting people have fun with the characters and not cracking down on fan films and things like that.

And I think there was a lot of concern when Disney bought Lucasfilm that, well, that's going to change. And so far, in some ways it did, but so far, I mean, but this I think shows the other side of that, that, um, maybe with things like the Mandalorian and, and having some folks on board the Star Wars side of things who come at it from the fans point of view, which is my polite way of saying not George Lucas's point of view.

Um, I think we get stuff like this and I think they're fun and intriguing. They don't always work. And like I said, I've only watched one of them, but I, I like that these are out there and, um, I mean, I, I finished the series. I'd say they batted 500, which, you know, not too bad, not too bad.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, do you guys remember when the Matrix did this as well? Yes. No. Yeah. They, they, they, yeah, they put out a bunch of, uh, Matrix side stories. Uh, some were, uh, some were animated, all different animation styles where they, I, I thought there was one live action in there, but, um, I thought that they batted about 500 on that one as well.

And some of them, one of the side stories actually made it into the last movie. So that was kind of cool, but, uh, yeah, I, I might actually check this one out. It's a, yeah, I really enjoyed some of them, some of them, you know, not so much, but, uh, it, it was intriguing to just have something so removed from Canon and obviously so.

And, you know, it was just, uh, some really interesting takes on, on Star Wars lore. So good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, Dave, you and I got into a little, uh, Twitter chat this week about, uh, how file systems work.

Yes, we did. I wanted to bring it back home because. Of course, of course you do. Uh, well, yeah, actually because one of the people on Twitter said, well, we don't actually read Twitter, so you should do it on the show. Save it for the show. Save it for the show. Save it for the show.

Um, and I, basically they're saying that, uh, professors are having to rethink how they teach kids nowadays because people don't understand how file systems work. And you had a, a point of view that I thought was, um, frustrating and maddening. I would say.

This is why I stayed out of it. Yeah. Mr. Diplomacy is in the building. Go ahead. Uh, you said, well, get with the times people. We got search and we got meta tags and all that stuff. And I'm like, well, it's really good to know how your tools work. If it is the most important tool in your life.

And you just said, no, search metadata, blah, blah. So would you like to, would you like to, uh, would you like to shore up your position? That, of course, is a, that, of course, is a perfect and completely accurate description of how I came at the problem. Jason does like to couch other people's arguments in a very favorable light towards Jason.

Yes. You know, I, I used to hang out with Marines and they say, never start a fight that's fair. So let's go. What do you got? So I'm coming at this from the point of view that I guess the, the top level argument that I'm trying to make here is that it's important that we not come at new tools in old ways.

Oh, but how can you have a top level if you don't have a file system, Dave? Oh my God, Brian. Exactly. So you, well, let's go there. So, so I'm not, I'm not against file systems, but what I'm saying is that if you came up, uh, and you were using, for example, iOS as your primary, uh, electronic device, and that's

how you, that's how you consider computers to work, then, um, it's going to make sense that you're not really hip to a file system. But there is an app called files in iOS that does very recently tree.

Very recently. Yes. Very recently. See, now I like to, I like to thread the needle between you guys because there is photos, which one can argue is also a file system. However, they are moving away from that. And there are many different ways that you can access your photos now that don't follow a traditional file system structure.

Yes. There are many ways you can't find your photos either, but I digress. Yeah. Um, I think, so part of this, I think follows along with the switch that happened for a lot of us and, and those of us who are older, old timers, those of us who are grumpy old geeks, um, went kicking and screaming into this new era of not carefully curating your own music collection.

Yep. Right. That was painful. Um, yeah, it was very painful. And I think this is along those same lines where what, so a file system is essentially a lot of structured metadata, right?

No, file system is a tree. You start at the top and you have branches going. It's an inverted tree, basically, if you want to think of it that way. But the descriptors are metadata. I mean, you say to a file, what is, what do we know about this file? This file is in this folder.

That's metadata. Where does this folder? This folder is in this folder. That's metadata. This folder is in this directory. I think it's also interesting to point out that why do we call them folders? Uh, I think that was, I actually, I don't know the history of folders versus directories because when I grew up, it was DOS and it was directories.

Right, exactly. Well, that's what I'm getting to is that I would call them folders because in graphical user interfaces, they look like folders. So that'd probably be Windows 3.1 that started that. Uh, or the Mac OS. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody will research this and yell at us, I'm sure, ad nauseum on Discord.

Right. But again, so trying to get back to the big picture that, um, this is all layers of abstraction, right? They're not actually folders. They're, it's, it's things being described as certain ways. It's different types of metadata being assigned to different files.

