529: It’s a Notch, Notch World

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. Happy after Halloween. Happy after Halloween. Did you have fun with the kiddo? I stayed home and passed out candy. I don't know if I'd mention this to you, but we moved on to a street in Toronto that is so into Halloween that they get permits from the city to shut the street down to car traffic.

And most of the city comes to our street. I handed out over 800 pieces of candy in less than two and a half hours, and we had to shut off all the lights and close the doors because we were out of candy. That sounds like hell. It was actually a lot of fun. It was really great. I enjoyed it a lot. So it was a good time. And the kid ran around and got tons of candy.

And is thrilled. So it was fun. It was normal, you know. This is the first because he's five years old, right? Oh, yeah. Pre-COVID, he wasn't old enough to really get what Halloween was at all. And then COVID hit and we couldn't do trick-or-treating and had to make shit up like hiding candy around the house.

So this was his first experience, and he had a blast. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, Halloween here ends on October 30th because we have, like, you know, we have a really nice big display that we put up in the front of the house for all of October. And then October 30th, it all just goes back in storage, and we shut off all the lights, lock the gates, and call it a night at 6 o'clock and say, stay the hell away.

Mainly just because we have dogs that will eat small children. Right. So I don't know if you noticed, Brian, it has been a shit tech news week. I didn't know if it was me burned out on tech news or me just not finding anything, but I guess it's the me not finding anything. Yeah, I went through everything this way. I went, you know, just scrolling headlines every day, just nothing.

I mean, if it wasn't meta, it was nothing. Yeah. And so, yes, I have proof. So behold, this made mainstream news. This is how shitty of a tech news week it was. A Reddit user found a black hole on Google Maps and users couldn't figure out what it was.

Huh. This was on, like, you know, KTLA here in Los Angeles. And I'm like, and it turns out, you know, a dot in the middle of the ocean? Hmm. You'd think it was an island. Well, it fucking was. Also, you're looking at a map that labels things.

So, I don't know. It tells you what it is on the map. Okay. So, there you go. There you go. Yes. All right. Yes, it's Vostok Island. Okay. So, there it is. You know, slow news weeks used to be, like, then you would get the heartwarming stories.

Now you just get the idiots. That's what you get on slow news weeks. That's what you get on fast news weeks, too, I'm afraid. So, let's get into the news. All right. In the news. Yeah, you couldn't throw a, you know, just throw a rock without hitting meta this week.

And because we missed it from our show last week. It didn't happen yet. And now that it has happened, yes, Facebook is going to be called meta. Everybody knows. I have been talking to civilians, Brian. I don't know if you know many of them, but I know quite a few civilians who aren't, you know, tech nerds like us.

Yeah. And the buzz on the street is, what are they? They think we're stupid? They suck. This is the dumbest thing ever. And what the fuck is it? Some universe thing? What the fuck? Nobody can understand what it is, for starters. The normies have no clue.

Yeah. And then they're like, you're trying to get out of all the shit that's been on the news, so you just change the name? You know, people are wise to their shenanigans. Just even normal folks who still use Facebook. Yes. By the way, but... No, I agree. That has been the reaction from most of my friends that aren't tech heavy.

They're more music industry. But I also have a lot of friends that are financially savvy, and they're like, this is genius. This is rebranding Google a la Alphabet. You have a top-level company. I mean, meta is just as dumb as Alphabet. And then you build your company underneath that.

You have your different divisions. Might help out with some of the regulatory issues if they do some separation. Worked for Google. Sorry. Worked for Alphabet. And stock price going up. So who's the dumb one? Yeah. I don't know. I know. But I mean, it is...

Okay. Who is the dumb one? Their whole presentation on what meta will be is fucking stupid. Nobody wants that. It is so bad. Nobody wants it. It's shown so poorly and so...

They think they're Apple and Steve Jobs, and they're just not. Like, the presentations are dumb and horrific and cringeworthy. And the idea is dumb and horrific and cringeworthy. It's second life on steroids. Whoop-dee-doo.

Yeah, they're trying to reinvent late-90s cyber arcades. Outside of the fact, none of it exists. None of it exists. Yeah. And won't for a very long time. It won't exist because nobody fucking wants it. No, there's that. We have a metaverse right now. With all of the gadgets and cameras and displays that we have, we can do just about anything that you can with, you know, just as far as AR goes.

Look at Snap. You can do AR with that. Look at Pokemon Go. You know, you've got your AR things, and those are fine use cases. You don't need to strap something to your fucking head and go into, you know, basically another Zoom meeting, but you got like five pounds of gear on your head.

Yeah. And that shit still sucks. People get sick. Their necks hurt. There is just no good use for the technology that he's trying to bring to meta. It's like, no, we have technology. I can't remember who I was listening to. I have a feeling it was Scott Galloway again on Pivot or something like that, who said something really interesting.

He said, everybody's focusing on the wrong sense. It shouldn't be vision. It should be hearing. And the person that's going to get us into the metaverse, the fastest and the easiest is Apple and the AirPods. Yep, that was on Pivot this morning. Okay, that was Pivot. And I thought that was great. That totally makes sense to me.

That is a metaverse that I wouldn't mind having. I don't want to wear goggles or a camera or anything like that. That's ridiculous. I don't want a fucking avatar of me wandering around. I don't even like me wandering around. Why would I want an avatar of me wandering around? Exactly. No, Brian, but it's Ready Player One, man.

It's Ready Player One. Yeah, that was a dystopia. Except it's not. We don't have the technology. All these things that they're trying to build were dystopias, you fucking morons. Yep. The reason that they invented the metaverse was to get rid of the, because the real world was so miserable. I mean, I know you're trying to jump the gun.

Why do all our billionaires want off the planet or out of the real world so badly? Because there's no more money to take. They're running out of people to mind, so. Anyways, dumb, dumb, dumb. Yeah, so Facebook is also working on a new smartwatch, allegedly, with two cameras. Great idea.

Great idea. But how many noxious? How are those Ray-Bans working out, by the way? Anybody buy those Ray-Bans yet? Or their Amazon Echo competitor, too. I can't even remember what it was called because nobody has one. Portal. Portal, yeah. You guys are hitting it out of the park with hardware. Keep at it.

No, they are going to fail so miserably. That's what I said last time. Like, if they're going to keep pumping this money into meta, everybody get a job, take the money, and run, you know? Because they're never going to crack that nut. And it could very well be the undoing of them, but.

