531: WTF Putin?

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. I want to start the show with a big shout out to all the single or solo parents out there. I've been doing it three days and I want to die. You say that every time you're stuck with a kid.

It's different when they're older, man. It's different. In some ways it's easier. You can really play with them and all that sort of stuff. And in other ways, my God, putting together the lunches and the snacks and the bedtime and the bath and the, oh my God, I'm going to die.

Someone needs a nanny. Get that man a nanny. I need a manny. That's right. So sorry to hear that, Brian. It's all right. I'm surviving and the wife is coming home shortly. So I do not live in this all time. But for those of you that do, I salute you. Man, it's hard.

Okay. So when I went with you up to the fire, was it fires? No, it wasn't fireside. Was it fireside chat or fireside conference or whatever, you know, not, not, not the stupid app. Not the stupid app. Yes. Oh, you took me to Tim Hortons and I got my first breakfast sandwich there and I thought it was delicious.

And now I, now I'm very upset because they have partnered with Justin Bieber. Yes. To make the Tim Biebs. And I just, what have you done, Brian? I leave you up there for what, four months and you're doing this shit? Come on. It gets worse.

Okay. It gets worse because in a, in a push to, to up, up their game and, and seem like more of a premier product, uh, Tim Hortons has, uh, decided to, uh, replace their breakfast sandwich eggs with freshly cracked eggs. And they're horrible.

They're absolutely horrible. I don't care that they did a series of test markets and closely monitored and studied for guest satisfaction. I don't care that it's supposedly healthier or better or fresher. They taste like crap. I want my old breakfast sandwich back with the reconstituted eggs or whatever they use.

This is typical. I move here and now I hate it. The one thing I was looking forward to was regular Tim Hortons breakfast sandwiches. I've had one and I will not go back unless they go back to their old crappy eggs. Give me powdered eggs or give me death. That's right. Maybe I'll make my own.

I'm going to order it without eggs and come back and make my own powdered eggs. There you go. That's solution. Save you some money too. Yeah. And speaking of things that are just still plain horrible, Uber. Yes. Uh, Uber, Uber's in the news because the, uh, Department of Justice has charged them with, uh, uh, making old people and disabled people pay more money.

Because if you're slow, you get dinged on the Uber. I saw that. That is a little bit ridiculous, isn't it? They should have some sort of button. Don't you think? It says this person is disabled and will take a little bit longer to get into the Uber and we will not charge them for that. Yeah. The only time you should get charged for taking a little while to get into your Uber is if you forgot your luggage or if you're drunk.

You know? Yes. Legitimate wait. But yeah, if somebody is, you know, if somebody's coming down in a wheelchair and they got to go in the car. But, you know, we do have the discrimination from Uber. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not picking people up who were disabled or blind.

We had that one before. So, yeah, this is just, you know, a continuance of Uber's horrificness. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I actually took an Uber for the first time in, oh, gosh, must be at least two years the other week. It was expensive. Very. Yeah.

Very expensive. Yeah. I remember that Uber when we were in Toronto going to Fireside, actually. Right. I forgot about that one. Yeah. I tried to forget about it, but it comes back in my nightmares every now and again. Yeah. That guy just did not look at the road. No, he did not. I was just going to say what I do like about Toronto is there's still an awful lot of legit real cabbies around.

The problem is we've all gotten spoiled to being picked up exactly like where we are, when we want, and all that sort of thing. If only the taxi drivers could do the app. I don't understand what's the problem. Yeah. I don't either. I don't either. Because, yeah, I mean, that's what Uber fixed was the fact that you could never get a cab in San Francisco.

That was, I mean, that's what started them, you know, try and get a cab in San Francisco back then. You just can't. You can't. You ordered all three, and one maybe would show up 45 minutes late. Yeah. So it was a godsend back then. But, yeah, we just need the taxi companies to use the app.

But, anyway, speaking of other things that are still horrible behind the wheel on the road, we've said it before. Full self-driving beta from Tesla is a bad idea when put in the hands of fucking civilians. Hey, update, Jason. Okay. Self-driving cars, 20 years away now.

Still 20 years. Yeah. Still 20 years away. Yep. This just in. Breaking news. Breaking news from the past. Yes. So a Tesla Model Y in full self-driving beta crashed on November 3rd in Brea, which is around here. Yep.

Yeah. So the NHTSA is investigating again. But, yeah, I love this. According to the report, the vehicle was in FSD beta mode, and while taking a left turn, the car went into the wrong lane, and I was hit by another driver in the lane next to my lane.

The car gave an alert halfway through the turn, so I tried to turn the wheel to avoid it from going into the wrong lane, but the car, by itself, took control and forced itself into the incorrect lane, creating an unsafe maneuver, putting everyone involved at risk. Okay.

Yeah. Get this shit off the fucking road. Let me fix that for you. The car didn't hit you. You hit the car. Let's start with that, because you swerved into the other lane. I think it's time for a class action lawsuit, which is the entire world against Tesla.

Look, I'm a shareholder still. I don't know why, because Elon Musk makes me pull my hair out on a daily basis at this point, and I can't stand what they're doing. I can't fathom releasing beta software and putting it out on the roads with everybody else.

It's irresponsible. It's stupid. And yes, I do think they need to be sued. I agree. I'm with you. I'm on board. Every week, you have this bout of ethics, and you say, I'm going to get rid of my Tesla. I'm going to get rid of my Tesla, yet you still have it. I also have a bout if I want to retire well.

If everybody sues, then there goes your nest egg. I sold Facebook. Baby steps. Baby steps. Well, how long did it take you to get rid of your Facebook? How long did it get rid of – you know, come on. We know that you're slow on the trigger. You want to do the right thing, but greed, greed has taught you that maybe you just want to stick in there for a little bit longer.

Daddy wants a Palm Springs retirement house. In the news. Okay, Putin, what the fuck? I saw this. I just saw this in the news.

