533: Schrödinger’s Dorsey

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. We're back from the holidays. Yes. No more turkey. Crazy. I'm done. Yeah. If you can avoid air travel, I would do that. Definitely. Yeah. I do that when there's not a pandemic.

Yeah. Not fun. Not fun at all. Lots of testing. I've had more things up my nose than most artists from the 70s. All right. I'm telling you, man, we switch to anal testing, then those masks will go on real fast. Yes, they would. Yes, they would. Anyways, though, on the plus side, I no longer own a property in the United States or Santa Monica anymore.

So that's all wrapped up and done. So that's a big wait off and just, you know, it's nice. It's done. Okay. If you say so. Moving on. I got a quick bit of follow up. Our super fan Desiree has kind of disappeared from the Discord. And I just want to put a shout out and say, hey, Desiree, we miss you.

Just come on back and let everybody know you're okay. That's all. Okay. Yeah. We do miss you and people are worried about you. So pop on back and say hi. All righty. There you go. I have not paid too much attention to Discord. I'm sorry to hear that somebody has disappeared. But that is the nature of the virtual world. Sometimes.

Sometimes. Yes. Sometimes. There you go. We have a bit of follow up. Yuri wrote in. Hey, guys. Sorry to circle back to a previous episode. I'm always a couple behind. However, I can explain why taxi companies don't use an app to compete with Uber and Lyft. My dad was a cab driver for 30 years. When he passed away, I inherited his cab and got involved with the company right when Uber was taking off.

The main issue is that each cab company operates in a specific region of the city. So yellow cab can't work where green cab works, etc. When Uber was just starting, I participated in a meeting between the heads of the top taxi companies in the L.A. area and presented a scare that if we don't work together, these guys will kill us all.

However, much like territorial gangs, they hated each other so much that none of them wanted to collaborate to stay afloat and decided they could not let their egos go and decided to stay separate. The rest is history. I was going to say, how did that work out for them? Yeah, I was about to say, I do remember right after Uber was kind of taking off and we first saw those Lyft cars with the stupid pink mustaches everywhere running around and all that sort of stuff, somebody did try to launch some sort of app that was going to work with cabs in the L.A. area.

And I remember downloading it and trying it and basically never once getting a single cab through it. Yeah, we had the same thing in San Francisco and it was the same deal. You never got – you basically would order all seven cabs and hope one would show up. That was about it. Yep. So, you know, I hate Uber.

I hate Lyft. I hate the whole ride-sharing business because it's not a business because they do not have a business model. However, the taxis really did screw it up. Yeah, that's their own fault. And we do have a bit of breaking news. I forgot to put this in the notes, but DoorDash has actually hired 60 people in New York to be couriers and delivery people and warehouse people because it turns out that DoorDash has found out that some people want stability and benefits for the work that they do.

Go figure. Go figure. Go figure. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Hustle, hustle. I threw this one in here because I was just – you know, a little follow-up on the Zuckerberg, which I'm sure we'll have more of in here somewhere. But I saw Zuck on a Truck on Jimmy Kimmel. Did you get to watch this video?

I did not. Okay. It's pretty funny. It's a little – you know, Elf on a Shelf is now gone and now we have Zuck on a Truck and a Fire Truck. And, you know, the whole standard funny bits about how Mark is like, oh, yeah, your daddy's having an affair. It's not your daddy, blah, blah, blah.

But then we get to – then it takes a very dark turn at the end and it turns out the children decide to take over Christmas with their MAGA hats and stage a capital riot against the tree and they've even got, you know, a crazy shirtless shaman in there howling.

So it's well worth a watch. Link will be in the show notes. I highly recommend it for your Christmastime viewing. There you go. And what happens when you take a week off is an awful lot of people write in. So here's one from Brian with a Y, the incorrect spelling. Hey, geeks. I saw this article and thought it summed up the silliness of NFTs very nicely.

And this is from David Gerard over in the UK. NFTs, crypto grifters try to scam artists again. And he says, I particularly like these two quotes. An NFT doesn't convey copyright, usage rights, moral rights, or any other rights unless there's an explicit license saying so. It's like a certificate of authenticity that's in comic sans and misspelt.

And the other quote being the trouble with explaining NFTs to a five-year-old is that you'll have a hard time convincing a five-year-old that this nonsense isn't the nonsense it obviously is. It sounds unfathomably stupid because it's unfathomably stupid. Yep, this is an old piece, but it still sums it up nicely.

We actually covered this exact article on episode 499, forever old. But that one didn't make the great show notes calling on the website. So Brian with a Y is excused. All right. And I spent some time just kind of, especially when I was traveling, you basically got your phone on you.

So I spent a lot more time on social media than I normally do scrolling through Instagram and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I like The Cure on Instagram. Therefore, I will get served ads and sponsored posts from Cure fan pages. And one keeps getting recommended to me and is always posting videos and photos and trying to be semi-legitish.

So at the posting at the end of the 800 hashtags they included, I just thought this was hilarious. They gave a source attribute. Source? Pinterest. Pinterest. Okay. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes, where everybody goes to steal things and post them and break copyrights.

Yeah, that's your source. Let me explain how copyright works. God. And I got this one over at Medium, which I thought was pretty interesting. NFT CryptoPunk owner sold it to himself for $532 million in Ethereum.

Okay. Yeah. So this is, I think I mentioned this like a show or two ago, where these people are like, you know, selling these things, moving them around and selling them back to themselves. So they get the record for the highest sale. So what they do now is they create these like lightning instant loans.

So you can borrow $532 million in Ethereum and pay it back instantly and still do a transaction and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Tell me again how this is legit. Exactly. Exactly. So Larva Labs has already announced that it will add filters to notifications so that such invalid transactions based on flash credits are no longer available.

Analytical service, CryptoSlam, said it will delete the data on this transaction. And I go, wait, what? Delete the data? But, but, but, but Brian, it's, it's the blockchain. You can't delete the data off the blockchain. Can you? Doesn't that defeat the whole fucking purpose of the blockchain?

I thought that was the point of blockchain, I guess. That was the, and what fucking adult names his company? CryptoSlam! Oh yeah, nevermind. I guess when you're engaged in fuckery, the rules don't apply and blockchain is now editable. Okay, sure. God, I just don't even fucking know anymore.

And over at CryptoSlam! I, I, I put a link in here to the CryptoPunks NFT tracker and just watching the numbers on these fucking things is enough to side with Elon that we are actually truly living in the matrix because this shit just makes no sense to a sane person.

And, you know, finally, because let's just all fucking grift in the open now. Longtime lift CFO departs to become CFO at NFT Marketplace OpenSea. So let's go from one, you know, bag of bullshit to the next. He's just trading real world for virtual bullshit.

Yeah. I wonder if he can get, yeah. Yeah. Somebody should make an NFT of that pink mustache. Ooh. There you go. In the news.