It won't be. Yeah, I guess Amazon did recover from the Fire Phone. Yeah. So, you know, you can't have a gazillion dollar flop. Yeah, they'll be fine. They're too big to fail right now, unfortunately. Yeah, and Apple is working on a headset. It is rumored. A very expensive headset, they're saying.

It should be coming out maybe in 2022, maybe, but probably 2023. And it'll be mixed reality. So I'm not going to say any more about it because it's all speculation. Too early to tell. It's all speculation. Yeah. Yeah, but I got to say Wendy's wins the internet for the day with their Twitter thread.

The PR company that runs their Twitter is fucking genius, man. I started following them about two or three years ago, and they're just great. Yeah. Because it all started out with changing name to Meet, and Slim Jim's like, this is awkward. We're going with Mita. And welcome to the Mitaverse.

And there are just so many companies that went back and forth with them that it was just – I mean, it really made the day. I mean, I busted out Photoshop and made a Goatsy Meta logo, which was pretty fun, but I haven't used Photoshop in a while. But here's the problem.

Most people didn't get it because nobody knows what Goatsy is anymore. Well, Goatsy, let's be honest, Jason, was not exactly a mass media even back in the day. Oh, it kind of was. It kind of was. Remember the software package I made called Goatsypeg? It was kind of like to thwart Etherpeg, which is where you could scan the Ethernet – it was supposed to be Ethernet, but you could scan the Wi-Fi for any images coming through, and you could see every image that was coming across the network.

Yeah. So I just had a little one-pixel, one-pixel thing that just kept reloading Goatsy every time. So anybody that was running Etherpeg would just get a screen full of Goatsy. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. Yeah. And I saw this one over on TMZ, of all places.

There's a computer company that changed their name to Meta a while ago, and they trademarked it. Well, they have a trademark application in. Right. And so they're willing to give it back to Zuck for $20 million. I'm like, you guys, that's kind of cheap. Yeah, I know. I would ask for more. Yeah. So a rare thing to find that Facebook had some good – something good came out of them.

They took down a government-run troll farm in Nicaragua. Apparently, multiple government agencies helped run a network of fake accounts and media pages that spanned across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. So they shared this on their monthly report on coordinated inauthentic behavior on the platform.

So hundreds of fake accounts, blah, blah, blah. And they said the weird thing about this is that it's so obvious and they were able to trace it to so many government institutions. Now, to be fair, I'm glad that they stopped this. And, you know, Nicaragua, not exactly the best government, not exactly doing good things.

But you want to talk about dystopia. A private company called Facebook has taken down government institutions in a sovereign country. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. You know, Facebook has so much money they could actually have just bought Nicaragua.

Yeah. Just probably. You know. Yep. Renamed it Meta. Meta land. That's where everybody's going to move. I just love that they have a report on coordinated inauthentic behavior. I'm like, isn't that Instagram? Pretty much. So they were able to do that, yet they couldn't stop themselves from verifying a Bitcoin scammer pretending to be Elon Musk.

Smooth, guys. Yeah, one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away. So, and now how this page got verified is beyond me. I mean, we can't get verified, for God's sake. They verified a Facebook fan page for Elon Musk as Musk's own official account.

It says in the About section, this is a fan page uploading tweets, et cetera, from him. And the URL ends in something that is Elon Musk officie, which, you know, doesn't sound very official to me. In the page transparency section, it says the people who manage the page are based in Egypt, not where Elon Musk happens to live.

Facebook verification theoretically requires account owners to submit proof of identity, such as driver's license or passport. How did this happen? I guess they were concentrating on Nicaragua. That must be the problem. Yeah, it must have been. Somebody just hit that verify button.

Go. I saw this and came across the wire, which was interesting. Snap investigation alert. Kessler, Topaz, Metzler, and Check. LLP is investigating securities fraud claims on behalf of Snap, Inc. investors. Okay. So, I'm curious what they're doing, since I am now a shareholder of Snap.

Yes. I am a Snap investor. You have skin in the Snap. I want to know how my $100 is being used. Oh, yeah. Still under when I bought it by like a buck. So, I'm hoping it's going to snap back one of these days. I think they're not going anywhere.

They'll be around. They'll just never – they'll be like Twitter, you know, the ugly step cousin. Always there. It's crazy. A lot of people still use them. And it's not as addictive as TikTok. It's not as harmful as Twitter.

It's not as just overused as Instagram. It's still there and people use it, but they don't even talk about it that much, but they're on it every day. Yeah. It's just kind of a thing. It's just a thing. It's in their list. So, I don't know. Maybe they're going to come out of this. Well, they're actually an AR company.

They've had glasses and things that are in the works. So, technically, they're ahead of Facebook. So, maybe that's why Zuck called it Meta so he could – because he can only come up with new ideas that Snap had first anymore. So, he saw Snap's glasses and said, hey, we got to get in on that. Let's do it. Let's do it.

And after all the big news about Uber and Hertz last week and, you know, the trillion-dollar run, woo, yay, whatever, I'm pissed off I sold all my Tesla stock because I'm an idiot. But, honestly, who could have seen that one coming? Me.

Yeah, I was going to say Uber. I knew you were going to say that. So, starting yesterday, Uber drivers can rent 2021 Tesla Model 3 cars through Hertz's rental program in L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. It will be nationwide in the following weeks. Please don't be using the beta software, please.

No shit. No shit. It's going to run you $334 a week, excluding taxes and fees. Wow. They say they'll get it down to $299 or lower over time. And you have to have at least a 4.7-star rating and a minimum of 150 trips. That is not cheap.

No. That's like half a day or a day's work to pay for just the car. Yeah. So, at least. Doesn't make any sense to me. Depending on surge pricing. Yes. Yes, of course. And you and I might be rolling in the crypto soon, Jason. Woo!

TechCrunch has reported that Patreon executives Jack Conte and Julian Gutman said at the Information's latest summit that the company was evaluating the use of crypto, including a previously hint of that possibility of allowing creator coins that fans can buy to show support. Yes, you too can own a Grumpy Old Geeks creator coin in the very near future, which will be worth absolutely nothing.

Yeah. We prefer you just give us the money and we don't give you anything in return. Yeah, that's how we like it. On the plus side, though, because we had talked about putting out some Grumpy Old Geeks NFTs and, like usual, we just never do it. They might package that as well.

So, we could do it easily through their service and in the future. Who knows? Basically, Patreon is desperately trying to find new things to do. If they'll let us sell these, you know, garbage episodes as NFTs, I'll sell them as long as we got them. Yeah. You can own the original pure copy.