Yeah. Yeah. Woke up this morning to find out the astronauts on the ISS had to huddle for safety because Russia decided to blow up two of its own satellites in a missile test. Now, here's the way Star Wars is supposed to fire the missile, and it actually hits the satellite.

You don't throw up a big goddamn bomb, explode it somewhere in the vicinity of the satellite, and then create a huge debris cloud. Just saying. I guess they're taking the stormtrooper approach. Shoot near the object. Exactly. Just keep shooting until something hits something. Yeah.

Yeah, this is bad. This is bad because – You think? Yeah. You know? And I'm like, why are we still testing satellite weaponry? I mean, really? And then I got to thinking about it, and I'm like, hmm. Okay, Russia, authoritarian regime.

United States has fucking SpaceX and all their shit. And now we are – we've got to deal with Elon Musk putting up Starlink satellites. So the internet is no longer ground-based, which means it is not in the control of the authoritarian regimes.

So if their people start to get space internet, what do they want to be able to do? Shoot it down. Knock out the space internet. Shoot it down. And that's the only thing I can think – I mean, yeah, there's other targets, military satellites and things like that. But if you get into a shooting war in space, basically what's going to happen is just like every other sci-fi book, we're going to be trapped on this planet and have to live in the fucking meta space that Zuckerberg created because we can't get off this rock because there's too much space junk.

And all the spaceships blow up when we send them up there. Agreed. I've read the books. Me too. And look, Russia, if you want to get some goodwill, I'm just saying shooting down Linksys routers in space is not going to get you goodwill. You want to get goodwill? Put up some printers.

Shoot those down. Everybody hates printers. And this one is just too funny to pass up. The U.S. government made it illegal to buy these NFTs. You know, I've been going slightly crazy because the news has been out because NFT sales are through the roof, right?

Like they're just massive. And then you read the stories going 99% of the sales? Yeah, laundering money. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. And our next story is science proves that NFTs are worthless for the most part because only 1% of NFTs sell for more than $1,500 and 75% sell for $15 or less.

Even worse, the majority of these pieces don't even sell. So they don't even enter the analysis. Yes. So when you see those stats about the massive amounts of sales of NFTs, you've got to remember it's like five of them that sold for a shit ton of money and a whole shitload that don't sell at all.

Yep. Yep. Because, yeah, the big boys are moving money around. And, you know, even that one – it was like last week I saw it come through the wire. Like somebody had the biggest NFT sale and it sold it back to itself and it was going back and forth just because they wanted the numbers to be up to say they had the biggest NFT sale.

It's like, dude. It's all a joke. It's crazy. Yeah, it is. It's just a seriously stupid thing. And I know everybody says if you watch the news, they're the next big thing. But, you know, come on. I've thought a little bit about this a bit more recently.

I've had to for work-related things and things of that nature. And there is – I get it. I really do. I don't because I'm old and I'm not a digital native, but I do get it for digital natives. They didn't grow up collecting anything physical. They don't care about physical stuff.

So there is something to this in the same way that there was something to baseball trading cards and all that sort of stuff and Pokemon cards and all that crap that we did. It's just gone digital now. So a tiny little market for cheap prices to get a little piece of digital artwork, sure.

I get it. The stupid crap that's happening now? Nope. Yeah. See, here's the thing. The way that NFTs should be working is not how they are working. Right now, it is a kludge tacked on to the Ethereum blockchain run by separate blockchains that have the authenticity and crap like that, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. We know how they work right now, and it's terrible. It's basically you buy a link. You buy a link that can go away at any time. On a distributed Excel spreadsheet, yes. But, I mean, nobody really thought out the tech for this long term. It's like, okay, if I want to buy an NFT in World of Warcraft and transport that NFT to another platform, we need interoperability and things like that.

That is the goal, I'm guessing, from all of these. So if I buy a digital asset, it is mine. It is, you know, if an artist create a set of armor for me, I can buy that armor and I can transfer it to different avatars and different games in perpetuity forever. It ain't there yet. And nobody's even, I don't even think, thinking about that part yet.

No, no. Right now, it's a money grab. That's all. It's all a money grab. People are just rushing to get the tools out there so that they can sell people on minting NFTs and trading NFTs and buying NFTs. But there's no thought about the long-term game. It's just, let's get something up there right now because this stuff is hot and we can get our ducats.

Yep, pretty much, pretty much. Moving away from NFTs, let's talk about Facebook for a second. Must we? Yes, we must because it turns out there is an exodus coming from Facebook right now. People have finally, I guess the great resignation has hit Facebook because lots of people are leaving and recruiters are trying to get them new jobs.

But yeah, let's see how it works. If they're going to be getting new jobs, I'm sure a good portion of them will land because everybody is talent poor right now. Yep. But yeah. I think most of them are going to land on their feet. I mean, some people are going to have some stink on them, but those aren't the people that are leaving Facebook.

I think they know that. They're going to stay and milk that paycheck and be horrible. But I mean, if you're a good engineer, if you're a good programmer, if you're good – just if you're talented in general and you've been sucking on that Facebook teat and taking that paycheck, now seems like a really good time to leave, right?

I would. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. You know, I'm glad they're finally coming to their senses. You know, we've mentioned it before, but now we have some proof from the recruiters that's saying that, yeah, they're showing up in droves now. They want to get out. But they are trying – Facebook is trying to, you know, have some more goodwill.

They're starting to get rid of some of their super hyper-targeting in their ads. Uh-huh. I heard that. Yeah. You can no longer micro-target on racist terms. That's nice. Thanks. Great. Hey, thanks for getting around to that. Yeah.

It's basically – what is it? Options referring to causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race, or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. Yes. Last time you ever clicked on a Facebook ad? Been years for me.

Yeah, years for me too. But I know that a lot of people still do. I mean, a lot of small businesses live and die by those Facebook ads. True. That is true. Yeah. Some people are going to have to be shucking and jiving here. I mean, the whole ad market is getting upended right now. So between Apple having, you know, basically the stranglehold on everybody's nuts as far as data goes, and the ethics of everybody else getting caught out in the wind saying that, yeah, everything we've done is destroyed.