Brian, Christmas has come early. Christmas has come early. 140 angels have gotten their wings because Jack Dorsey is no longer the CEO of Twitter. He is out. Out, I say, out. And Scott Galloway's head exploded because he's been screaming about this for about five years.

Okay. I'm sorry. Fuck Scott Galloway. In his fucking eye holes. He was live tweeting Succession and posting live spoilers. And that cannot stand. He has been blocked. He has been banned. He has been expunged from my life. He's been, he's been deleted off the blockchain. I know.

I called it Crypto Slam and got him, got him removed. Well, this is good news. He didn't even spend like five minutes dealing with, with Twitter. I, how Twitter's board of directors put up with this, how shareholders put up with this is ridiculous.

He and his beard can move on. Well, it seems to be he finally just did get fired, you know? Yeah. Finally. So, finally. Because nothing's happened. Because as has been pointed out many times, of all, of all the fucking dot-com companies, of all the Googles, the Apples, I mean all the tech companies, Twitter still trading underneath its initial IPO offering.

You have to work really hard to not make money. To not make money the last 10 years? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's a certain fucking skill right there. And again, as I've been pointing out the entire time of this show, Twitter seems to have the best PR in the world because any news show, any news article, any promotional materials always go to the Twitter account, not to the Facebook account, not to Google pages, not to the website, not to the Instagram, it goes to Twitter.

Twitter gets all the attention in the world and they yet, they cannot make a profit as a company. They cannot do anything. So, get rid of your, not even part-time, phoning it in, CEO. Thank God. It's about time. You know, he literally does phone it in because he doesn't have a laptop.

He does everything from his phone. All right. Well, it makes sense. It makes sense now, doesn't it? So, a report from the Washington Post states that the new CEO, Agaral, sorry, Agaral, Agaral, is announcing a major reorganization of the company today, which is what new CEOs do.

So, who knows if that's actually going to do anything, but leads of engineer and design are both leaving. So, they're gone. What design, I say? No shit. No shit. What? Okay. Oh, man.

I tell you what, though. I am going to continue with my Twitter blue. I do like it. Okay. I do actually like it. That, you know. Money for nothing. Well, that undo feature is saving me a couple times, which is nice. And your undo's for free. Yeah. Yeah, you need undo. I do. I really do need undo. You are the prime market for that, yes.

Remember the story where I was telling you, like, where I would buy stuff on the Apple store and I would pay for it and then I'd wake up in the morning and then delete it or, like, you know, return it and cancel the account. That undo, that 180 seconds between pressing send and pressing cancel gets that out of my system.

So, I can just say, fuck you to the world. And then, right before it goes, nah, I'm good. I said it. I will point out that, you know, one can just leave the window open, have a few seconds of calm reflection, and then click on delete. But, okay. Uh-uh. You've got to press send.

The lizard brain requires you to press send. It does. Okay. It really, really does. Okay. You can delete after the fact, too. I'm just saying. Yeah, but not without people getting notified first. Whatever. Yeah. Then they screen cap it and then you're still in a pickle.

You're still in a pickle. Yeah, they can fake that and sell it as an NFT, too. So, immediately after leaving Twitter, Jack has changed the name of Square to Block. Why not Blockhead? Well, have you seen their profile pictures on the Block website?

Yes, I have, actually. Yeah. What the actual hell? Whatever. Whatever. You know, just let him go now. The only reason I use the Cash app to buy some Bitcoin, I bought the dip. Because why the hell not?

But that's all. I don't use Square for anything, so I'll stay away from them. Except when I buy something at the local coffee shop. What is up with this bullcrap line in the Business Wire article? The name change creates room for future growth. What? How does a name change create room for future growth?

No, it doesn't. It doesn't do anything. I don't know either. Okay. It makes no sense. It's just a hip thing to do. All right. The thing about, you know, he just wasted a mulligan on this because, you know, Facebook changed a meta because they suck and everybody hates them. But nobody hates Square.

Square does its job. It's fine. You know, it's kind of payments. Who gives a shit? So they totally wasted a name change on that. There you go. Quibble sent in this article. Have you guys seen the Streamlabs OBS story? Link below. I'm shocked by the outright brazenness of these people and how the industry works to fight this kind of thing.

And this is the OBS project accuses Streamlabs OBS of stealing name and trademark. The OBS project, an open source project that produces live stream software. And distributes it for free. Released a statement on Twitter on Tuesday. See, again, Twitter. Twitter always. Everybody says Twitter. You're right. I'm sure they also released it to normal news agencies on Tuesday evening in which they accused Streamlabs, which is owned by Logitech, which I thought was Logi, but I guess they backed away from that name change.

It's so confusing. Yeah. Sometimes it's Logi or Logi and sometimes it's Logitech. I just don't know where to go anymore. Of copying their name and stealing their trademark by naming their new software Streamlabs OBS. Additionally, another company called Lightstream is also accusing Slobs, which is Streamlabs OBS, of stealing their UX and marketing materials as well.

Honestly, I'm less concerned about the name appropriation that occurred here than that somebody over at Logi thought going with Slobs as an acronym was a great idea. This is probably the same person that went from Logitech to Logi. Maybe. Who knows? You know, come on. Slobs. Unbelievable.

Slobs. Oh my God. Yeah. And by the way, this really did cause confusion because I had no idea because when I was using OBS, I'm like, which one is it? Is it Streamlabs OBS? Is it OBS? I just don't know. And I ended up spending half a day like trying them both out to figure out which one was the actual one I was supposed to be using.

So good for them. Good for them. I saw this over at Ars Technica. The movement to hold AI accountable gains more steam. And, you know, this is people in New York are trying to come up with some ways to say, hey, you've got to check your work here when you're using AI for employment.

You know, is it going to be, you know, biased in any way, shape or form? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But as we all know, it's a black box and nobody knows anything. Right. And I love this at the very ending of this. Julia Stojanovich, an associate professor at New York University, says she supports the disclosure requirement in the New York City law, but says the auditing requirement is flawed because it only applies to discrimination based on gender or race.

She says the algorithm that rated people based on the font in their resume would pass muster under the law because it didn't discriminate on those grounds, which makes a fucking beautiful point because you don't know what it's actually going to be discriminating on. It could be discriminating on grammar.

It could be discriminating on punctuation or spacing. It doesn't like this format of a resume, but it likes another format of a resume. Uh-oh. Oxford comma. Exactly. So you're fired. You're not going to work in this town again, buddy. And that's, that comes back to the point where we just don't know what's going on in these things.

And, you know, unless everybody is formatted exactly the same way using the same, you know, basic, you know, blank text file, then it's really hard to, and like I said, even with that could come down to punctuation, could come down to grammar, you know, not actual skill sets.

So, you know, how do you train these things to actually be smart enough? I don't know. I don't know. But we find this over at Science Alert. AI is discovering patterns in pure mathematics that have never been seen before. And they're using, well, here's the thing.