Yes. You can get the $4.90 Dave Bittner fuckfest for only 5,000 whatever ETH and we're good to go. There's a hell of a show title. And speaking of crypto, we got this one from Sherman. Hey, geeks, just wanted to drop this in here as one to add to the crypto as a fucking scam files.

And this is a story about Squid Game crypto plunges to zero after scammers steal millions of dollars from investors. Are they really investors? I would not. Honestly, I think we call them Rubes or Marks, yes. Yeah, Rubes and Marks. Yeah. They absconded with $2.1 million, which isn't a whole lot.

So, who made it? Who made the squid? I guess, okay. So, it's not related to Netflix or the people that made Squid Game or something like that. Because I can see that, you know, back when we were kids and like Star Wars came out and then McDonald's would sell those really crappy glasses that you could get.

Yeah. You know, that would have like Princess Leia on one and Han Solo on the other. I can see this being the new thing that people do. Like, the Matrix come, you know, the new Matrix is coming out and they should be marketing a Matrix coin along with it. That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah.

Another great idea for free for anybody that wants to use it. But yeah, I think maybe, I mean, it was only $2.1 million. So, maybe they tried to get out, like, you know, get a decent chunk of change, but not so much that, you know, the black squads would come and find them or whatever rock they're hiding under.

The funny thing is, everybody said it was a scam. Don't invest. So, you get what you pay for on that one. And I saw this this morning. I thought it was really interesting. Yahoo is now out of China. This is, these are coming hard and fast with everybody pulling out of China.

Well, there's, there's no plus side for being there. And basically, China steals your tech and steals your institutional knowledge if you go there. And then they prop up a local, local guy to basically rebuild what you built.

And then they push that one instead of you. And all of a sudden, China has its own thing. That was exactly like your thing that you came there to hope to sell to them. So, that's what's going on. And I'm not surprised at all that we're, we're starting to move and, you know, U.S. and international companies are getting out because they've seen this pattern over and over again.

And it's not working out well for anybody except China. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been a thing with physical goods for years. So, why not software as well? Yep. So, because Fortnite pulled out as well this week. So, I thought that was really interesting, especially since part of them are China owned.

Yeah. I mean, you want to talk about the splinter web. I mean, this is it happening right in front of our eyes. Like, China has its own versions of everything and they're not available outside of China and our stuff isn't, isn't there anymore. So, they've got their own whole thing now. Yep.

And Russia's trying to follow suit. So, yay, internet. Goodbye, internet. That's about it. And this is just one of the, just because you can do a thing, why should you? I saw this over at Business Insider.

It's about a company called Hereafter.ai. We've covered some of these chatbots that are recreated from conversations with dead people. Yep. And these guys have just, they've gone whole hog and started a company around it. And I don't, I.

No. No. No. No. Uh-uh. Or to quote Ted Lasso, no. Because the thing about it that finally I was thinking of this morning when I was just, you know, mulling this over. I'm like, you know, in like, you know, 15, 20 years, if they still have these things, it would be interesting to go back and see how unwoke the dead people are.

How shitty and racist people used to be back then. Because that's the way people were back then. Can you imagine going back to like, you know, you know, like the 1800s and getting chatbots from people back then? Oh my God, they'd be canceled so fast. My great, great, great grandfather's chatbot.

You done married a China woman? Exactly. Is that one of them goddamn Orientals? Jesus Christ. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs afterlife Twitter. No, they don't. Some things should just fucking die. Look, we tell you not even to like have current life Twitter.

You should be using tweet delete. You definitely don't need one after you're dead. No doubt. No doubt. And it reminded me, long ago, I think this, I started this in 2004. Was that site Death Vault that I was trying to build? Oh yeah, I remember that, yep. Yeah, I threw the logo in the show notes here so you can, if you want to do a social with it.

I think I used early version of Fiverr to get that logo done. And yeah, that was just, I'm not really good with upbeat, happy names. No. Everybody's like, everybody was like, that's a great idea, but man, the name, really?

It still is a good idea. I can't believe somebody hasn't taken that and built something pretty solid with it yet. Yeah, yeah. I just got scared with all the crypto that I needed to know to do it because the whole premise of it was that's where you keep all of your sensitive documents that if you don't, you know, if your heartbeat doesn't ping the service in X amount of time, that everything gets released to your family, your lawyers, and everything like that.

And I even, this is even before I even knew about these things. I was coming up with, okay, I've got multiple levels of passwords. So if I'm getting, you know, held at gunpoint somewhere, I can give somebody, you know, a password that would say, okay, here are the documents and give them a fake set of documents.

And then immediately call the police and send them my IP address and geolocation so somebody could come fucking rescue me. And then it turns out that that's a spy thing that they've been doing forever. I guess most of this stuff is kind of baked into like your 1Passwords or your password managers. If you use that, you can put your important documents in.

You can give somebody your master password or set something. I don't know, but yeah, it's a thing. I think I was, I was more building it just for something that was like, okay, if I get in trouble, you know, the documents will be released type of thing. That's pre-usual for Jason.

It's somewhat shady purposes. I was making it like I was in a movie, you know, I wanted to have some fun with it. It was a coding project. Back then we used to have coding projects that we did for fun. Yes, I do remember. That was a fun one. And when I was going through my, I was going through my archives trying to find the damn thing.

And, uh, I was looking at all these old websites, like source code and things that I had. And I was just looking at some old blog posts that I wrote back in the early 2000s, which is never a good idea. And, uh, I found a post where I was, uh, bemoaning the death of Deadwood when they canceled it.

And, uh, the word Deadwood linked to fuckhbo.com, which I, I'm almost positive was mine. I think I got that one. I'm sure it was. But the, the crazy thing about it now is it's available. So if anybody would like to go get fuckhbo.com, it's, it's currently available.

You know, first come first serve for that one. You should sell, you should, you should write John Oliver's people. I'm sure they can do something funny with that. No, I'm going to skip that one. He's always crapping on his masters. Yeah, but if it's fuckatnt.com, I can see that. That's true. But, uh, the funny thing is though, it's like, I, you know, back in the day, these companies would get these antagonistic domains and hold onto them and just register them for 30 years.

So nobody could ever get them. Apparently HBO is so untouchable now that everybody loves them and they think, uh, well, our shit don't stink. Well, you and I have talked about this. Domain names don't really matter so much anymore. The algorithms don't care that much about your.coms. Yeah, we're old.

Yep.