Um, and then it's being presented to us in a way that makes it easier for us, the slow meat bags to understand. None of this is real. We're in the matrix. Yeah. Uh, but there is a bee tree. There is, there is no spoon, but there is a bee tree.

So, yeah. But what I'm getting at is that, um, I think there could come a point where the, a, a search based system could be superior to or supplemental to a directory.

But I think with Dave's argument here, the way, the, the way to solve the discord between the two of you right now is I think Dave is saying at some point in the future for people who are not professionals, who don't do computery stuff for a living, there could be something that easily supplants file systems and, and they can do everything that they need to do in their lives and live their lives and use their devices without ever understanding what a file system is.

Now people who actually are building the software upon which these people are using this new format that is evolving, we'll still need to understand how file systems work, but it's going to become more niche like it was before back when nobody understood computers at all. And we were geeks who understood all, all this stuff works.

I think we're heading back to that point again. So what you're saying is Dave believes in Uber because kids can drive somewhere without having to get a driver's license, but the, the power users will still get a driver's license and drive themselves everywhere. Yes. Okay.

Just wanted to clarify. Yeah, but I would also extend what, I agree with Brian and I will also say that I could see a time coming when the file system is abstracted to the power users as well, where they don't need to worry about it anymore. God, I hope I'm dead by then.

You will be. Yeah, you probably will be. Yes. That's good. That's good. The race you're going now, count on it. Oh, yes. No shit. See, the thing is, I was about to make a joke and put a timeline on that, but I've listened to this show before and I know that when we do that, it actually sometimes comes true.

So I'm going to say in 2079 when the file system goes away. Yeah. So, I mean, we have smart folders already, right? So those are auto-searching folders on your computer, but I think if the fact that we can go to our systems now and they're generating their own metadata, so you can say, you know, show me all of my photos that were taken during the day at the beach on the West Coast and in which

there is a cocker spaniel, and the computer will come back and show me those. Is it perfect every time? No. But it's a lot more effective a search than trying to go through a directory structure to find that kind of stuff.

The days that you remember being at the beach, yeah. Right. Yes. And this works great for white people, but, you know, how does that work if you're black? You know? Not so good yet. Well, that's, yeah, I mean, that's a different issue and, of course, a serious one, but yeah, I don't think that has anything to do with file structures.

Yeah, and we were talking about libraries and librarians. You brought up, you know, I'm like, okay, even though I can go ask the librarian, it's really good for me to know the Dewey Decimal System in case she doesn't show up that day and I can still find my book. Right. And, you know, the search method is like, okay, so basically instead of having everything organized, you have a pile of books and you are basically, you know, dependent upon this

librarian coming in who may have been drunk the night before and asking her to find the book that is this one specific page in a book that you're looking for that she might or might not be able to find. Even though it's there, she might not find it, but you have now given up your agency to the librarian, whereas in the old days you could just go find it yourself.

You know, I'm not sure if you've been to a library recently, Jason, but I go basically weekly now and they have little computers where I use search to find the books and then they tell me where they are. Well, the search is the same thing as the drunken librarian. I'm sorry, Brian, I didn't make the metaphor. No, but I made the counter argument that the librarian has a ton of metadata.

So because there's a librarian there, you can go to the librarian and say, listen, I'm interested in this book about dinosaurs. It's the tall one with the red spine and it had really funky type on the spine. I don't know anything more about that. And the librarian can go, ah, yes, I know exactly the one you're talking about.

So you don't get that from the card catalog. Dave's librarian is the newfangled search engine. Yes. Here's the thing. I don't see these as mutually exclusive options. I'm just saying that it would be better if everybody knew the Dewey Decimal system. And 10 minutes ago, I made the argument that it's going to be a hybrid between both of what you guys are saying.

Yeah, well, I made the argument last week, so fuck off. That's the same thing. Well, you're the one that brought it back up. Of course I did, because I want to hear how Dave said it. I think it's good to be able to fall back on, but I believe that, and this is having come up the way the three of us did through the history of accessible computing, you know, 8-bit computers and beyond.

I think it's not necessarily a reflexive impulse for us to think that hiding this stuff from users is better. But when I see the success that normal people have with things like iPads, I think it is. I think there's a lot of stuff under the hood that the vast majority of people don't have to see.

And indeed, if it's hidden from them, their computing experience will be better. Does that mean we do away with the stuff and don't allow the power users access to it? No, I think that should be an option. But I think for most people, having it sort of hidden, protecting them from that complexity, I think leads to better outcomes.