I got three questions. First, who's going to check the work to make sure it's correct? Right. Don't know. Another AI. Second, have none of these nerds read the laundry files where math is actual pure sorcery? Come on. Come on. And last, the rate that they switched between AI and machine learning just completely made the same thing now.

Made my head spin. I mean, so I just want them to build an AI to let the writers know which term is actually correct. Right. That's all I want. Good luck. I don't know. Yeah. Finally, my last story is debt collectors can now text, email, and DM you on social media. And here is this one.

Consumers in the collections process deserve to be on a level playing field with others in the financial services marketplace with recognition of their preference to use email and text messaging over other outdated methods, such as faxes, as outlined in the current law. Mark Neeb, CEO of ACA International, a trade association for debt collectors, said in a statement.

In a statement from Grumpy Old Geeks HQ, debt-riddled co-host Jason DeFilippo wishes to tell Mr. Mark Neeb to firmly fuck right off. And continue to fax Jason. Yes, continue to fax me. I have dealt with debt collectors in the past. They have no scruples. They have no rules. They will call you or your family at three in the morning, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So anything that gives these assholes more power, I am not a fan of. I think you make it a law that can only use email. Forget calling you. Perfect. That's fine with me. I can delete that. Spam filter. Mark a spam. Mark a spam. Mark a spam. Done. Problem solved. And finally, Barrett sent over this article.

Elon Musk frantically warns employees of potential SpaceX bankruptcy. If only the richest man on Earth could help solve that problem. Hmm. Hmm. Where are we going to find any money? I don't know. I don't know where we could possibly get money to keep this going, but instead of ponying it up himself, he's urged his employees to work over the weekend in a desperate attempt to increase production of the engine meant to power its next-generation Starship launch vehicle.

Yeah, I'm going to need you to come in and work on those TPS reports. If only there were bags of money around somewhere.

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Well, since we were off for a week and it was, you know, some holiday-esque, we have a lot here in Media Candy, so let's run through it here. We do. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Looking forward to seeing it.

The wife desperately wants to see it, so we're trying to find that period of time where we can both watch it together. Looking forward to it. It's so good. It's so good. I've heard it just got greenlit for a sequel, too. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah. A friend of the show, Teeter, said that I was really going to like it up until the end when all the CGI kicked in, but that was absolutely false.

I loved every minute of the show. It was fairly predictable, but it was fun. It's a fun ride, so I think you're going to like it. Right. And I kind of broke my rule with more, you know, Marvel superhero stuff, because there's nothing else to watch. I started watching Hawkeye on Disney+.

I'm watching it as well. I watched the first three episodes so far. Right. I love it. I think it's good, and I strongly dislike Jeremy Renner. See, I like him a lot. Really? Listen to his album. See what you think. He's got music.

Really? Oh, yes. Oh. He is an auteur. Shatner-esque? Yeah. Oh, boy. He takes himself way too seriously. Shatner, at least, is with a nod and a wink. Shatner's in on the joke. Yeah. Shatner's in on the joke. Jeremy Renner is not. Okay.

But I do like the show. I have to admit, I enjoy it. It's because it's not all Marvel-y. It doesn't feel Marvel-y. Yes, it's kind of got a superhero in it, but it's kind of like the lamest one. So it's... You got to admit, the Ren Faire scene was fucking classic.

Oh, that was hilarious. Yeah. It was so good. Very well done. And the Captain America musical at the beginning. Yes. It was just priceless. Priceless. Very funny. So I, on the plane, watched Cruella, which is available on Disney+. It's got Emma Stone as the kind of, it's supposed to be the origin story.

Doesn't really tie in at all in any way, shape, or form with the original, but that's okay. It was fun. I really enjoyed the movie. And Emma Stone, I mean, just as a showpiece for her, she crushed it. It was great. Cool. Cool. I'm surprised. Yeah. It was highly enjoyable. It's not for kids.

No way. Really? But a lot of fun. Oh, Jason, you'd love this, actually. It's really good. I think you would really enjoy it. It's more of a caper and kind of a cat and mouse sort of thing. It's great. I liked it. Oh, cool. I'll check it out then. That's a very surprising review.

I'm like literally surprised about that. No, it was very good. I really did enjoy it. It was quite well done. And I watched all 7,000 hours of Get Back. Why? I liked the Beatles. And actually, I was home with my mom. My mom was a huge Beatles fan, saw them live back in the day.

So she wanted to watch it. And I was like, all right, whatever. Peter Jackson's doing all the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings based on just one recording session with the Beatles. Sure. How interesting could it be? Fascinating once you let yourself sink into it, especially because I've spent time in recording studios doing my own albums or sitting around with other artists that I was working with.

So it was like seeing the best band that's ever existed doing it exactly the same. Amazing. It's just hours and hours of boredom. Hours and hours of boredom. Ringo talking about farting. Basically, whoever wasn't recording that day is like passed out drunk in the corner.

It was awesome. It was amazing. And the sheer moments of brilliance when they actually bring a song into being from like nothing like that just puts your hair makes your hair stand up. I wish there was an edit of just those parts. It's crazy. Okay. And you know, I talked about the Atlantis documentary.

It's a whole series on HBO called Music Box where they're doing all these different documentaries. Listening to Kenny G. Not for a million dollars. I put this on thinking, I'm going to turn this off in five minutes. There's no possible way this could be intriguing or engaging.

Loved it. Loved it. God. Absolutely loved it. It is amazing. I still hate him and I still hate his music, but I loved the whole story behind it. And the whole, the director that came into it was basically the same thing.

It was like, I can't believe I'm doing something about Kenny G. I cannot stand Kenny G. It's awesome. It is so good. Like, okay, don't go into it sober. Like, open up a bottle of wine, get halfway through the bottle and then put this on. Then put it on.

Okay. It's awesome. My dad and my little brother love Kenny G and they would always go to concerts together and I always felt left out. I'm like, oh, they're bonding and I'm not, but they're bonding to Kenny G. So I don't want to be in that club. No, I don't want to be in the club either, but I liked the view into it.

It was awesome. Okay. Oh, there's another one I just downloaded that I want to check out. The A-ha movie. Have you heard about that one? No, it is on my list of things to watch though. Okay. Okay. I didn't know if you had heard much about that. I saw that come through and I'm like, oh, let's try that. Cause I, you know, can we, can we take one song and stretch it out to two hours?

Well, obviously they can do it with the Beatles. So let's see if they can do it with A-ha. Right. And I've been continuing to watch Star Trek Discovery and I was going to say something about it, but you found the exact tweet that I saw scroll by earlier this week as well. That basically perfectly sums up my feeling about the show.