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Media candy. So the new Star Trek show has come out, Star Trek Prodigy, and I watched the first episode. They're doing the once a week drops over at Paramount+. Um, I watched this because, uh, I knew you wouldn't because it's being marketed towards kids.

I'm not sure who's kids. Um, because the first episode was pretty dark. I was like, there's no way I'm going to let my kid watch this. I watched it this morning. Oh, good. What'd you think? Well, the thing is, the animation style reminded me so much of the Star Wars animated series.

I didn't know which universe I was in. I really didn't. Yeah. Until literally the last five seconds of the show. When Janeway shows up. When you get the big reveal. Yeah. The big Janeway reveal. Like, that's the only Star Trek-y thing about it. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's, it, yeah, I, I don't get the demo on this one at all.

Yeah. I mean, it was so formulaic. It was just like, oh my God, this is the part where you're supposed to tear up. This is the part where you're supposed to go. Yay. This is the part where you go, you know, it was just so beat by beat by beat boring. I'm hoping it'll get better now that they're on the ship and we'll see what happens.

But, uh, yeah, it was like, you know, the way that they were promoting it, it was like, all right, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 year olds can get into Star Trek. It'll be a feel good show. And I was like, oh, whoa, whoa. What is happening here? No, it's a little intense for kids.

I mean, it's, it's more, it's more intense than regular Star Trek episodes are. I know. I know. Um, but, uh, the thing is, it's definitely not for me. I will not be continuing on with that, that journey. I'm going to give it a go. It worked for me with, with lower decks.

So we'll see. Okay. Let me know how that goes. I will. Um, it is pretty though. I give it that. It's pretty. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see what happens. Um, anyways, uh, speaking of giving things another go, I watched another episode of, uh, go God, what's the show called? It was the new Jon Stewart show. The problem with?

The problem with, um, and I've got a problem with, uh, it's just too depressing. Like, I mean, Jon Oliver is depressing, but it's depressing funny. Jon Stewart, not so funny, just depressing. Can't do it.

Okay. Yeah. I gave up on it after the first episode. I mean, I, I know I said I was going to go back and try it. I did. I lied. I did. So you don't have to. I lied. I did. So you don't have to, uh, the jokes, the jokes just aren't there. The, the, the silly comic faces that Jon Stewart pulled back, you know, 20 years ago when he had the, the comedy central show have not aged well and are not funny.

Uh, comedy has moved on and the, the, the comedy to depression ratio is way too skewed to depression. Like it's dark. Too bad. Yep. And then I cleansed it with some more Ted Lasso. I'm still working my way through the season. It is phenomenal.

I love it. So good. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Get to the end. Skip to the end. Come on. No, no skipping. No skipping. I linger. I savor Ted Lassos. Ups and doodads. So Brian, the Oculus Quest that I have here, um, who I have had a love, hate, hate, hate mostly hate relationship with.

Mostly love to hate. Yeah. I have one love for like 20 hates, uh, especially because of the problem with the Facebook login shit that I had to deal with and couldn't use it for like months. Yep. Um, uh, they're going to finally get rid of the, uh, account login requirement.

Okay. And apparently when that whole thing happened in the big backlash with them requiring the Facebook account for the Oculus, that's when Mark came up with a grand idea to call it meta and start that whole thing. That was the, the impetus for that whole project, but, um, that's fine.

They're also getting rid of the name Oculus, which will be interesting. Metaculous. Yeah. Uh, I, I still like metastasize, but, uh, yeah, so they're going to finally get rid of that. Um, I still haven't plugged mine back in yet to finish those Star Wars games.

So maybe eventually. Here, strap this onto your head. It'll metastasize. Yeah. That's going to go great. Perfect. Uh, over at, uh, Apple Arcade, which I get with my, um, I don't know, Apple plus one, whatever thing I got with all of the goodies.

Um, they released tiny wings plus tiny wings was one of the best, you know, single click games ever made. And I was excited when I saw it. I'm like, woohoo, because you know, they redid, uh, was it Alto's Odyssey and put it in some extra levels, which was great.

I like that tiny wings. They did not for the main, the main game. There's still only 30 levels and I beat those 30 levels seven or eight years ago. So I was, I was bummed. There's another secondary game where you're racing these little, uh, computer generated birds, which is definitely not nearly as fun and sucks.

And they added new levels to that, which made me really bummed. But, um, still, I'm still got my fingers crossed, hoping one day that they are going to go get flight control back because flight control was one of these single best games ever on iOS. And I miss it. Right. Cool.

So, uh, we've been talking a little bit about global supply shortages and shipping and all that sort of stuff, particularly, um, my studio here, because I can't even get a damn couch or anything. Uh, but I saw this story and I just thought this is hilarious. Um, Apple has not had too many problems because they've got all the monies and they've been able to purchase a bunch of stuff.

However, there is something that you can order that, uh, will take an awful long time for it to get to you. It is backordered a lot. It is the $19 polishing cloth. Okay. Yes. If you order the microfiber cloth from the company store, as of, uh, when this article was written, you'll have to wait 10 to 12 weeks to get your Apple branded polishing experience.

You could buy a new MacBook pro and wait in another two months after you get your MacBook pro to officially wipe smudges off the screen. Nice. That is great. I actually have something backordered right now through, uh, Apple. Cause I, I saw this and I wanted it right away.

It's called the Belkin boost charge pro three in one wireless charger with MagSafe black. Um, I don't know if you've seen these things. They're really cool. They're not cheap. They're 140 bucks, but, uh, it's basically, a little T bar on the base. You put your AirPods one side of the arm.

You put your, your Apple watch. And on the other side, you put your phone. Yeah. I've got a $30 one for my bed stand. Remember? Yeah. And it works great. Yeah. I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does, but I like this one. I just like this one here. I'll throw this in the show notes so you can check it out. But, uh, this thing has been, um, still back ordered and it's not coming anytime soon.

As far as I can tell, uh, November 3rd to the 17th. So kind of, kind of bummed about that one. Yeah. But when it gets here, I will be charging like a pro. All right. And I've got a, so I went down a little bit of a music news rabbit hole here. Cause I saw this story first.

Uh, Fender is buying studio gear company Presonus, which, uh, we use some of their stuff. So that's interesting. It will still need regulatory approval because, you know, we can, we can do regulatory approvals on guitar manufacturers, but we can't fucking do it on meta. Apparently, uh, they did not disclose financial terms of the deal, but, uh, it makes sense because they envision, you know, obviously people are recording at home a lot more now.