It's destroyed democracy and made the world a worse place. Things are getting shaken up quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So, Mt. Gox is back in the news as well. They have – the trustee has announced approval for 150,000 Bitcoin rehabilitation plan.

Okay. They're going to rehabilitate. Told me to took my Bitcoin to rehab. I said, no, no, hodl. Hodl, hodl, hodl. Yeah. This is out of the 850,000 Bitcoin that were stolen.

Right. Something, something. It's something. Okay. It is something. Yeah. And armchair – oh, yeah, go ahead. No, that's it. I just get a kick out of it. Okay. And speaking of silly coins, armchair Rambo wrote in, the Brave token is on a roll.

Decided against cashing my $35 in for a gift card. I'm holding. And if you say hodling, I will punch you in the mouth. Keep keeping on. And this is the basic attention token up 25% following Brave Solana integration. You do you, armchair Rambo, bambo, hodl, hodl.

I particularly like this tidbit of news that's meant to make us feel better. In October, Brave Search became the default search engine in the browser, replacing Google. Yes, in a brave move, Brave announced that the Brave browser would use Brave Search by default. How brave of them. Wow. It made the news that they decided to use their own search engine in their own browser.

Yeah, this is coming from, I feel really guilty about Pimp and Brave in the past. Back in the day here. I really do. Because, man, yeah, Brendan Eich is shitting the bed over there. Which is fine by me because he's a douchebag and I hate him. But, yeah, I can't in good faith ever say use the Brave browser now.

Even after, you know, the cryptocurrency thing at the beginning. And now it is completely tied to crypto. Everything is crypto and brave. And you can't turn it off. I still, unfortunately, have it on my iPhone and my iPads because it's the only way I can sync my bookmarks easily.

But I'm going to try and figure something else out because, man, I just, I don't want to give them any attention whatsoever that is positive. But you can make some basic attention token. Yeah, yeah, bat. You have to be bat shit crazy. That's all I got to say.

I found this one over at Medium. The 10 websites that track you the most. And I just thought it was funny that your website, Ladible, or Ladbible, as you like to call it, is up there. I actually unfollowed them a long time ago because they just got way too clickbaity.

And, obviously, they're just going down that path now. That salon is way up there. And the chive, not surprising. Yeah, yeah. The chive, 143 trackers. Salon, 139. New York Daily News, 126. HGTV needs 121 trackers. Why?

They don't. They don't need them. They just have them. Crooks and Liars at 116. Barstool Sports at 116. Ladible at 114. Adweek at 112. Refinery 29 at 111. And USA Today, Tomorrow of the World at 104. That's a lot of trackers.

Yeah, yeah. Surprisingly, though, on the least side, Wikipedia and TikTok are tied for the least at three. Pretty good. Instagram's down there. That's nice. Instagram? What? You'd figure. FB Messenger is even down there with five. Because that's all they need. That's all they need.

That's true. They know where you are. Yeah. They just suck it in for themselves. Everybody else is, you know, on their own. Whatever. And speaking of Instagram, Vincent wrote in, only six weeks till Christmas. Why does he have to tell me that? What will they think of next? Get a meta tattoo and you might win an imaginary trip to Mars.

You heard it here first. And this is the story that's out there about sharing a pet photo and planting a tree on Instagram. Which is bullshit. Okay. They actually, this company called Plant a Tree Co.

Used Instagram's new feature, Ad Years, which rolled out on the application the day before and allowed users to contribute to a thread in the stories feature. They quickly gained traction with their posts, basically saying, if you share a picture of your dog, we'll plant a tree. Then they realized we can't plant that many trees and tried to shut it down.

We immediately realized the posts would grow too big and we didn't have the resources to plant that many trees. So we deleted it 10 minutes later. Even though we deleted it a week later out of nowhere, the stories continued to spread out of our control, reaching millions of reposts. So now they're like, whoops, we screwed that up.

So no, they're not going to be planting trees for your pup. Sorry. They screwed up. They couldn't do it. Man, this is what happens when something truly goes viral. However, what they're doing now is they're trying to raise funds to help plant 4 million trees. So instead of posting your puppy and getting a tree planted, you can give them money and they'll plant a tree.

What the fuck? This story is the internet in a nutshell. It really is. Like, fuck everything. Ending on some good news. Portugal has now made it illegal for your boss to text you after work in a game changer remote work law. Euronews calls it a game changer, bro.

But yeah, I thought this was already in effect. Was it France that did this already? I think so. It was France that we talked about at least two years ago where they put that rule in effect that said, you know, you couldn't reach out to your employees after hours.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it was email based. So that's good. Look, life work balance is important and it's gone out the window with COVID. And, you know, we got to get it back. If we're going back to work, we got to get back life work balance.

It's just people cannot work themselves to death for nothing. It's crazy.

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Media Candy. Well, Brian, I was thinking last week about the Orville and whatever happened to that show. We still don't have one. It's scheduled for maybe sometime next year. Right. So we'll see. Will it even be relevant anymore?

Who knows? I just I just I missed that show. We were talking about fun shows last week and I just kind of missed the Orville. I thought that was a good, good, solid show. I might have to actually give it in and watch it at some point. I remember watching the first episode and hating it, but it is what it is.

I'm sure I can get past it. Yeah, it got better. It's kind of like Lower Decks. It gets better. Gotcha. Yeah. I watched Another Life season two. So you don't have to. Oh, is that bad? No, it's not horrible. It's perfectly serviceable sci-fi.

I actually liked the story. The problem I have with it, and God knows I love you, Katie Sackhoff, but man, the acting is just horrible, horrible. Not so much her, but everybody else. It's just bad. But I mean, Another Life season one had horrible acting.

I know. It was terrible, too. I know. And I sat through it. You kind of know what you're getting when you go into this, you know? That's true. Well, it's like crapper sci-fi, right? Like in our at the library segments. It's just simple, quick, super fast sci-fi, and it's fine. Okay. Okay. Foundation, though, on the other hand, I've actually started to enjoy now that it's almost over.