So yes, this is, this is from Christopher Moore, one of our favorite authors. He says, oh my God, Star Trek Discovery, you can't work through your feelings in every emergency. These people shouldn't be running a garbage truck, let alone a fucking starship. And it just gets worse as the show goes on.

Every episode, you just think more and more, how, how, how are they? Captain Kirk wouldn't let any of these people on board his ship. No shit. Oh, Captain Wokistan is, oh, I made it 15 minutes into episode two and I'm like, I'm never watching this garbage again.

I can't. It is so bad. It's, it's horrible. Um, you know, it was actually really good though. And I'm, I can't believe I'm saying this. It's, it's by far the best sci-fi show I've been watching recently. Lost in Space season three. It was great. I binged it in a day and a half. I'm done with it too. I think it wrapped up satisfactorily.

I don't need any more. They'll probably give us more because apparently it's doing very well. I don't want more. I think it's perfect. Leave it there. It is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Yep. I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I'm glad I watched the recap, uh, from, from season two, because I forgot almost all of it, but, and then, uh, but when they kick it out, it is a solid show.

It's well written. It's well acted. The effects are fantastic. There was just absolutely, there was nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell. Yeah. I, I think it all wrapped up a little too quickly at the very end. Uh, they could have spread that all out. They could have spread that out over the, the episodes a bit more, but other than that, great.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, it did what it needed. It did what needed to be done. Yep. And, uh, continuing to watch Wheel of Time and continuing to enjoy it, uh, boot Lego wrote in just as a followup from our previous discussion. The Wheel of Time book series is done. There probably won't be any sequels, prequels, or other fuckery either because Robert Jordan, the author, died years ago before he finished the series.

His estate ended up hiring Brian Sanderson to finish it up from notes that he left and they're at rest. Okay, uh, there's a, there's a typo here because it's not Brian Sanderson, it's Brandon Sanderson, one of our favorite authors. That's right. Yeah. Some of those books were really good. Uh, yeah, I, I like the show a lot. Uh, I, I, I really do enjoy it.

It's, it's, uh, Game of Thrones, but not as insane. So that's good. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Um, Bruce Dickinson, one of my favorite singers of all time from Iron Maiden, has a podcast, Psycho Schizo Espresso. Okay. Um, I, I put the link in here, you can go check it out.

I don't like it. Okay. Sadly, I don't like it. That's fine. I don't, I don't think it's great. Um, and Bruce looks bad. Well, he's old. He's not doing well. He's old. He's not, yeah, he is, but he took a turn ever since, I mean, I, I reviewed his biography.

There's autobiography on the show a long time ago when it first came out. Um, but man, he has definitely, uh, turned into some, uh, road weary luggage since then. But, um, uh, but I did watch true story with Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes.

Okay. What the flying fuck was that is all I gotta say. It was, it was terrible, but it was good, but it was terrible. It was just like, we were scratching our heads. Like the first episode, we're like, if, if something doesn't happen here, we're done.

Cause this is one of the most poorly written transparent things we've ever seen. And then it just kind of, it's weird. It's really weird, but it was cool seeing Billy Zane again as, as a villain. He was, he was in it. That was interesting. Cause I worked with, on Billy Zane's, uh, movie, the phantom. I like Billy and he was in Titanic too as another villain, but, uh, he just did not look like Billy Zane in this one.

He has definitely gone the, uh, uh, not Benicio del Toro. No, the, um, uh, the bad guy from daredevil. Oh, I can't remember his name. Yeah, but yeah, definitely on going on the daredevil route there. Uh, so yeah, it was interesting.

I watched the power of the dog, right? Um, Benedict Cumberbatch's new film. I had a hard time with this one. Uh, but then I, it in like, at the end, I even fast forwarded a bit cause things were going and then I listened to an interview he did on Mark Maron.

And then I'm like, okay, now I missed something. So I went back and I watched the last like 20 minutes of it. Changes everything. Turns out it's a really fucking good movie. If you stick with it, if you stick with it, that ending is just like, oh, fuck.

So it's worth it. It's worth it. All right. Um, and, uh, I did not know this, but Lawrence Fishburne is not playing Morpheus in the new Matrix. Apparently this is old news from half a year ago that I missed cause I got the new Wired magazine and it's like Morpheus.

And I'm like, that ain't Morpheus, but I don't know what they were doing, but apparently Lana does not like the Lawrence. Well, okay. So the title of the title of this article, Lawrence Fishburne was never told why Matrix 4 left him out. You have to ask Lana Wachowski. Uh, I can tell you, uh, have you seen Blackish?

Have you seen what Lawrence Fishburne looks like now? No. He is a cuddly, large, berry grandpa. Well, I've seen him. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've, oh, that's true. He's, he's not going to be doing any Kung Fu. I did see him. He's been in the John Wick movies. Yeah. I love Lawrence Fishburne, but, uh, visually he does not have the Morpheus look anymore.

Oh, he can't do the, he can't just hit the gym for a couple years. This ain't a three month transformation, brother. Keanu and Carrie Moss have aged quite a bit as well, but they still look the part. Yeah. They kind of, they kind of kept the, kept up with it.

You know what I'm saying? I'm just saying. That's all. Like, I'm not trying to fat shame or anything here, but. Hey man, call a lard ass a lard ass. Yeah, it happened. It happened. And in the strangest news, Spotify hired a psychic to channel your personal audio aura.

Yes, mine was greenish orange. I couldn't even find mine. I tried to find it. You have to go through your Spotify gift wrap thing and it shows up. It's just, it's so stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Too much money, not enough sense, but apparently not enough. Too much money not being paid to the artists.

Or the comedians. Or the comedians. It's been the big news. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Yeah. What are you going to do? You can hire a psychic, but you can't hire the best comedians in the world. Okay. By the way, did you call the psychic or do they call you? Because they should have known you were going to hire them.

I know. Come on. I never understood why psychics advertise. They shouldn't have to. Exactly. Exactly. If you're going to hire a psychic, hire the one that finds you. Cups and doodads. Brian, I found this really cool YouTube video. It's called, How Old Are Your Ears?

I was going to say, How hodl are your ears? My dyslexia kicked in for a second. I'm like, hodl, hodl. Yep. I clocked in at 42. I got 38. How old are you now? I am 48. You're 48. Okay. So you're two years younger than me, but your ears are four years younger than me.

That's surprising. Yeah. But I've been an audiophile most of my life. So expensive, high quality. Headphones. I've, as soon as I started getting into the music business and I was going to concerts professionally, regularly, I invested in the high quality, super expensive earplugs that let you hear all the music, but control the sound.

I've heard of those. Yeah. Yeah. I have the ones that where they pour the mold into your ears. So they're custom to you and all that sort of stuff. So I wore those at shows for most of my professional working life. Um, so yeah, I've been very protective of my ears. Yeah, I wasn't.