They're not going to studios and things like that. So making a deal with a company that basically builds really good, small studio gear makes a lot of sense. So they're part of the Fender family now. So hopefully they don't screw it all up. The, the professional Presonus stuff I love, I still have a studio one 92, which is a rack mounted interface works like a charm still.

I mean, had that thing for like six, seven years now. It is just, it is a fantastic bulletproof, totally solid. Their consumer grade stuff. Not so much a fan. Yeah. Not so much. Remember that one we bought that little tiny, uh, two XLR input interface.

Yep. No boy. That thing was garbage. Yeah. That thing was total garbage. It was a hundred bucks. Yeah. You know, the, the studio when I got was like 800 bucks, but you get what you pay for. Yep. So yeah. So pretty good for Presonus. Hopefully they made a chunk of change. Hopefully found some other things. There's Switzerland based Mick, Mick tick is, which has created a pair of wearables that turn thin air into your concert hall.

So you basically strap these things onto your wrist and you can move your hands around like you just don't care. Yeah. And it, uh, triggers samples. Okay. I watched the video and, uh, they obviously use the same company that meta did for their videos because it is just embarrassing and looks silly and ridiculous.

Uh, but they have music megastar Moby as part, one of, one of their initial, uh, investors. So I don't see this being anything for anyone ever. The only thing that I could even imagine it being good for is maybe for live performance, particularly like industrial sort of stuff.

Like if you were, you know, skinny puppy and you're thrashing around on stage and every time you moved your hand, you wanted to trigger a sample or something like that. I could see that, but I can't imagine anybody buying this to play around with at home. It's just weird. Cause the image on the top looks like she's playing air guitar.

So yeah, it's just, they're, they're just the, as far as I can tell, they're just wrist straps and it's based on your movement. So, and you can trigger different sets of samples from it. That's what I can take out of it. So no noodling. No noodling. And then I saw this one and I just love the writing on it.

Uh, the title. I wish anyone other than Kanye had made the STEM player. Kanye found his way back into our show. It is the Donda STEM player. It's a fascinating and unique device. Not really. I read through this a little bit. It's a tiny puck shaped computer, which basically, if you don't know what STEM is, you're not in the music business.

STEMs are basically the mixed down elements of a song, you know, a fairly involved song will probably have, you know, maybe, maybe 30, 40, 50, 60 stems, you know, one's the guitar tracks, one's drums, all that sort of stuff. Apparently, Kanye's music is not all that involved because there are four stems in this player.

Oh, that's 50 bucks a STEM. What it lets you, yes, it's an expensive toy. Uh, what it lets you do, obviously, is you can put different effects on each track and you can, um, you know, do different volumes and all that sort of stuff. And as the review says, it looks kind of like a sex toy though. And it's covered in what I assume are surplus fleshlights.

It doesn't feel unpleasant, but it is slightly unnerving. So, and this thing is very, very expensive. Uh, they also have a lot of promises, of course, much like Kanye that they don't keep. Um, they say some, you know, you'll be able to download other songs and it will, it will take the songs apart for you and create stems, which by the way, even with pro grade software on a high powered PC is almost next to impossible to do.

Yeah. I was going to say that doesn't work. And as the reviewer points out, it does not work. Um, and that there, there is no, no, uh, nothing. There is nothing in terms of a manual. There's a fact that tells you, you can do a bunch of things, but, uh, even the reviewers, I have no idea what the hell that means or how to even do it.

And nobody can tell you how, and it costs like 200 bucks. It's crazy. So do not buy. Okay. I wasn't planning on it. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's funny too, speaking of manuals. So when I get my, when I got my 14 inch Mac book, there's a little thing on top that used to contain a manual, but now it's like mostly cardboard just so it fits where manuals normally go.

Yeah. Now there's like a one sheet that says, go online, figure it out yourself. Dumb ass. And, uh, of course you still get stickers with Apple computers. They should probably stop doing that because when those stickers mattered was when Apple was a teeny little company. Now, if you put an Apple sticker on anything, you look like a twat or somebody will steal it.

Yeah. And, uh, but here's the big change. I mean, they used to be rainbows back in the day and then they went to the white ones and some silver ones. Now they're black. Ooh, that's it. That's all I got. No manual and a couple of black stickers. Thanks, Steve Jobs.

Barrett sent this one in and I love it. The cringe level might qualify as a crime against humanity. This is a leaked internal Facebook staff video talking about their benefits and how they need to claim it because open enrollment is happening. Did you watch this video, Brian?

Uh, I watched about 30 seconds and I'd had enough of Facebook's videos. Okay. It's, uh, this one actually beats the meta one for, for cringeworthy. It is bad, bad, bad, bad. These guys have way too much money.

No sense. And even less talent is all I got to say. It's like, you got to find some singers at Facebook if you want to do it. I know they're trying to be kitschy and, uh, whatever, but, uh, yeah. Hire some professionals, not the interns. If you're going to do a music video about your benefits, please.

You've got the money. Security. Dave Bittner is joining us again from the great state of, it was a Maryland. Dave still in Maryland. Yes. Yes, it is.

It is Maryland and it is great. Thank you very much. Dave is the host of the cyber wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, hacking humans with Joe Kerrigan, co-host of caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. And finally, he's the co-host of recorded future where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence and his new show talking about Maryland.

I was going to say, I was going to say the new podcast, what went wrong with the Orioles this season? Yeah. Something like that. Our 10th, our 10th year of that show. At least you can just do your seasonal show. Merry Christmas, Maryland. That's right.

You know, I remember one of the first baseball games I ever went to. My father took me to the old Memorial Stadium and we got great tickets and we're sitting real close. And I remember my father telling me that there was this new player this year who they were really excited about.

His name was Cal Ripken Jr. And we were hoping that maybe he would go places. And I'm not sure how it worked out for him, but I do remember that he hit a home run that night. So it was very exciting. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Pretty cool. I think the most famous baseball player I ever saw play was Willie Stargell.

That's a good one. And hence the cricket. So not that famous for you guys if you're not in Pittsburgh. I know the name. I know he was a, I know he was a Pittsburgh pirate. That's that I know. Yes. Yep. Big old black dude. He had a really crazy wind up and man, he could hit that ball. I saw Pete Rose every morning for about a week when I was at a conference in Vegas and I would walk by the sports.

Vegas. Go figure. And he was holding court in there signing. Yeah, right. Exactly. He was holding court in there signing autographs and doing, you know, I guess what Pete Rose does these days. Those weren't autographs. Those were IOUs. Yeah.