I've caught up. The last episode is coming out this Friday, I believe. And I'm enraged, actually. I just wish they left the whole foundation aspect out of it.

Like, just make a sci-fi show because this is not foundation at all. None of this stuff happened. It's crazy. But it's pretty decent sci-fi. I'm with you. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like, it's not actually a bad show once you kind of get past the fact that it's not the books that it's, you know, purported to be.

You know what? We need some kind of new technology. You know how back in the day I used to say that all I want from AI is to make sure that the Red Hot Chili Peppers never play on my car radio. Yeah. Now I want AI to replace Harry Seldon's name in this show with Bob Smith.

And if AI just did Bob Smith says instead of Harry Seldon, I'd probably be okay with this. Okay. You can't use Bob, though, because we got the Bob-a-verse. We can't mix those two up. Oh, yeah, the Bob-a-verse. That's, yeah. Well, that's never going to get made into a TV show. Shenanigan Charlie. We'll call him Shenanigan Charlie. Right. How's that?

Perfect. There. Then I'm fine with it. Okay. For some reason, my roommate got me to start watching the show You on Netflix. Mm-hmm. Because lots of people have been talking about season three that it's out now. Well, in watching You, I found me is very bored.

I think it is very boring. It doesn't look like your kind of show. Yeah, no, I can't see you watching that. Well, there's supposed to be serial killers and shit, you know, but this is like General Hospital meets Dexter, but more General Hospital than Dexter. Right.

I don't know. Yeah, I'm unfortunately forced to watch this one, so I will be mocking it as we go. Hopefully, it will pick up and get better. Okay. But, and I did see there is a trailer out for the Three Body Problem TV show produced by Tencent over in China.

Yeah. And I don't even have to speak Chinese to watch this and go, oh, they fucked that up. I mean, did you watch it? No, I haven't watched the trailer yet. Oh, you should watch it. It's entertaining. Okay. It is very entertaining. It's very high budget.

And I don't remember any of that shit from the book. So maybe they- They're doing a foundation. It's a foundation, people. I don't know. But I was just like, oh, this is going to be a clusterfuck. I don't need, like I said, I don't even need to speak Mandarin to know that this is going to suck. Well, I took a quick trip to Sweden and I watched No Time to Die, the new Bond film, to which I can just say it is time to let Bond die or reinvent him, her, they completely.

This was an utter snooze fest. I couldn't believe it kept going. I didn't care about anything. It's just such a remnant of a past time. It's time to do something different. It's just done better by other people without using the Bond name now.

Okay. Yeah. I haven't watched it yet. I did go to Sweden as well. But then I saw that it was available for rent on Apple TV now. So I might just, if I'm going to watch it, I'll just pay for it and get it there. Right. Because, you know, like we always say, if it is available to purchase.

Yes. If it's easy, we do it. Yep. I'll press the button. I do have a little musical thing for about four people in the audience. There's a new face-to-face album out called No Way Out But Through. It is very face-to-facey. If you're into that band, every like 10 years or so, they come back with another album that sounds like the previous albums, which is fine by me because I like all their other albums.

So if you're a face-to-face fan, you're in luck. All right. Well, I also have an old artist with some new music. Sting has a new single out called Rushing Water and a new album coming. This is not Loot Sting. This is Good Sting. And I am pleasantly surprised.

I really enjoy the single. It's much better than I thought it would be. Okay. Cool. Is it anything police-like? More like his early solo work. You know, it's not as cutting and punky. It's polished adult pop. Okay.

I was at Trader Joe's the other day and they were playing the police on the PA system. I think they were playing Don't Stand So Close to Me. Yeah. And it was a 70-year-old woman in the vegetable aisle, like, checking out tomatoes and dancing. Yeah.

It was very cute. That's the demo. She was digging it. And there is a new Alanis Morissette documentary coming out. Yes. Called Jagged. Yes. This is the one that she participated in and then later decided that, no, I don't want to have anything to do with this. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know anything about it?

Can you shed some light? I don't. Just what I've read in the news. I'm interested in watching it because I was involved with her at this point. Well, it depends on how far into her career they go. But I'm curious about it. I'm curious to see what it is that she didn't like about it that made her distance herself from it.

So we'll see. I will be watching it. Yeah, definitely. Me too. I was a fan. And one of the best shows I ever saw was her at the Chicago Theater that you got me tickets for. So thank you for that. She's a very good live performer. Oh, my God. So good. So good. I do have to say a little shame on the Washington Post for their URL choice.

Slash Alanis-Morissette-Rape-HBO. Alanis-Raped-HBO? Way to keyword stuff it there, Washington Post. Good job there. Ups and doodads. I got an email this week about my Masterclass subscription renewing soon.

And it said, yeah, you get the all you can eat. It's going to cost you $180. I'm like, yeah, I like Masterclass for sitting in bed at night. And I'll pop one on the TV and watch it. But I'm like, it ain't $180 worth of entertainment. I'll tell you that right now. No. So I canceled.

And of course, immediately, they're like, oh, please, please, please don't leave. Would you like 50% off? I'm like, $90 a year is well worth the entertainment. So there's another quick tip. If you want to renew your Masterclass, just quit and they'll give you half off.

Yeah. Sounds much easier than the SiriusXM version where you have to call and argue forever. But then you eventually get it cheaper. Yeah. No, it's not even worth it. It's no SiriusXM. No. And I love this. iOS beta 15.2, beta 2, lets you actually turn on the digital legacy feature, which is kind of like the death vault stuff.

Right. This is coming. They teased it, but it didn't come out with 15. So we'll be getting this soon. So you can have, you know, put your beneficiary of your data in there. The downside here is you have to show up with a death certificate and like an access key. So I would like a duress option just in case, you know, I don't know, I was kidnapped or something like that, um, or just disappeared and gone missing where people can go and get

my, get my phone data and pull that faster and easier than having to, you know, wait for me to, oh, I don't know, die, you know, let's, let's use this for maybe trying to get me some data faster so the cops can find me is all I'm saying. But baby steps, baby steps.