Yeah. But still, you're doing pretty good. I was amazed. I was literally quite amazed. I'm like 42. That can't be right. And I went back and I checked the frequency where I stopped. I'm like, then I, I found another frequency generator and tried it. I tested it on another site and I clocked into 42. I was like, wow.

Okay. That was amazing. Yeah. But don't try this at home. Kids definitely get earplugs, go to shows with earplugs. It's, it's better for you. Uh, I tried a new app called lucid. It is a visual approach to learning. It's kind of like blinkist, but instead of the audio and a text version, they, they do little cute graphics and things like that.

Tried it for a bit. I was kind of getting into it. Uh, then I just $99 a year and that was a turnoff. That was a big turnoff. But I said, you know, if I'm doing a couple of books, you know, a day even, but they don't have that many books. So I wouldn't get my money's worth there.

Uh, it's iOS only. There's no iPad OS version. Um, but you can load the iOS version onto your iPad, but it doesn't sync for shit. So lucid was a short experiment in absolute failure. I took a look at their website. Uh, I obviously kind of knew that you were not a fan, but I wanted to take a look anyways, cause I thought it was an intriguing concept.

And for a company that really, uh, prides themselves in their bread and butter is on presenting information visually. Well, their web designer is shit. Their CSS is shit. And I put a screenshot into our show notes here. That is a full window on my laptop in which, uh, the images are overrunning the text that explain what the site is.

That is beautiful. That is beautiful. It's a visual approach design company that cannot provide a visual, visual approach of their own information. So that that's spot on. Uh, I did like the service. I actually did like the service though.

They're just, you know, and I, I, when I left, there was, uh, you know, there was an exit thing and an exit questionnaire, which is, I guess that's the thing now, which I'll talk about in a second. And I'm like, yeah, I'll try you guys in a year, but you're not there yet. These are the technical hurdles. Your catalog isn't up to date, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I tried Blinkist because God knows you hear it on every goddamn podcast in the world, except ours. We're going to talk about them. And we're, we're the only people that are dumb enough to not get paid for it. But so I, I got the trial.

I used, I used a coupon code from, I think Cal Newport's podcast, and I got the seven day free trial and about three days into it, I learned that Blinkist is not going to get my money. I went through a bunch of books and the premise is just fundamentally flawed because you can't learn from the tidbits.

Seriously. You need, you need depth and context to make that impression. So you can kind of internalize the lessons. Otherwise it's just people shouting word salad out their ass, which literally kind of sounds like half the time. And it's not worth the money that they want, you know, they want like 80 bucks a year.

They've got like 4,000 titles, but they're putting in podcasts. Now they're doing like, you know, Blink, Blink casts where they'll take, you know, a show like ours and cut it down to like six minutes, which is probably smart. Fuck Facebook there. AI, machine learning. What the fuck? That's it.

But they know this from their exit questionnaire because I got this question. The Blinkist formats are just not for me. They're too short slash shallow, which is, that's it. So they're aware of it. They are aware of it. So yeah, neither one of them hit the bill for me. So I'll just go back to listening to books and reading books.

That's what I'm doing. The way God intended. I got the new Neil Stevenson. I listened to it on Audible for a little bit and I'm like, I want the print book. And I got the print book and I've, it is slow going. I got to tell you, it's nice. It's fun to hold the book and read it. But man, slow going.

Yep. I picked up Craft, which is, it won like the app of the year award from Apple. It's a writing app. And it's similar to Ulysses as far as writing goes. The thing about Ulysses that I don't like is that it's all Markdown based. And I hate Markdown.

Craft doesn't, you can do Markdown and Craft, but you don't have to, which I really like. But it also does this internal linking stuff. I'm really enjoying it so far. I still got a bit to go on my trial. So I haven't like pulled the trigger on it because last thing I want another goddamn software subscription.

But as far as I can tell so far, it's really nice. They are there. They've got this whole 2.0 thing coming out. So they're, they're, they're releasing developer APIs and things like that. So hopefully they'll get Grammarly embedded in it because it's not in Ulysses, but if it's, if they can get Grammarly into Craft, oh, life changer right there.

So yeah, check it out. There's a, there's a trial for it, but it's beautiful. They definitely did a good job on the design and the quality of the app is top notch. Cool. I found two new apps called Sun and Moon Seeker. These are just iOS apps and what they do, it says it right there on the, on the tin.

It says it on the tin. You stay, you stand in a spot and it'll tell you where the sun's going to be at any given point in the day. And you can actually, it does have an AR component to it. So you can turn on your camera and pan around and see where the sun's going to be and the moon's going to be. I originally got this because I, with my new camera, I was trying to figure out where the best place to do a shot of the moon was going to be at one point.

And then I'm like, oh, they got the sun one too. So I just got it because they're, they're cool. They're, they're cool. Like, you know, just technological pieces. So it was $11.99 for the bundle for both of them. And they're cool. I mean, if you're a photographer who needs to know at any given point where the sun's going to be for a shoot, you have to have this or something similar.

I know that people, a lot of people do with pen and paper and I'm like, eh, what the hell? But the, the, and the AR is really cool. I got to give it to them. The AR is really cool. The next one I have here is just a little web app. It's over at calculator.net called a time calculator. I do a lot of, uh, time-based billing for my podcast work and I get multiple files from people and I have to add them all together to get a full thing and trying to do it in your head with base 60 and all that just drives me crazy.

So I found this where I could just add things together and it, it does what it says on the tin. It is free and it's great. Hey, I've had calculator.net bookmarked in all of my browsers forever because they've got a gazillion useful things. And I used to use the time, uh, time zone and time card calculators all the time, uh, back when I was, uh, doing my, my whole gig thing with all the musicians, because I would have one client in the studio in London, another client touring Belize, another client, uh,

you know, in South America or South Africa. And I have, I would always have to keep track of all these things. And this is well before iOS had the handy, you know, you could just scroll through the different, uh, you could set all the time zones in your own handy clock app. So this, this thing was a game changer for me back in the day.

And the site's great. It's got every calculator you could possibly think of for anything that you want. So yeah, I I'm a big fan of calculator.net. Yeah, no, it is so awesome. And this last one I have in here is the chatter telephone with Bluetooth from Fisher price. This is a, it's a toy.

It looks to be a toy, but it is literally a Bluetooth handset. So your kids can learn how to take meetings, I guess. It's an old school phone that my kid doesn't think that's a phone. He only knows cell phones.

Yeah. I'm looking at this. It's like, what is the use case for this? Nostalgia. It's more for the parents than the kids. Somebody will buy this thinking, oh, this, uh, my, my, my, my nephew will love this. I know. And it comes with a quote unquote, super advanced rotary dial.