Yeah. It was funny. The first day you walk by, you sort of stop and look and you go, oh, that's Pete Rose. After a whole week, it's like, oh, I guess Pete doesn't have a whole lot on his schedule. So, yeah, he hadn't started up as a podcast yet. We got some feedback from some listeners here.

And this one, first one comes from Listener Gene. You're negative about everything, everything. Then Apple puts out a $2,000 box of glue, calls it a laptop, and you write epic poems about it. What the fuck? Have some dignity and stop being such a tool. And by the way, I'm writing this to you on a MacBook Air.

First of all, what do you mean we, Kemosabe? I don't know. You were kind of excited, too. Don't throw me under the bus. Yes, but he doesn't have the yin to that game. Right, right. Yeah. Yes, I will guilty as charged when it comes to getting excited about new Apple hardware.

But I think we're justified in that these new processors are legitimately a breakthrough. And also, to be fair, yes, Jason and I are very negative about things, but Jason also gets excited about anything he buys. Yes.

At least until it shows up, and then he hates it. Exactly. Yeah, he's the king of the honeymoon period. Yes. And then he's the prince of buyer's remorse. Well, no, then I'm the prince of giving shit away. Get that on a business card. I've got shipping labels for everybody. That's true.

Yeah. How's that mark you're talking to me on there, Dave? I was going to say, we are the beneficiaries of Jason Spires' remorse because he is generous of regifting the things that he purchases. So I cannot fault you there. You say, watch it there, buddy.

Yeah. No, I'm just looking around the room and seeing how many things here were sent to me by Jason. So, yep, yep, yep, yep. There was a period of time where I always knew anything came from Jason because it always had, what was that artist that always did the Andre the Giant stuff on it? Shepard Ferry.

It always had a Shepard Ferry sticker on it. Oh, that's funny. I bought a couple pieces, and basically when you buy Shepard Ferry posters and artwork, they send you a giant bag of stickers. Yeah, so anything from Jason had a Shepard Ferry sticker on it, and I would just look around the room.

Oh, yep, that's from Jason. All the echoes. Yeah. No, so I got to say, I still love it. It's working great for me. Oh, yeah, I wanted to check in on you, Jason. Last time, when we spoke last week, you were about to receive it, so you're a week in now.

Oh, that's right. Still feeling good about it? Oh, my God. It is the best laptop. Sorry, Gene. I'm going to, I got to cush. This thing is so damn good. I got the 14-inch. Everybody says it's heavy, but it's not heavy, because I'm coming from a 16-inch, the last 16-inch, which was just a brick.

This thing is light. It's nimble. It's comfortable. It doesn't basically irradiate my balls when I put it on my lap. There's no fan noise. It's fast. It's got ports. I actually use the SD card port. It works.

It's amazing. All in all, I'm keeping my air just because, you know, two is one and one is none, just in case. Right. But this is my main now. I basically open up my air every now and again just to make sure it's updated and all the patches are on, but I'm running Monterey on everything, and amazingly, everything works.

I can't believe it. So knock on wood, I only had one problem with Ophonic, and I had to do a clean my Mac X, uninstall and reinstall, and then it worked again. But so far, everything else works, and it works well. You know, everything that runs in Rosetta is comparable to what it was running on the 16-inch Intel.

So I haven't lost any speed, but on other things, I've gained speed, like, you know, what is it? Handbrake. Holy shitballs. Yeah. My God. Yeah. So I did see something for those of us that aren't upgrading, much like myself.

If we want to feel cool on, you know, without outlaying the cash. Apparently, there's now an app called the Notch Pro, which adds a black notch below the top center of a user's screen to emulate the new MacBook Pro's most controversial design decisions. In fact, it might be better because you can modify the size of it so it's either tiny or goes the entire screen.

You know, this reminds me, this is going way back, but when I was in college, I was dating a girl who had a younger sister who was a spoiled brat, and their father had a car collection, and the spoiled brat girl had a 5 Series BMW.

Nice. And yeah, I know, right? And this was in high school. She had a 5 Series BMW. Hater already. Yeah. She, well, like I said, spoiled brat, the baby of the family. And so by the time she was coming up, the father did quite well for himself, and she had all of life's pleasures.

So she whined and complained because the 5 Series BMW she had, it was right around the time when they started having the extra brake light in the back and the rear window, right? Remember that? When those became a thing?

Yep. And hers didn't have that. And because hers didn't have that, people could tell that it was a couple years older than the new ones that had that. So daddy went out and got her one, just not the new car, but the light. Okay. You had to run a wire into the cigarette lighter.

Yeah, exactly. And that's what this reminds me of. Poor little girl with her 5 Series, with the wrong 5 Series BMW. Oh, nice. I got to say, as far as the notch goes, the only change I had to make was I upgraded to a beta version of Bartender and went back to using the Bartender bar, which basically instead of when you expand over it, everything shows up in the menu bar.

This just drops a bar underneath with all of your stuff in it, because I use a lot of menu icons. Quick access. But so far, when I'm not using my giant Samsung curved monitor and just working off the 14, the notch, I don't even notice it.

It just goes away. Yeah. I think those of us who are completely all in on Planet Mac are probably already conditioned to it from our iPhones. Yeah. Now I need one for my iPad. It's just getting confusing. Well, and someone pointed out, too, that all of our cars have a notch now.

If you look at the windshield of your car, there's a notch there, right, for the cameras. It's the cameras and the weather sensors that they have built, like rain sensors and all that, that everything that's built into those things now. Yeah. Right. So it's, you know, it's a thing. Yeah. Notch, notch world.

Yeah, that's good. Okay. Also, Daniel wrote in, hey, yesterday, my Mac notified me that an upgrade is available. Mac OS Monterey. I remembered and laughed at your show, 490, and Dave's wonderful Big Sur upgrade. I'm watching the download right now, and I hope it gets better than that upgrade did for him. But, hey, I did just disconnect my time machine, and I am not using Migration Assistant.

Lots of love. Oh, boy. Yeah, fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you. Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you both. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. It's nice to have a recurring bit anytime there's an OS upgrade now. Yep. You do not disappoint, Jason.

I was wondering how quickly you were going to reflexively reach for that button and trigger that soundbite, and you did not disappoint, so. Yeah, because, I mean, we used to have, every time that there was an odd or an even upgrade for iOS, Brian's Bluetooth would either go off or it would come back on.