So I was listening to the accidental tech podcast this week and, uh, Marco was going on and on and on about his cases and I just kept screaming at him. I'm like, get this, get blah, blah, blah. Cause I just bought a new case for my iPhone 13 pro and it is the best case I've ever owned. Turns out it's from a company called peel and, uh, it is awesome.

I got the, uh, the super thin iPhone 13 pro case clear. Nice. It's not so much even clear as that it's kind of silver and it's got kind of a carbon fiber texture to it. When you look through it, it's soft, but it's slick, but with enough grip where you can hang on to it, but it doesn't stick to your pocket going in.

It is hands down the single best phone case I've ever owned in my life. Oh, I'm going to have to order one period. Yeah. It is so good. It is so good because I I've been putting together my, my perfect max stack, you know, with getting everything new and updated.

So I don't have to do it for like three or four years. So I got the iPhone 13 pro with a terabyte of storage. Good to go for a long time on that. Then I went out and I got this ultra glass full auto application designed only for iPhone 13 pro screen protector, tempered glass, 6.1 inch bubble free 0.5 degree microgravity tech, anti-scratch case friendly full coverage on Amazon.

These, these, these titles are going to be great today. It's one of those cheap glass things that, you know, you can put over the screen. I never liked them before, but cause I'd always get bubbles and stuff. And this had like a, um, uh, basically an installer thing that made it super easy with no bubbles.

So I've got zero bubbles. I am covered on the front, covered on the back. That thing's going to last forever. Knock on wood. Uh, just don't drop it on broke tomorrow. Yeah, no shit. And for the new iPad mini I got, I got this ESR hybrid case compatible with iPad mini 6, 8.3 inch 2021 detachable magnet cover, hybrid back shell fully supports pencil to rebound series.

Okay. Uh, so I got one of those, uh, cause it's got, it's basically kind of a nice bumper edge on it. The magnetic cover is garbage. I threw that out. Don't need that. Um, but I need it. I, I like holding it and I like want it to be protected, but the problem is it's big enough where it hurts your hand to hold all the way.

So I'm like, huh, maybe this is one of those jobs for a pop socket. So I got a cheap pop socket. I got the pop sockets pop grip with swappable top for phones, tablets, black problem with the pop socket is it does work perfectly with the iPad mini. It's great.

You can hold it. It just rests on your fingers. Uh, it's nice, but the edges around the damn thing are so sharp that you feel like you're going to cut your fingers off every time you use it. So I'm in the, in the market for a smooth pop socket. All right. Okay. So the iPad's done now. Now I got the iPhone.

I got the iPad and, uh, the 14 inch Mac book. I just got Apple care plus. I'm not putting any crap on my laptop. I'm not a, not a maniac. So I think between the iPhone, the iPad and the, the new, uh, Mac book, I'm good for like three years now.

In case something, so you say next week, all the new stuff that Jason orders, there's nothing left to buy. I can't, I don't want a new iMac because I love this Samsung curve display that you got me to get. Um, this thing's fantastic. So, and it works great with the, the 14 inch Mac book.

I don't even have, uh, an audio interface anymore. I got rid of my, uh, mix pre six. I'm using a sure MV seven now with, uh, just straight into USB. So I can pick this whole, you know, kit up and go anywhere with it. Like I'm going to, of course, but it's great.

So I think I've got everything dialed in for a while until next week. You're right. When the next, until next week comes out to something shiny. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I did get, uh, the Ninja AF one Oh one air fryer four court black gray this week because my old air fryer that my family got me was the size of a trash can.

Right. And I, I wanted something smaller that I could just, you know, pop out, pop in. Cause we were just, we just have no space here for, you know, kitchen gadgets. I got to say, I love it. They like 89 bucks gets the job done. Does my tater tots, my bacon, Brussels sprouts are great in it. Highly recommend Brussels sprouts.

Also everything that everybody uses an air fryer for it. This is a really nice one. So cool. And we talked about air purifiers for the house before, because you have the super ding dong Dyson, right? Yes. Yes, I do. Two of them. Yeah. Okay. So that's what 1200 bucks right there. Something ridiculous. Yeah.

So I got the Levoit air purifier for home allergies, pets, hair in bedroom, H13, true HEPA filter, 24 DB filtration system, cleaner, odor eliminators, ozone free, remove 99.97% dust, smoke, mold, pollen, core 300 white. Thanks guys.

Um, a hundred bucks. Nice. Works great. Okay. I can buy 12 of these for the Dysons. I did not make that purchasing option. That was not, that was not me. So I would have gotten something cheaper. I probably wouldn't even have an air purifier to be honest, but.

Oh, they, yeah. But I do. You don't have pets though. And I have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It works really good for pets. Cause, uh, I have to, I clean mine every week because they're typically full. We also have a wood fireplace in the, in the winter that we use every day. Right. And they are key, key for that.

I mean, my other ones are, I've got these big, tall, um, they're not Hewlett Packard, uh, Honeywell, these big Honeywell air purifiers. So, I mean, we got really pure air now, except when you go outside cause it's California and the air sucks. But, um, these little voids are good. And I found out that a couple of my friends also have them and, uh, swear by them with, you know, with the allergies.

So a hundred bucks for those, check them out. And they have sleep mode too. So they turn off all the lights and, uh, like turn it down way low. So it's still going, but yeah, they're good. They're good. Okay. And cool. And finally, in app news, Spotify is finally letting you block other users.

Okay. And I saw this come through on Engadget and I'm like, I didn't know there were Spotify trolls that needed to be blocked. Did you? No, I did not. But, uh, I don't use my music player as a social network. Yeah. Me either. The last, I actually should turn that off. I don't want people to know what I'm listening to.

