534: Fat Finger Financial Foibles

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. And it's like the whole last year has not even happened. Mask mandates are back. Travel's a pain in the ass again. My Christmas office party has been canceled. Yay. Christmas is canceled. Woo-hoo. Just like the old days.

Just like the old days. Just like a year ago. Thanks, everybody. All right. Okay. The FAA got some follow-up here is giving Bezos and Branson its last astronaut wings. So initially we heard they were not getting them because, you know, they just basically took a joy flight.

But they are going to give them to them. They're going to give it to Bezos, Branson, as well as William Shatner. And then they're going to stop the program completely and that'll be it for wings. Good. Because it seems like every two seconds they're shoving somebody up in the new rocket. Yeah. The Bezos rocket. The dildo.

So they're just like, we're just tired of this. We're not going to give them out anymore. We're going to save them for the real astronauts, please. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be nice. So there you go. They get their wings. And Mercedes-Benz kind of got their wings. They have approval to drive their, quote unquote, autonomous vehicle in Germany.

It's a level three. Okay. So-called level three. Ars Technica called it a so-called level three. I'm like, ooh, nice dig. Nice dig. Now, is it really being given approval to drive if it only functions on pre-mapped, geofenced, closed-access highways and only at top speeds of 37, which gets your ass booted off the Autobahn real fast?

So, yeah, not so much. I mean, this is the kind of system in which it will work. A pre-mapped, geofenced, closed-access highway. Yes, exactly. Yes. I, too, have that. I call them hot wheels. Yeah. Except mine might always jump the track.

But, yeah, I mean, it's a start, I guess. I guess. Well, it's the start that we should be doing, not letting people just drive around Arizona, which is what they're doing right now. So, yeah. San Francisco. This is the way you start. This is the way you start. And then you find out that it doesn't work, and you go back to the drawing board.

I think this will probably be just fine. Yeah. I think this will be just fine. But the big difference is, like, usually on Level 2, you still have to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Yeah. With Level 3, you can literally, you know, do whatever. And it is Germany, so they will. Yeah, they probably will.

Interesting. It's interesting that they're at least making moves for it. But this will be still 20 years away. Still 20 years away. I agree. And continuing with the car news, Barrett wrote in, because who doesn't want to have a subscription to their car? Now, up until now, we had heard plans from BMW and high-end luxury mobiles that basically will come – the car will come with everything in it, because it's all basically software these days.

And then you can pay to unlock features. Well, Toyota said, hold my beer. They're going to make you start your car with your – if you want to start your car with your key fob, you will have to buy a subscription to it. Now, details are scant on the ground here, and they're obviously getting a lot of pushback immediately.

So, now I saw that the free period that comes with your car will be between 3 to 10 years. So, that's obviously them backpedaling very quickly. Oh, did we say months? We meant years. So, yeah. Silly in turn. We'll see.

But they're definitely trying to push this. I mean, you can tell all the car companies are testing the waters here a little bit. What can we get away with? We like these subscription models that the rest of the world has. How are we going to get people to subscribe to our cars? Yeah. It's called renting them.

Yeah. Yeah. Come on, guys. Seriously. Yeah, come on. Like a key fob. Come on. You're going to make us pay to unlock our car with the fob. I love Bittner's tweet about it this morning. He's like, hackers, start your engines. In the news.

Well, I don't know if you were online December 7th, but a lot of people weren't. Amazon Web Services had a huge outage that knocked big parts of the internet offline for several hours. Let's see. Let's read through their explanation here. Amazon revealed an automated capacity scaling feature led to unexpected behavior from internal network clients.

Devices connecting that internal network to AWS were swamped and stalled communications. The nature of the failure prevented teams from pinpointing and fixing the problem, they added. They had to use logs to find out what happened, as do all of us. Hopefully not logs for Jay. Yes. And internal tools were also affected.

So basically, something went wrong. They fixed it. There was some sort of latency issue that prevented network clients from backing off and giving systems a chance to recover. And eventually, they fixed it all back. And then we all went, what the hell, man? How come one thing goes down and all the internet goes down? And that's the way the internet is now.

Yeah, because, you know, it's called a SPOF. AWS is a SPOF. Everybody puts their crap there. And when they go down, and this is the old, old East infrastructure. You know, this is where they started. Yeah. The one that the guy tried to blow up, remember? He thought he could blow it up and take down the internet.

Well, turns out that guy might have been right. He might have been right. Yes. Yeah. But this was why our show was a day late last week, because I couldn't even get my files from when we did our recording. That's right. That's right. And I love this one. This was over at Vice. Amazon server outage took down a, quote, decentralized crypto exchange.

Due to a major AWS outage, Diddick's exchange is currently down, Diddick said in a tweet on Tuesday. We are experiencing a greater latency across services and impaired functionality with endpoints not working and the website not loading. Now, Brian. Sounds pretty centralized. Sounds pretty fucking centralized to me.