That's right. That was always, that was our running gag for a long time. Somebody finally fixed that code. Yes, and then, you know, always with the Facebook update, how many of my settings are now public that were once private? Oh, that was everyone. Never mind. Oh, now they're all out. That's good. Now they're all meta, so, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. So, this is, yeah, it's good. I will say one of my colleagues here at the Cyber Wire, his Intel MacBook Pro did get bricked by Monterey. Ooh. And so, it was a quick trip to the Apple store to upgrade to a new M1 Mac Pro.

The rest of the rest of us here on the staff are skeptical that this computer actually did get bricked. Yeah, exactly. But that's okay. Evidently, they were able to unbrick it by jumping through some hoops. And I include, I included a link here to an article over at Ars Technica that's talking about the pattern of bricking and what you might be able to do to unbrick it.

Let me guess, they unbricked it about 10 minutes after he unwrapped it and said, oh, can't return it now. Got to keep it. After he'd already gotten, yeah, installed everything, engraved his name on the back. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Can't send it back now. I will also say that the latest version of Final Cut Pro, which I, at this point, use for exactly one thing, is unusable.

So, they've screwed the pooch when it comes to that. So, there's my dose of negativity for the day. Join us, one of us. But here's an interesting thing I was thinking about this morning when it comes to the bricking of the laptop.

And I'm not sure if this is possible, but I thought it would run it by you guys to get your thoughts on this. Is it possible, if you're running a Mac laptop, to have a second Mac laptop that is automatically mirroring your first, so that should the first one go down, you could open the lid on the second one and pick up where you left off?

I believe you could do that if you were using something like, use it in target disk mode. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Use it in target disk mode and use carbon copy cloner. Okay. So, carbon copy cloner allows you to do a bootable backup of the original.

So, you could have, okay, yep, that makes sense. A rather expensive proposition. Well, yeah, but I mean, I guess, you know, there are those for whom the half day at least that it takes to get a new machine, to go buy a new machine, get it up to speed, restore from, you know, whatever backup you have, it might be worth it to them to have a second one running there.

Right. But I was just trying to ponder through, is it possible? And so, if our listeners know of anybody who's actually doing that or can point to a, you know, a blog post or a case of someone testing it, I would love to see that. I'm curious if you can actually do it. And I wonder if the new M1 systems change your ability to do that or not.

I know there have been some changes, obviously, in the file system and with things like, you know, the secure enclaves and things like that, how picky it is about what it allows you to boot from. So, just curious. I think the easiest way to do that would be, I mean, obviously, it's easier if you have identical hardware.

So, you know, buy two. Yep. I use Carbon Copy Cloner every day. It just actually runs every hour. So, all of my production files get just uploaded to a NAS. And so, it's an easy restore for all the production files. And like I said, that Air is always on hot standby.

So, that way, I don't need to actually clone the whole OS. It's just, you know, once every few days, go in and make sure all the apps are up to date and all the settings are up to date. Because one of the other things that is, that I think would give you a big gotcha is when you're doing software license subscriptions, like my plugins for Logic.

Yeah. Those things are keyed to the machine. They're like, you know, like actually keyed to the actual machine ID. So, you'll probably still have to do some, yeah. I had to do that. Unhook it from this one, connect it to this one, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had to do that when I got rid of my 16-inch. I had to like, you know, unauthorize all the plugins, reauthorize them on the new machine.

Kind of a pain in the ass. But it only took about an hour to do that. Yeah. So, because all of the plugins and everything moved over. So, it was literally just a, have one machine open, unauthorize, reauthorize. And some of the stuff I'd already just forgotten and deleted. So, I had to just go to support and say, can you just deauthorize everything?

And they're like, sure. Boom. Press a button, done. So, there's never going to, I don't think there's ever going to be, since everything is subscription-based now, there's ever going to be a just like, you know, okay, this one's dead, turn this one on and go. Unless you buy enough licenses and get everything licensed up on that machine.

Yeah. And for some things, like, you know, if you're, because so much stuff is in the cloud already, if you're using Gmail, if you're using, you know, any of the cloud-based services, that will, that's just automatic. That's just going to work for you. So, you don't have to worry about that.

But yeah, as you say, the Pro Tools types of things, those are, and by Pro Tools, I mean professional tools, not the product Pro Tools. That's different. Yep. But it's, you know, it's, you definitely have a lot less downtime than the old days. Like, I don't worry about, I don't worry about my hard drives dying anymore.

So, if this 14 just dies, I can pick up where I left off in like an hour. Yeah, that's true. Nothing is locked onto that drive inside that box anymore. Yeah, no. And anything critical, just like client files and things like that, client audio, that's all backed up to the NAS and double backed up overnight to Google Drive.

So, there's always a cloud version at the end of the day for everything that I've done. And Time Machine running all day long, too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, mine is similar. I have Time Machine alternating between a local SSD drive, external SSD, and then a NAS.

So, it just ping-pongs between those two. And then also a daily, you know, off-site cloud backup as well. Yeah. Yeah. It would be cool if they just had like a Time Machine configuration that you could set to have a drive in, you know, target disk mode.

It knew that it wasn't just a standard Time Machine backup, but just a machine sync. But like I said, I guess you could just do that with Carbon Copy Cloner. Yeah. For sure. But I got to say, it did take about eight hours to restore my Time Machine backup from my 16-inch MacBook to my 14-inch.

So, I just let it go overnight. But when I woke up in the morning, boom, it was booted up and ready to go. Hmm. Okay. That's interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The migration is much, much easier. Now, I don't like the migration assistant stuff. That thing never, ever, ever works. But restoring from a Time Machine backup seems to be pretty bulletproof nowadays.

Yeah. That's what I did when I went to the M1 Mac Mini from the 27-inch iMac, and it was pretty flawless. I didn't take that long. I want to say it took probably about two hours, but I probably have a lot less stuff than you. Yeah. I was going from a terabyte and a half, but it was also my terabyte and a half of data for my machine, but also it was coming from a spinny drive.

My Time Machine backup is actually on a spinny platter, old-school thing. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this was on an SSD, so a little speedier. Yep. All righty. All right. Well, we got a little Star Wars news. Have you guys seen the Book of Boba Fett trailer?

I did. I have. What'd you think? I like it. Who's first? I liked it, too. It's more of the same, but the same is good. I guess my only complaint would be I would love to have had just a completely different look and feel from The Mandalorian for a second show, while this is very much, I mean, it could be The Mandalorian, but that's okay, because The Mandalorian's great.