I don't, I don't care. I really don't care. What was the Apple one that, that died on the vine? Oh, ping. Ping. Ping. Yeah. That's right. Because it made no sense what the name was. Yeah. Built into iTunes. That was so stupid. Yes.

Security. Ha. We are here again with Mr. Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy 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. Good morning, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. Good to be back. Everybody doing well, I trust. Yes, of course. Now let's- Except for the construction outside. Oh, yes. It's great. Well, it's a good thing you're not much of a complainer, Jason.

No, not at all. Wouldn't be a day that ended in Y if Jason wasn't pissed at something. That's right. That's right. These are the people that had the Property Brothers in, so apparently the Property Brothers didn't do a very good job. Ooh, shocker. Yeah. Yeah.

I did see the episode, too. And they were talking about how much they love their new forever home, and I just wish it was their never home, because I don't like my neighbors very much, but they don't listen to this show, so- My understanding with all those shows is that they're built just so that everything lasts long enough to be filmed, and then it all falls apart.

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then you have to go in and redo it. Yeah. And their numbers are so off. We watched the estimates on what they did, because we watched the episode, and the cost that they put into the fixes that they made were just astronomical. And you have to pay for that for being on the show.

All you get is free labor and screen time. That's it. Yes. Well, let's get to the important stuff that we're here for. Did you take a look at the Obi-Wan Kenobi series? We got our first look, which is a couple stills, basically, but I'm very excited. Yes. Yes. Just a little glimpse.

I, too, am looking forward to it. I think these series, of course, The Mandalorian and the Boba Fett series, I think they are our only hope for new Star Wars content that doesn't suck.

I'm very excited for them to CGI Mark Hamill as a baby. It's going to be awesome. Hmm. Oh, yeah. Maybe we can get another better... No! Maybe they can motion capture him and put his face in there.

But, you know, they are teasing another lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Darth, so we shall see. I'm very excited. Mm-hmm. But you know what I did this morning, guys? Hmm. Hmm. I watched a 20-minute video on rollerblading, so... Yes. Yes. Victory is mine!

Asshole! You asshole! And? And? I was wondering why Jason ordered the neon-colored shorts from Amazon. Now I know. He's getting into it. Parachute pants. That's right.

Oh, this video made me angry. Made me angry. Go ahead. Why? Because obviously this guy is a rollerblade fanboy, so... Oh. Well, I don't think one would make a 22-minute... Not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't know. I don't think somebody would make a 22-minute video about rollerblading unless they were, Jason.

Okay. I think you're all right, Dave. I think his timeline's off. Yeah. I think it was lacking in a lot of information, especially about skateboarding. That's what I thought, too. Yeah. That was my sense, and that's why I wanted to check in with you on it. Yeah.

Yeah. This is just poor journalism, in my opinion. Okay. The skateboarding stuff that he was talking about, it didn't go down like that, and I don't think, since I know that that didn't go down like that, I can't trust what he said about rollerblading went down like that. So, as a rollerblader, you said that you thought some things were wrong.

So, what do you think was wrong about it, besides all the spandex and rollerblades? My sense, yeah, my sense was that the skateboarding stuff was what he got wrong. I felt as though the timeline on the skateboarding stuff was wrong in that, in my mind, skateboarding definitely came first and established that they had the beachhead for all of that culture stuff.

He does cover that, though. I think it was right. No, he covered that, but he got his timeline a little bit wrong, because skateboarding basically started in the 50s. It did get bigger in the 60s and 70s in Dogtown, when surfers basically made the move. When there were no waves, they would skate. And then, you know, there was a drought in California where all the pools got basically emptied.

There was no water for the pools, so skateboarders discovered pools, and they, you know, that whole thing started with, you know, like, I get Dogtown and Z-Boy stuff. But I think his numbers on how unpopular skateboarding was, I mean, it definitely took a huge dive, but vert skating took a dive.

Street skating was alive and well. Not at the, you know, the scale of rollerblading, obviously, because skateboarding was a crime everywhere, and we were underground, we were punk rockers, and, you know, screw the man, fuck the establishment, but definitely no neon, definitely no neon spandex.

There's no spandex in skateboarding, but... No, my take is that skateboarding was a movement and a cultural thing, and really rollerblading was mostly a fad. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And there's still people who rollerblade today.

I see people around who do it for exercise, but the whole, you know, it rose quickly and burned out brightly, and that's the way a fad works, but... They're still definitely keeping the candle burning in Venice Beach. Lots of rollerbladers there. Is that right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a great workout, I have to say. I enjoy it. Low impact, all that kind of stuff. Not as easy as it used to be in these old bones and joints, but I still do have a pair, and every now and then I strap them on and tool around the flat parking lot.

I was going to say. I'm not skating down any stairs anymore or going for speed runs, but I enjoy it. It does clear my head. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And we've got an article here from Nosec who gave this to us on Discord.

It's a story about the first kidney-shaped pool, which is a pretty good read. It's worth diving into. But yeah, it was kind of a half-assed history, I believe. Maybe that's a good show to do, half-assed history. Instead of drunken history, we'll do half-assed history.

Right, right. Right, yeah. Why not? Sure. Yeah. Wouldn't be the first. I noticed that elsewhere in the show you guys were talking about one of you got an air fryer or was looking at an air fryer. Yes, I got a replacement air fryer because the first one I got was like a first-gen.

My family gave it to me for Christmas, and it was the size of R2-D2, and I didn't really have any place to put it. So I traded up, and I got a smaller one. I got a little Ninja air fryer, which is programmable and very nice and gets the job done very well. I make tater tots and bacon in it.

Yeah. Well, I included a link here. I, too, bought an air fryer, I guess it was Christmas before COVID. My wife had let it be known that an air fryer was something that she wanted on her Christmas list from Santa. And so I went and did a bunch of research.

And what I learned was that air fryers are basically just convection ovens. Yes. Yeah. There's nothing magical about them. And so I'm linking to this review from the folks over at Wirecutter about – they claim that the best air fryer is not, in fact, an air fryer, but it is a convection toaster oven by Cuisinart, which is the one I purchased.