What the hell is a super advanced rotary dial? It's an interesting product, but I'm not sure who it's meant for. I know. And here's the, here's the crazy part. It's sold out. Yep. I told you it's going to be people our age buying this for, for other kids, for people our age that don't have kids thinking this will be great for a kid.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. Yep. Security. Ha! Dave Bitter is back. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

And finally, he's the co-host of Recorded Future, where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence. And it's been a couple of weeks since we talked to you, Dave, any more shows to roll out there in the intro? No, I mean, we, we did add a sort of an occasional show to our Hacking Humans feed, which is, we call Hacking Humans Goes to the Movies, where we talk about some of our favorite scams from movies and occasional TV shows, but mostly movies.

And that's been fun. It's me and Joe and Rick Howard, who's one of my colleagues here at the Cyber Wire. He's the former chief security officer at Palo Alto Networks, a little company you might have heard of. Name drop, name drop. Yeah, he joins us.

And it's fun. It's a fun kind of silly show. But yeah, so other than that, no, just the normal 10 shows a week. That's all. All right. That's it. Okay. NDD. It's good to be back, though. I mean, it's been a couple of weeks. You're right. It's been before Thanksgiving. So catching up and everything.

Everybody have a nice Thanksgiving and all that. Brian, I saw you were back stateside for a little while. I did. I had to go close my house sale in Santa Monica and got to visit with some friends and have a couple of beers, which was nice. And then, you know, felt existential angst and pain as the continued stupidness continues on and you see it everywhere.

So I'm happy to be back in Canada, which still has a lot of stupid people, but definitely a different percentage. Right, right. At least you get health care, right? Yes, you get health care. How about you, Jason? Anything special for Thanksgiving? Oh, we lost power in most of the valley, so...

Oh, that's right. I remember seeing you tweet about that. That's eventful for the day when everybody's cooking. Yeah, yeah. It was fantastic. Actually, for us, it wasn't bad for us. I had a lot of friends who basically, their day was ruined. Their food was ruined.

Everything was ruined. Yeah, the timing couldn't have been better. It was like right when you would have been well into the turkey and a bunch of the sides would have been simmering away and then all of a sudden, gone. Yeah. That was exactly what had happened. Yeah. I wonder how many people didn't realize it until it was too late.

They just went and opened up a cold oven. What? Well, they lost all the lights, so I think there was a... Oh, okay. So not just the gas. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. Because the gas still worked, but the pilot lights were out because everything's electric. And I apologize for the noise in the background.

I'll try and cut this in post. But yes, there is a Fargo moment going on with a wood chipper outside my door right now. I'm surprised that there are any trees left on your street at this point. We did pretty good because most of the trees have fallen down with the other Santa Ana winds. It was pretty epic, though, but they prune the trees all the time.

But fortunately, we were cooking in Calabasas where the power went out, but here in Woodland Hills, we were in a little pocket where we still had power. So it was like ass on fire or hair on fire, whatever you call it, moment where we put everything in the car, sides, turkey, the whole shebang, drove it over to the house, which is like five minutes away, put it in the oven here, get everything back up to heat, and then cook it, run back to the house.

And as soon as we come back to the house, the power comes back on. Well, it takes a village, right? It really does. So everybody pitched in and did their part. Yes, we had three SUVs of foodstuffs running through Mulholland Drive. It was fun.

Well, that's nice. I took the decadent move of taking the entire Thanksgiving week off, and it was much needed. And I have to say, one of those things where midway through the week, you kind of take stock and you say, oh, I'm disengaged.

This is wonderful. I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about... And there's still several more days to go before I have to think about work. Oh, this is why we take vacations. I should do this more often. You know, it's that sort of, duh, you know, you know it's going to happen, but when it actually happens, it feels good, and you're happy that you did, and try to file it away for the next time, even though you know you probably won't.

Yes. This is the difference between being an employee and a contractor, because I worked my ass off for two weeks coming up to Thanksgiving. And of course, your clients screw you, and you're working the whole time. You're like, oh, can you just do this? Can you just do that? I'm like, oh, where's the notes for this?

Oh, I'll get to them. So yeah, the whole trip was, you know, just, yeah, fuck you. It was a big rule of thumb for me when I was running my own business for that 20 years, that any time I would decide to take a vacation, I would let all my clients know I was taking a vacation.

They would always find some emergency while I was on the vacation without fail. Yeah, I think what we screwed up, Brian, you need to tell them that your vacation starts a week before you take the vacation. Yes. Because in their head, they will give you stuff while you're on vacation.

But the week after, dead quiet. Yep, that's the way it works. You have to fake it. You totally have to fake them out. Yeah. Or just tell them you're vacationing on a deserted island that has no access to anything. Oh, they'll find a way. They will find a way. They will find a way. A fucking pigeon would show up saying, I really need my tour dates added to my website.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Can you just move this ad 30 seconds to the right, you know? Right. Remember when I told you I wanted it blue? I want it red now. They hire a skywriter to leave specific notes. I would not put it past those clients of mine back in the day.

Seriously. All right. I have lived that life as well. And for certain things, this one is better. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's move into a little bit of news here. In news that shocks no one, another crypto exchange has lost a whole bunch of money to hackers.

This one is BitMart. It has lost the equivalent of $196 million. The intruders beached Ethereum and Binance wallets with a flood of transfers starting around 2.30 p.m. Eastern on the 4th of December, followed by an exodus of tokens that I'm just going to start to refer to as Tweedledee and Tweedledum because who the hell is buying this stupid stuff?

Anyways, it's gone. Founder Sheldon Shaw said only a small percentage of the assets were at risk, $196 million. Yeah, sure. It's other people's money, so it's a small percentage. Who cares? Even so, the company has frozen withdrawals until further notice and is reviewing security.

Too late. They have no idea who's responsible as of yet, but the culprit obviously may have been knowledgeable. No shit. So there you go. Yeah, I found it interesting that they said they were going to make whole anyone who lost money here.

Yeah, that was interesting, isn't it? It's like, where do you have all this money from? From where? And it also made me wonder, do exchanges like this have insurance against these sorts of losses and how would one write a policy like that?

Who would float that policy? I will tell you that chances are they do not because the company that I am working for now has insurance just for run-of-the-mill regular websites for clients and things of that nature. It is harder and harder and harder to get, and we expect that within the next year or two, we're probably only continuing to get it because we're grandfathered in,

and we expect that in the next year or two, it's not going to be a thing because insurance companies do not want to touch the cyber in any way, shape, or form, much less, I'm sure, crypto. Yeah, I've floated the idea that I suspect that cyber insurance is going the way of flood insurance where the only organization willing to underwrite it is the federal government.

And so all you'll be able to do is buy really crappy insurance that really doesn't cover much, but you may be required to get it for regulations. But nobody else is going to want to touch it because it's just upside down. There's no way to make money doing it.

It's all downside. Yep, I agree. I agree completely. I figured out where these Bitmark guys are going to get their money. They're going to sell some NFTs. Oh, yeah, of course. They're going to sell some of their NFTs. They're going to take images of empty wallets and sell those.