See, I come from a standpoint where I live with someone who I've known for 20 years. She has no idea how a file system works. And I'm the one that has to come in when she can't find anything that is, you know, 17 layers deep because, you know, one of these people who will take something, download it in Chrome, open it, and then like copy it to the desktop.

So now she knows where it's at. And you've seen people like this. You've seen their desktops. Nothing is, nothing is, you know, find. And then she'll take five minutes to find it on the desktop with all 34,000 files because she never throws anything away. And there's duplicates everywhere.

And this comes down from a lack of understanding of how the file system works. And even though you try and teach people how the file system works, they don't want to listen. So I still see that there are so many flaws in the system as it is. That's what just gets my goat and just says, ah, I want people to know how this basic stuff works because computers are the most important tool that all of us use every day.

Even though we don't make money on it, it is still the most important tool. And I think basic knowledge should be key. Yeah. And I'm saying that in addition to that, if the operating system can look at that file that she placed on the desktop, analyze it, make a bunch of conclusions about it, that will really help her when it comes time for her to find that file.

Which is usually 30 seconds after she needs, like, and she drags it 30 seconds at the most. Okay. We're both making the same points now. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I've got a story. The Lithuanian defense ministry urges people to throw away their phones after listening to this fucking segment on the podcast.

Yeah. No, after discovering censorship tools, this came from Vincent, who said he's basically switched over to Apple now because he's sick of all this kind of stuff happening. According to an analyst from Lithuania, the Chinese company's flagship devices sold in Europe have a built-in ability to detect and censor particular items.

Phrases include, oh, this is one of those smart operating systems, Dave. They didn't even have to put these words in folders. These phrases include a demonstration, free Tibet, long-lived Taiwan independence, and church, according to the authorities. So they're saying this is turned off for devices in the European Union, but they are still in there and could be turned on remotely, which is pretty crazy.

Yep. Yep. I wouldn't buy one of these phones. I wouldn't. And I would. But I, but they're, it's interesting. Although I'll take a phone that bans church. Do we have these in the U.S.? Can you buy a, uh, one of these phones here or not?

I'm not sure. I don't, because I remember there were a few brands a few years back where there were some issues with this sort of thing and they were yanked from the market. But yeah. And I mean, this is the underlying sort of stuff that was behind, uh, Yahweh and all that sort of stuff too. Right.

We didn't want them, uh, giving us bits for infrastructure for 5g because we didn't know what was in the chips. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly what this is. So it's interesting. I, we got another note in this morning. Uh, Vincent's from Ireland, I believe, cause he's always, he loves his Irish whiskey.

He does before he writes us. And we got another note from William from Ireland as well, who has decided to give up Android and move to Apple also. Um, so, um, he's had, he's had some issues. He's the tech support for his large Catholic family, he says, which I, I feel for your brother.

Um, uh, and he says, since I'm a, I'm the techie person and an Irish Catholic family, all seven of them too. Any advice for a newly minted Apple adventurer? So do you guys have any advice for William? Um, uh, they're pretty easy. Go and give into the ecosystem.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It, uh, it all works pretty well. There's not much you're going to have to do. Um, you know, Google some of those like, uh, 10 things to do as soon as you get an iPhone articles. Cause they're usually pretty good about, uh, just some basic settings, but, uh, man, these things just work, man.

They really just do. I was going to say, take, take that time, worry or not worrying about, uh, ransomware anymore and go, uh, have a pint because you don't have to, you don't really have to worry about that anymore. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is good. Uh, speaking of Apple, I thought we'd, uh, wrap up things today.

There's an article from Vice. Um, there was, uh, the researcher about a week ago, his name is Haber or that's his hacker name that he goes by. And he was very frustrated that he had shared three zero days with Apple and Apple had not fixed them in the most recent versions of the OS and had not satisfactorily responded to his requests and inquiries about these zero days.

So he published them responsibly, uh, which means he gave Apple plenty of time to do what they needed to do. He warned Apple that if you don't answer me to my satisfaction, I'm going to publish these and so he did and that's the right way to do it.

Um, got a lot of PR about it and since then Apple has responded and they have apologized, uh, for their lack of response to his bug bounty or his bug program disclosures. Hopefully, obviously these will get fixed, but hopefully also this guy will get, uh, a good payout from Apple who does not necessarily have a good reputation for great payouts when it comes to bounties.

Is this the guy we talked about last week that posted to GitHub? Yep. That's it. Okay. Yep. Oh, good. So it's sort of, it's follow up on that, that, uh, Apple, I, you know, cause I would have put even odds whether or not we'd hear, hear anything from Apple on this at all. So interesting that they're bowing to public pressure a little bit and saying, we're sorry, we should have, we could do a better job and we hope to do so in the future.