And I have to say probably in the whole time that we've been a family, this is the best kitchen appliance we've ever purchased in terms of the amount of use it gets. It's an oversized toaster oven, which means there's all kinds of things you can cook in there that previously you would have cooked in your real oven.

Right. So it really saves you from having to fire up the real oven. And because it's a convection oven, like you were saying, Jason, tater tots, bacon, all that stuff just cooks up so much better in a convection oven than in a real oven or a toaster oven. So if it's something you're interested in, two thumbs up from the Bittner household on this Cuisinart toaster oven slash air fryer.

It's been really, really great. Okay, good. Yeah, we've got a smaller toaster oven with a convection oven in it, but it doesn't have the same power as just a standalone. So it takes twice as long, but, you know, I never put a, because mine has a, it's built for pizzas as well.

Like, so you can put a, you know, a 13 inch pizza in it because it's got like a round back on it and everything. I never put it, I never put it on convection with a pizza. I wonder how that would work. Crispy. I don't know. You probably get nice crispy crust on there. I'm going to have to try that. Yep. Well, now that we've talked Star Wars rollerblading and air fryers, I almost think we should just wrap it up.

But here is a little bit of security news. I did find this one pretty interesting. The FBI appears to have been used as a pawn in a fight between hackers and security researchers. According to Bleeping Computer, the FBI has confirmed intruders compromised its email servers on the November 13th to send fake messages claiming recipients had fallen prone to data breaches.

The emails tried to pin the non-existent attacks on Vinny Troia, the leader of dark web security firms Night Lion and Shadowbite. The non-profit intelligence organization Spam House and its sister organization, the International House of Spam, quickly shed light on the bogus messages. So this is pretty interesting.

They got into the FBI email systems and use it to kind of just start a fight basically. The FBI, of course, has egg on their face from this. They put out a terse message describing what had happened and saying that this was an email system that they used to communicate with partners, people outside of the FBI.

So this wasn't an internal email server, according to the FBI. So, you know, they're saying no internal data was at risk. Nothing was lost, that sort of thing. But, yeah, about 100,000 emails went out that appeared to be from the FBI because they were from the FBI.

They were from the FBI servers. That's where they came from. Yeah. This whole thing with Vinny Troia, the guy who the bad guys are trying to pin it on, evidently he's been the target of this sort of thing before. I don't know a lot about him, but I guess he's a character who attracts that kind of attention from folks in the dark corners of the web.

So that was pretty much written off. But other than that, it appears as though this was mostly one that was just kind of done for the lulls to embarrass the FBI and then go after this Vinny Troia guy. Some people have pointed out it's a heck of a thing to basically burn an exploit on.

Right. You know, imagine things people could have used this for. So I guess good news is the FBI found out about a vulnerability in their systems and it wasn't that bad. But, you know, still embarrassing for them. Yeah. I hope the Nigerian prince has locked down his email systems because, you know, if I ever got one that was really from his email, that would be something.

This next story I put in here, this is a series of sort of nested Twitter items. It started out with a gentleman named Jason Kint and he's tracking the fact that he deleted his Facebook account in the beginning of October and Facebook has been pestering him to try to reactivate the account, of course.

And he's been really deliberate about not touching the account in any way because he was under the understanding that if you touch that account in any way, Facebook will consider that to be activity and will cancel the deletion. Yep. So he's been tracking that and evidently, you know, Facebook, he's planning on going after them for privacy violations.

But another interesting thing here that someone commented, someone named Liz Fong Jones. She said, here's another fun one. I deleted my Facebook account in 2011 after Google Plus launched. Five years later, in 2016, I attended an event at Facebook office and RSVP'd with my email address.

Lo and behold, on the kiosk, I was presented with name and photo from my deleted account. Nice. Visibility set back to one, apparently. Well, that's why I put this in here because that's what you guys always say. And shocker.

Everybody that's deleted their Facebook accounts will already have avatars waiting for them in the metaverse. Trust me. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. That's right. For no particular reason, when I was poking around today, it might have been when I was looking at that air fryer thing.

It struck me that I think since I started using the Brave browser, I do not see ads following me around like they used to online. How many bats do you got now, Dave? How many bats? Yeah. Brave attention tokens.

Brave attention tokens. Their entire browser is tied into crypto now. You can't fart using the Brave browser without getting a crypto token. Well, that's mostly true. But all right. So I just fired up a new page here. And it says, Brave rewards, earn tokens and give back.

And there's a button that says, start using rewards. So I've never pressed that button. So as far as I know, I do not have any Brave rewards. Much like not doing any activity with your Facebook account. I'm sure you're getting Brave rewards. Yes, yes. I know. Yes, yes.

I know. I know. But that said, the reason I started using Brave, the reason I started experimenting with it and I've stuck with it is that I needed a Chromium-based browser because this tool that we're using right now, Riverside, to record ourselves needs a Chromium-based browser.

And I wanted something that was disconnected from Chrome proper because of all the tracking and stuff that Chrome does. And Brave seemed to fit that bill. So, yeah, I do see this stuff about the crypto stuff, but I've just sort of been whistling past that graveyard, I guess.

Yeah. I would recommend trying Vivaldi because they have multiple levels of security with tracking. You can pick a couple different levels of tracking that you can allow or disallow all of it. I barely get followed by anybody anymore. It is Chromium-based. It is not tied to Google in any way, shape, or form.

And their latest versions are fast and are incredibly feature-rich with a bunch of really cool stuff in it. Yeah. So I got to say that Vivaldi right now for me, since it's just so damn fast and lightweight, is great.

Because I was at Vivaldi, then I went to Brave, and I just got sick of all the crypto crap and then went back to Vivaldi. And they upgraded it quite a bit since I was gone. It's good. And all the new tools that are in it are just fantastic. It's good. And it's good on Mac and PC, too, because I'm using it on both.