Right. Sell NFTs of the ransom note. Yeah. That'd be good. So Twitter made the news in more than just Jack Dorsey finally giving up the pretending ghost that he was actually doing anything over there.

And this article over at Engadget says, if you're worried people might abuse Twitter's new policy banning non-consensual image sharing, your fears were well-founded. So the social network told the Washington Post it suspended the accounts of 12 journalists and anti-extremism researchers by mistake because far-right activists and white supremacists sent a coordinated and malicious flurry of bogus reports attempting to silence critics.

It wasn't clear how many reports had been sent beyond a significant amount. So, hmm, tools being misused if they aren't policed properly. Interesting. Who would have thought that? Yeah. Yep. It's the old we-can't-do-that-at-scale problem. Yep. Yep. And eBay has also suffered that this week.

They have also accidentally banned users. eBay has confirmed it's suspended a small number of users by mistake on December 3rd. The company did not provide a cause or reveal the extent of the problem, but said it had fixed the slip-up and notified those affected. So they don't know why this happened or how it happened.

And, of course, people have been posting everywhere about being banned for no reason whatsoever. So, yes. Well, companies, yes, this is pointing out the problems with using AI to moderate Internet services. You know, they make mistakes, and it's the scale thing again.

Exactly. Isn't that reassuring? Isn't it great? Think about, yeah. As we've all moved our lives online, isn't it great? Yeah. And there are people who rely on these platforms for their earnings. People who are selling full-time on eBay, if the AI decides that you've accidentally uploaded a copyrighted picture and shuts you down for a week or however long.

Yeah. And there's no one to call to talk to, to try to talk sense into someone. Yeah. Yeah. When we rely on Twitter to shame companies into fixing things, what do you do when the company that fucked up is Twitter? Mm-hmm. That's the new bear shits in the woods.

That's what I'm saying there. So I think it's Schrodinger's Dorsey. Oh, that's a good title. So one of the things that I was thinking about is, you know, back in the early days of starting this podcast or even back way, way before we started the podcast, Jason and I would scream, you know, you don't build your house in somebody else's garden.

But you don't have a choice anymore, really, do you? Like, if you're making a living selling on eBay, you can't really just set up your own site and sell from it. I mean, you could, but you're not going to get – You got Shopify, but there's always a quote-unquote platform in the middle. Yes, there's always a platform in the middle.

And it's funny. I was – I got a newsletter yesterday. I get, like, all these crazy newsletters about social media and all this stuff. This is from the Information, the Creator Economy newsletter. And they were talking about how creators are making custom websites vogue again because they're trying not to be, you know, beholden to the platforms.

And then I'm reading this, and I'm just beating my head on the table because they're all using Wix, Squarespace, Linktree, this other new one called Universe. It's like you're doing the same thing.

You're just doing it in a different place. You don't own your metal. You don't have a server anywhere. Even having a spot at AWS would be more, you know, resilient than using one of these places. But they don't even – they're not even in on the joke.

That's the funny part. Let me get your guys' opinion on something. So I got taken to task by a dear friend of mine. I don't know. A couple weeks ago, I posted a regular thing in my rotation, which is get off Facebook, right? You know, just – you should – everyone – some story had come out about something terrible Facebook had done, and I retweeted it but added my own comment that said, get off of Facebook.

And this friend of mine took me to task and said, that's great if you can do it, but not all of us can do that because many of us rely on Facebook to keep in touch with our families and know when things are happening and events and all that sort of thing. So I don't think that's entirely an invalid point.

And the more I thought about it, I thought part of the reason that I can get off Facebook is because my wife is on Facebook. Yep. So if anything on Facebook happens, she's going to tell me. Yes. I still have an avenue in there. And so I kind of do have the privilege of getting off Facebook, but I'm curious what you guys thought about that because I don't think her argument is entirely without merit.

You go first, Brian. Well, I think Jason and I will come from the opposite ends of the perspective here. In fact, I will do Jason's part for him and then I will do mine because we've had this back and forth so many times. Jason will say, you should just get on the phone and call your friends and talk to them that way.

And therefore, you don't need Facebook and you can have a birthday calendar, so you don't need to rely on Facebook telling you when people's birthdays are coming up. And that solves all problems, to which I say, that's great, but I like to stay in touch with people that I wouldn't necessarily pick up the phone and call.

I like the occasional contacts I have with a lot of my friends from, say, high school. I would never call them. They're not a close personal friend of mine, but I like to touch base once a year on birthdays and see how their families are doing and see if any big life changes have happened, like moves and things of that nature that I would not be aware of any other way.

Now, the real argument here is Facebook just makes it easier, or at least they used to, because this is my caveat. Facebook's algorithm has gotten so fucking bad that I don't see the things that I want to see anymore. That's the problem with Facebook, and they're driving themselves into the ground.

Facebook needs a come-to-Jesus moment, not only with just the stop doing the stupid shit, but with the fact that the reason that people use that service, they are slowly taking away completely, and it's getting to the point now where a lot of people don't feel like they need to be on Facebook anymore, because we're not getting that little thing that kept us there.

Well, Brian got close to what I was going to say. Very close. I mean, the first part, yeah, verbatim. He knows. I've said that a million times. And, you know, Brian wants to keep in touch with people that he, quote-unquote, normally wouldn't keep in touch with. Where I would come in and say is, why waste your time?

They're not worth it. It doesn't matter. I remember, it doesn't, it doesn't matter if you keep in touch with them, because they're not part of your lives anymore. It's just like, it's just voyeurism for no reason. It's not voyeurism. I'm interacting with them occasionally. It's not just seeing their updates.

And I get, I derive pleasure from that, Jason. You and I are slightly different social creatures that way. I think. Slightly? I think everybody that listens to this podcast is well aware of that. Yeah. No. But the thing is, you don't have to be.

You don't, there's not a hard and fast rule. You just summed it up, Brian. You like it. You don't have to do it. I don't have to do it. I would have to put in a lot more time and effort to get the cost benefit out of it that I get. It's just, it's easier with Facebook.

Easier. But not required. That's why I think Dave's. Well, it's not a law that you have to be on Facebook. Of course it's not required. That's what I'm saying. That's why I think Dave's friend is wrong. I'm on, I'm on team Dave. I'm totally on team Dave with this one. But, but you're not. Team Dave is actually kind of on my side because he's admitting he gets those benefits because of his wife's account.

But if his wife stopped on Facebook, he would, his life would not materially change, I'm betting. Is your wife willing to get off Facebook, Dave, since she lives with you, with your continual anti-Face? That's what I thought. My wife is, no, my wife is the admin for a major Facebook group.

So she's, yep, she's, she's in full, you know, she's, she's a lifer. And I suspect that she also provides you with information about far flung family, friends and things of that nature that you wouldn't talk to normally, but you now have a touchstone to their lives still because of, because your wife is still on Facebook.