There's a lot of that going around with Apple nowadays, isn't there? Well, I'm, I'm thinking that this is just such a strange new world for all of these companies to be in when you've got, uh, okay, let's, let's be honest. We've, we've all known people that are probably like Haber. Um, they're not the most normal people that, that go and delve, delve so deeply into these things and find all these vulnerabilities and all that sort of stuff.

And as a corporation, you now how have to kind of appease these people because you don't want them getting pissed off at you and making, and, and, and turning their full powers towards investigating you and your stuff and finding things. Right.

So you're walking this tight warp of like, we appreciate that you found this. We want to, you know, reward you for this so we can fix it. But we also really don't want to piss any of you off. Right. Well, and I think it's important to recognize that this is a market response in that there is a market for these zero days outside of Apple.

There are plenty of other folks, bad guys, nation states, uh, uh, spy organizations who would love to spend good money on the zero days. And there are people out there that that is their living. They search for these things, they find them and they sell them and they do quite well for themselves.

So part of the reason why you have a bug bounty program is to be able to have an alternative to allow these people to still profit, but do it in a way that's for good. And Apple who has all the money, um, yeah, there's a shame they're not doing better with this.

I, I, I think it, I suspect that it is just a result of Apple's sort of insular culture that they don't like to admit that people outside the mothership could know anything more than they could and all of those kinds of things.

Yeah. Is it like arrogance on their, their coders? Like, you know, our shit don't stink. I think it's partly that, but I think it's deeper than that. I, I, I really, you know, they just, they're lousy at communicating as well. Back in, you know, my, my video day, my pro video days, it was just really frustrating as much as I loved using final cut pro.

It was frustrating that you just couldn't get any information out of Apple for, do you even acknowledge that there's a bug here? What, what, what is your timeline for updates for new versions for any of that kind of stuff? And maybe that works on a consumer based device, but when you're a pro and you're using pro tools and literally pro tools, um, uh, you need to know this kind of thing.

And it was very frustrating that, that Apple was this way. Every now and then you'd see a little bit of like somebody at Apple would convince somebody that maybe we should try this a different way and it would get clamped down on really fast. So I don't know. I wish they could do better.

And it just seems like if they would, it would be better for everybody. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. All right. Well, that was a lively discussion. Yeah. I'm going to go play with some puppets. So, uh, see you guys later. I'm going to go put things in folders.

Yeah. Very good. Very good. Jason, why don't you go take a trip to the library? I will. I want to meet this drunk librarian. Always had a thing for it. Closing shout outs.

Hey, Brian, last week we mentioned that we're probably going fully fan supported. And, uh, I have to say the fan stepped up. This has been a, this has been a very good week for us. I hope it sticks because if this is an anomaly, we're fucked. And, uh, yeah, but, uh, since it's, hopefully it's not, but, uh, we want to start off with thanking everybody at Patreon for upping their pledges and also Gregory, JW and ENC as new Patreon supporters.

Yes. And Mark, Matthew, Daniel, Ian, Thomas, and Charlie over at PayPal. And then the big gun donations at PayPal from Simon, Jason, and Steven. Thank you guys so much. And Steven said, thanks guys. It's been great having the show during the pandemic attempted government coup. God, did that really just happen a year ago?

Uh, Texas grid failure. What? Snowmageddon. Snowmageddon. Interesting times. Yep. Yep. And over at Stripe, we've gotten the $10 club. We've got Gay DLV, Michael Z, Kyle D, Brian G, and 20 buck club.

We've got Christian Von B, Bonnie K, and, uh, Alden R dropped a $30 donation and Scott A wins with the $50 donation. And also I would like to point out that Simon and Jason did drop 50 on PayPal and Steven gave us a cool hundy. Thank you very much. And, uh, we got a sub from Adam D for 10 bucks and a new $5 sub from Daryl W and Jennifer C with the $5 sub.

We love those subs. Keep them coming. Seriously. This is like, I can't, I can't tell you how much we appreciate this because this is what's going to keep the show going. That's true. And, uh, you guys were so busy giving us money that nobody reviewed us on iTunes. Fuck iTunes. We'll take the money.

Take the money and, uh, a, uh, heartfelt shout out to our friend, uh, MXV who had a fucking heart attack this weekend. Um, 51 had a damn heart attack. So, uh, I, I've been talking to him and he's going home today.

Okay. Uh, so yeah, it's good news. Good news, bad news, but, uh, yeah, talk about a fucking scare. Take care of yourself, people. So stay healthy, stay safe. And until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever.

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