And I have to say, actually, the PC version of Vivaldi is phenomenal. It's just so fast. Yeah, it's fast, fast, fast. All right. I'll check it out. When you say all the crypto stuff was bothering you on Brave, what do you mean? Every time you go to – you have to turn it off manually on any install.

And even if you're doing sync across multiple machines, you have to go in and turn off all that start page crypto crap. They're always – and now that they're literally tied in with crypto, with the Solana thing, yeah, I just – you can't trust them.

Plus, they were mining stuff in the background for a while. That was one of the first kerfuffles with them. So there's just too many red flags around that browser for me to recommend it to anybody. And that's what I was saying earlier in the show, that I feel guilty for actually recommending it before because it is definitely not a great piece of software.

Yeah. All right. I'll check out Vivaldi. That's a good tip. Thank you for that. You're very welcome. And in my final story, I put this one in security because I thought it was interesting. This is a Vice article called Inside an Online Community of People with Microchip Implants. Now, when this whole thing started, we made fun of it quite a bit.

There are people now – I'm sorry. I'm just thinking about furries. But go on. You think about furries. I'm like the number of the beast. I don't know how you went to that. What kind of implant you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I guess many things remind me of furries.

But I digress. Go ahead. So these people, like some of them have, you know, 20, 30 implants in them at this point. And one person says, I use my microchip to store my medical records and work portfolio as well as to use it as a crypto wallet and unlock doors.

I'm like, okay, they're going to chop your arm off to get your NFTs now because there's nothing keeping that thing from just being pulled out. I know this because my dad used to tell me horrible stories about Chicago in the 70s and 80s about wearing a Rolex on the L and people would literally get their arms chopped off because it was faster than actually trying to hold somebody up and steal their watch.

Yikes. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a pretty big, you know, community around this thing. And they're using it for, I mean, it's a lot of it's beta technology and a lot of it is, you know, getting end of life to, you know, the RFID things die on them.

The antennas suck. The software, you can brick your implant. And then I got to thinking, I'm like, hey, why don't they just make all of the, you know, the chips external and, you know, use the actual microchip in the body as kind of an authentication token. So, when you put it on, then you have, you know, access to all of the chips so you can log into different things.

But then you can program them, upgrade them and things like that. And then, you know, it dawned on me, wait a minute, we have Apple watches at this point. So, isn't that the same thing almost without having to inject yourself? Yeah. Yeah, but I think the thing for these people is they like the fact that they've done this.

You know, they don't want to watch. They want to be able to go to a bar and say, I've got a chip in my arm. Yeah, I'm a cyborg. Yes. You know, because you can forget the watch, but you can't forget your chip. Right. They want to be on the way back from lunch with their coworkers and they want to just hold their wrist up to the little scanner thing and have the door unlock.

And most importantly, they want everybody to say, how'd you do that? Yes. Are you a wizard? No, I'm just weird. Right. I agree. I think there's not much here that doesn't – isn't accomplished by an Apple Watch. Maybe an authentication factor that Apple Watch on its own doesn't have.

But, you know, it has a password on it. But some sort of biometric verification. But, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's just a thing for – I mean, you know, hey, if you want to put – stick something inside your body that does cool electronic things, more power to you.

But, yeah, I don't see this taking off. I don't – right. It's not like there aren't much more practical alternatives to this. I've spent – As you say, Apple Watch. I've spent most of my life trying to avoid having objects shoved into my body.

So, I'm going to continue that way. Well, don't knock it till you try it. Yeah, yeah. More about your furry convention next week. Although, I'm pretty sure we did do – I'm pretty sure we did do hacked butt plugs at one point.

So – Yes, we did. Of course we did. Of course we did. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's anything that I would – Here we go. I was thinking, like, could you – No, no. Oh, God. Like, how about a tooth filling?

Could you – would that be a good place to put an implant like this or a false tooth or – I think it needs to be close enough to the reader. Earrings aren't inside your body. Right, right. Yeah. Because they say like two to three millimeters, so it's got to be pretty close. That's why they keep it close to the skin in different parts.

But, yeah. Right. So, it really needs to be in the fleshy parts of your hands, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, because you might look kind of weird trying to stick your mouth over a card reader. I'd pay good money to see that. Well, people do want attention.

These people do want attention, so. That's right. That's right. Sure, I can pay with Apple Pay, but I've got to suck on the card reader for five minutes. By the way, never, ever let Bob open the door for you. I'm just saying. I am really popular at nightclubs, though.

Let me tell you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Wait, wait. Oh, no, no, no. I can't even go there. Yeah, let's go ahead and stop. Let's just stop there. Probably a good time to wrap up, gentlemen. This week on security. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Security. What? Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Thomas. Thank you. Thomas or Tomas? Tomas. And at PayPal, we have Miles, Shari, Natalie, Linda, Derek, Andrew, Nathaniel, Dag, Edward, and Ramsey.

And over at Stripe, we've got Anne Q and Sean M. All right, and we have a new five-star iTunes rating from Granny Dar. It was time to show my appreciation again. It's been two years now that Grumpy Old Geeks has been my go-to for making housework less of a chore. It was sad when you guys went to once a week, although understandable.

Cleaning days are twice a week, and you had me covered. Sorry about that. It was a hard decision whether to listen to you while cleaning upstairs or wait till later in the week when I did the downstairs. However, the upstairs one is I was less likely to be bothered by my child husband. Literally a child husband? Okay.

We'll dig there. Damn. I always learn something new, often something bizarre, sometimes discover something to add to my shopping list, and I'm thoroughly entertained by the banter between the two of you. The inclusion of Dave B for security segments, mostly, is truly a delightful experience after one manages to get over all the unnerving information.

It's a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde performance. One never knows where those conversations might go. Grumpy Old Geeks is an honest, insightful, irreverent, and revealing. It's something to look forward to once a week. Thanks. Thank you so much, and get back to the vacuuming. Thank you for that very detailed review.

I'm sorry about your child husband. It sounds disconcerting. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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.

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