My God, they should fucking hire me for PR. As I was trying to, as I was weighing in my mind, my potential responses to my friend who took me to task, I went through the exact argument that Jason is making, which was the way I went through it was, well, what did you do before Facebook?

How'd you keep in touch with all these people? Those, all those things didn't go away. And that's true. But I think Brian, you're absolutely right. It's this whole notion of ambient awareness, which is that it's just, it's easy and it's pleasurable to see, oh, look, so-and-so from high school had a baby or they're moving to so-and-so.

And it is, it's nice. And that part of it, I do miss, but for me, the other parts that I thought were detrimental to my mental health, which is ultimately what made me get off of Facebook is I, I believe that it was causing problems with my mental health.

That's why I got off and stayed off. But I acknowledge that it might be a different risk reward equation if I didn't have this back door into Facebook, which is my lovely bride. So you've just shifted the danger to your wife instead of yourself.

You're clever, aren't I? Well, you know, that's why they say, put your mask on first. That's right. Yeah. So there's gotta be one sane person left in the house. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I mean, she's a mom. She, she, she, you know, she, she hasn't had any mental health in 20 some years.

So yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So same, same. Right. I understand that completely. So yeah, there we go. Please don't write in. Please don't write in. Please don't write in. Please don't write in. All right.

I think we're good wrapping it there. I don't think we need these other stories in here because I think that was a good. Okay. But yeah. Well, I'm glad I met. I'm glad I asked. Let me just stop you here for a quick aside because I know we'll get letters. Very nice.

Very nice. So yeah, I think, you know, it's going to be an immutable thing here where Jason is on one end of the spectrum. I am on the other end of the spectrum and Dave is leaning heavily to my side via his wife. That's, that's how it's working. No, Dave's hacking the system. Dave is just hacking the system.

Yes. He has hacked his human. He has hacked his human. Yes. I found a way to subvert it and use it for my own means. He literally has a, he literally has a meat filter in between Facebook and himself. Yeah. I'm like Tom Sawyer getting everyone else to paint my picket fence. There you go.

Yeah. And I think we know who the smartest one on this show is. Well, I don't know. All right, guys. Good, good seeing you. I'll see you next time. All right. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Paolo and Chris. And over at PayPal, I'm going to have to take a deep breath here. I've also got to say, I think, I think we need to take a week off more often if we're going to get this many donations when we don't record. So apparently you're telling us something. Okay. Over at PayPal, we've got Humphrey, Mark, Thomas, Matt, Simon, Judge, Jonathan, Matthew, Nicola, Michael, Doug, Susan, Breed, Robert, David, Shaleen, Melissa, Nikolai, Charlie, and Joe.

Joe says, just sent you all 50 bucks via my PayPal account. For some reason, it won't let me make a comment. Thank you for making 2021 bearable. Your broad insight and cynical view of all things geeky have been quite entertaining this year. If you are so inclined, please give a plug to my geek and Southern YouTube channel, Stay Grumpy Fellas.

And we've got that link in the show notes. And Melanie who gave us the $169 donation, which is random, but great. And Anchor who gave us 250 bucks. Thank you. Merry Christmas to us. We're not making a show anymore. Yeah. I'm never making a show again. If this is what happens when we take a show off.

Seriously. Over at Stripe, we've got Ashley G, Daryl W, Adam D and Q, Mario P, Clu and V, Matthew S and Glenn B. Thank you to everyone who has donated it. You're literally keeping the show going. I can't stress that enough.

Yep. And over at iTunes, we've got a couple of reviews this week, and this is definitely my favorite review we've ever gotten. That was higher than a one star. Mine too. Some of the one star ones were definite winners, but this is a good one. Von Zulu who gave us four stars and says, okay, ish.

Inconsistent, sometimes good, sometimes tedious. They overplay the grumpy bit at times, but that's their thing. I don't mind F bombs at all, but sometimes I think they drop it just to be edgy. Sounds unnatural and forced. I disagree with them on most things. But I do enjoy it when they articulate and provide insight, even if I have to go away and think about it, if it's nonsense or not.

I enjoy their comments on media they have consumed and often check it out. Actually, I've just talked myself into upgrading my stars to four. If you would have typed a little bit longer, you might've gotten to five. I'm just saying. You might've gotten us to five. Yeah, seriously. Oh, that's the funny. The funny thing in here is, yes, I know we're sometimes tedious and inconsistent, but, uh, there has never been a gratuitous F bomb in this show.

This is just. No, they're all felt. Yeah. Yeah. We have all the feels for the Fs. Seriously. And this one, the next one comes from code ACDC with five stars. Take my money. You filthy animals. This podcast cures my itch of the weekly grumps. After each episode, I can always say to myself, man, still have something to look forward to in a few years when I can scream, get off my interweb.

You tick snap grammar. Thank you. Code ACDC. Thank you. And another five-star rating from a radio teacher who says team grumpy Jedi Bittner appointed me to the Sith GOG show a few years ago, and now I'm a full member of team grumpy. Thank you for the superb podcast. In every respect, the internet will be better soon.

Not true. Agreed. Thank you. And I got to say, we did an experiment where we were putting these shows up on YouTube for a while. The numbers are in and it is not worth the time. So we're, we're pulling that experiment. It is done that extra hour and a half per week.

I am going to take back and walk with my puppies because that part sucked. And I do have a shout out to 1-800-CONTACTS. Talk about customer service. This company has the best customer service I have found in probably a decade.

I made my order yesterday. And then I, there's a couple of ways that you can send your prescription in. You can type it in and give the phone number and then they'll call the optometrist or you can take a photo of it and send it in. And I'm like, Oh God, they're going to do ML, whatever on it. Cause he has like four different prescriptions, a couple for glasses and one for contact.

So I take a picture, I send it in and within five minutes, I get a note back from them saying, Hey, we just got your prescription. It looks like you did not pick the ones that were the contact lenses that were prescribed from your doctor, but you've got the long-term ones.

They have different like spherical circumferences. What do you want to do with that? And I'm like, Oh, I picked the wrong ones. The website was confusing and I apologize. What can we do to make it better? Do a couple of emails back and forth, get everything done. Turns out they saved me about $200 because I picked the wrong ones.

They got the right ones. They put them in the mail yesterday and they gave me expedited shipping for free. Yes. 1-800 contacts. You have my business. I could not believe it. And the crazy part is every, every step of the way I dealt with somebody different, but they actually read what had gone before.

Unlike when you're on the phone, I don't know. Like anyone else. AT&T, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, this is the ninth time I've given you my phone number and address. Why am I doing it again? Okay. Uh-huh. So 1-800 contacts has nailed it for me and I get my contacts tomorrow. I'm so excited.

Yep. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on. And we'll love you forever. 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 533.

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 so 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.

You can work yourself up to it. Stay grumpy.

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