So let's see another one of these guys wandering around the universe and, you know, shooting things up and going on quests. Okay. Yeah. That's about it. Yeah. I'm really happy with the Mando universe, and so more stories in that universe are fine.

I think most Star Wars fans have great affection for Boba Fett, and so to finally see him doing some stuff other than being mysterious, it's going to be fun. We had best find out how he got out of the Sarlacc in this show.

That is all I'm saying. Yeah. I think they're going to tease that until the series finale. Yeah. I think probably what's going to happen is he's going to allude to it a lot. Yeah. A lot. He'll be like the inside joke. Yeah. Yeah. Like slowly put little pieces together.

You know, he'll run into somebody from his past and they'll say, what happened to your hair? I'll say, long story. So I like Pitt. You know, something like that. Yeah. Or it could be one of those things where he just makes up like outrageous stories every time, tells somebody a different story every time, so you never know which one's real. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But I will definitely be tuning in. I'm looking forward to it and happy to have. I guess it's fair to say that is my favorite new Star Wars stuff right now, is the stuff in the Mandalorian universe. I think that's where they're really killing it.

Yep. Agreed. Yeah. All right. Well, I do have a cybersecurity story for us this week. This came out today. Some researchers at University of Cambridge released some – a study on something they're calling Trojan Source.

Trojan Man. Everybody remembers that. I've linked to a blog post by a gent named Adam Caudill, who is a security engineer, and he works at 1Password.

And he's sort of broken down – he's read the research so we don't have to. And basically what's happening here, this research points out that there is a vulnerability that basically threatens the security of all code. That's right.

Yeah. This is kind of a scary one. All code. All code. Ever. Yeah. This is the matrix. And that's not an exaggeration. It pretty much – I mean, I don't know. It might not affect basic. But other than that, any modern language seems to be on the list.

PHP wasn't on the list, I noticed. Yeah. I did see that too. I noticed that. So for once, WordPress is okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. At least we all don't have to go back to Perl. So the main issue here is that all of these languages use Unicode, which is the standard for text encoding.

But Unicode allows both left-to-right and right-to-left languages. So think about English versus Hebrew, right? And what that allows people to do is encode thing – write code that when read left-to-right looks like one thing, but when decoded right-to-left does another thing.

So when you're in the midst of your code review, you're looking through someone's code, something may look benign, but it's actually able to do something else because someone cleverly cleverly made it function a different way when compiled in the opposite direction.

Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Just looking at his before and after, I was like, oh, that's evil. It took me like two minutes. I was like, what? Oh, there it is. Yeah. It's like a really fucked up version of highlights. Like, what's wrong with this picture? Yeah.

So – and as I say, it affects pretty much everything. I'd say it seems to be theoretical at this point. There are no cases known of it being out there in the wild. But really what it comes down to is who do you trust, especially all major software packages use open source code or, you know, code that comes from other sources than in-house.

And so how do you do code review when it keeps this sort of thing in mind? And it's – I think it's really interesting. I'm curious what you guys think. It's fascinating. Yeah. I think it's good that they're going after the code review tools like in GitHub and some of the larger players that are – that host these open source libraries because, yeah, trying to fix all of the, you know, the actual nuts and bolts of the compilers and pre-compilers and all that stuff, good luck.

Seriously, just good luck on that. What I particularly loved about this is I read the whole article is the inherent nihilism of anybody that works in security. So there's this one paragraph. So we need to update these tools and compilers and we're good, right? No, and probably not by a long shot.

It's been pointed out that this isn't new. It's been reported at least as early as 2017 and no serious action was taken. And again in 2018. And again in 2019. And again in 2020. This issue will still exist in a decade. I wouldn't be surprised if it still exists in two decades.

I love it. Yeah. This is fine. This is fine. It's fine. We're fine. How are you? Great. I'm throwing my computer in the trash. I also like, and unlike Halloween candy, third-party code actually has a history of bad actors inserting dangerous objects.

Nice. Yeah. Because we do vet Halloween candy a lot more than we actually do open source code for the most part. It's like, does it work? Okay, slap it in. Somebody would have had to found something by now, right? No, not always. Not always. So it's hard to say if this is going to be something.

As Brian pointed out, this isn't a new discovery. Really, this is the folks at University of Cambridge sort of putting it all together in one big research paper that lays it all out. But what often happens is when these research papers come out, well, the bad guys read them too, and they say, oh, clever.

And they add it to their toolbox. Right. Exactly. So I don't know. We'll see if it's a thing. But in my read around the web right now and the security folks, the folks who are reading it are kind of reacting the same way both of you guys did, which is, oh, huh.

Interesting. Clever, but also this could be a big deal. So we'll see. Please hold on to the bar. Well, hey, we actually got some security, and that's a first for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Every now and then, you know, we've got to justify the name of the segment, right? Yeah.

Nah. It's our show. Screw them. Yeah. That's right. That's right. All right, guys. Well, that's what I've got this week. I will see you guys next time. All right. See you later. Bye. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got no new subscribers, sadly.

And thanks to people who have upped their pledges. We appreciate you very much. We do. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Richard, Michael, Matt, Nicola, Simon, Doug, Judge, Jonathan, Shaleen, Matthew, Melissa, Nicolai, and Linnae, who said, I just sent you $20 on PayPal for Jason's great tip on canceling the New York Times cooking and getting an offer for all access for $1 a week with them.

I figured you deserve some of my savings. Love your podcast, although I always laugh that you are grumpy old geeks. You are babies compared to me. I rate as a true grumpy old geek. Heck, I bet you can't tell me anything about the DOS 360 on a Mayframe. Actually, I kind of remember that. Yeah, maybe, maybe.

I read my mom's manuals. Yes. There you go. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Over at Stripe, we've got Adam D., Anne Q., Gatiel V., Mario P., John L., and Matthew S. Thank you all so much. Much appreciated. And I guess that's it.

You got any shout outs? Because I don't. I do. I got one little shout out. It's just me. If you want to check out my new newsletter, The Pivoteer, just go to pivotteer.substack.com. Sign up. I got a new one coming out. I was going to have a new one yesterday, but these asshole contractors screwed up my day.

So next one drops on Thursday, and we're going to be going to two a week. We're going to have a mini pivot Monday, and then the big one comes on Thursday. So it's free. Just go sign up if you want to learn how to pivot some things here and there. Are we referring to ourselves as the royal we now? Yes, we are.

Okay. I am we. We is me. Coo-coo-ca-choo. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies.

It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 529. 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.

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 notchy.

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