But, I mean, in the old days, we used to be able to mirror our website on different hosting providers. We'd have them around the country. You do round robin DNS. If one falls out, you take it out of the thing. You use, like, what is it, a big five router back in the day or things like that.

You could, this is not hard stuff to do, to have, you know. But it involves planning and money and thought. But they're, they're, they work in money. Well, is it? Well, I guess maybe not.

Yeah, I mean, they're, they're in a decentralized exchange on, on the Ethereum blockchain for cryptocurrency derivatives. So, I guess they do kind of work in, in the land of fiction. Yes, yes, they do. But they do have backing from Andreessen Horowitz. And, you know, Mark Andreessen probably knows how to, you know, mirror a website.

He was sick that day. Maybe not anymore. But he's too busy shaving his head and, like, flogging around in his pools of money. But, yeah, I just thought that was pretty funny. It is funny. And I thought this one was funny, too. This was an article at the New Yorker.

And I'm putting this in here for, well, two reasons. One, because I'm just like, let's start here. BuzzFeed employees missed their big payday when the company went public through a SPAC last week. Ex-employees who got stock options found that they could not sell their stock options because they were the wrong type.

They were class B shares. They had to be moved to class A shares. Before they could trade them. And the company that they hired to do all this, a company called Continental, basically shit the bed. So they were screwed. And I love this. This company, Continental, sent them an email saying, you need to print the email that we're sending you.

Sign it, scan it, and return it. Now, so many things wrong with this. First off is one of the former employees' response, which was, obviously, all of us are millennials and none of us have printers. Wow. Okay. That's a little crap.

Problem number one. Okay. Listen, you unself-reliant piece of shit. You have to print the email, sign it, scan it, and return it. Have you not heard of signing a PDF? There's DocuSign. Print a PDF. And yeah, they could have DocuSign. They could have done a million things.

Well, DocuSign would have to come from Continental. And so they screwed the bed on this. But the process of printing an email, signing, scanning, and returning it, you can fudge that with print a PDF, scribble with your finger, and send it back to them. I'm just saying I went through an entire mortgage process without one single physical piece of paper.

This is ridiculous. It's all DocuSign now. All DocuSign. But my real problem here is with the New Yorker, because they dropped the ball on the title, man. It should have been 10 amazing jobs for broke-ass former BuzzFeed employees. Good job. Nice.

Come on. Come on, New Yorker. You're not even trying. Right. Right. Let's see. What else has happened? Twitter has asked the judge to throw out Trump's lawsuit over the ban, because, of course, he had to sue like a little baby. They are, of course, arguing that, what did I say, First Amendment free speech rights, and the social network noted it's a private company, and it's obligated to host speech it doesn't like, much like Trump's own social network will do when he launches it.

So, fuck you, hypocrite. Yeah, blah-di-blah-di-blah-di-blah. More interestingly over at Twitter is Spaces. We've talked about Spaces a little bit. It was the knee-jerk reaction to what the hell is that? Clubhouse. Clubhouse, which is, I guess, still around somewhere.

Dead in the water. Pretty much dead, but they basically rushed it, and the people inside Twitter knew that Spaces could be misused due to a lack of moderation, because, well, that's also, I just say, the internet can be used due to a lack of moderation, because there is no moderation anywhere.

And it has happened, so there's been a lot of bullying on that. There's going to be, you know, there's Taliban have been recruiting on it, blah, blah, blah. Exactly what's going to happen everywhere. And, of course, you know, they talk about, you know, at least they never said AI in this article.

I would have freaking lost my mind. They talked about the machine learning algorithms that they're using for moderation, which can be bypassed by simply misspelling words. Yeah. Come on, that's why we have LeetSpeak. We've got LeetSpeak for that. Come on. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

So, yeah, there's a lot of concern, and out of that will come absolutely nothing. Does anybody even use Spaces? Kara Swisher does. Oh, does anybody really even use Spaces? I have to unfollow her on Twitter, because I'm sick of seeing that thing take up one-third of the real estate on my phone every time she starts another stupid live space.

Brad, I was thinking this morning, an old joke came to me. How do you know somebody's vegan? Oh, they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you. Maybe you'll write an album about it. Hey, I bought Moby's vegan cookbook, so it's pretty good, too. And how do you know somebody's into NFTs?

They will absolutely tell you how to rechange your brain to come to their worldview. It's just one of those things. I got a couple of NFT stories that are pretty funny here. All right. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the big ones out there.

Yep. It's like second next only to CryptoPunks. Well, some dude, probably drinking, named Max, sold one of his Bored Apes for 0.75 ETH, which isn't very much money. It's about $3,000.

It should have been 75 ETH, which would have been $300,000-ish. And he just comes out and says, you know, I screwed up. So here's my BuzzFeed title. Fat Finger Foibles, Fuck Financial Future. I got stuck in the BuzzFeed title loop for a second there.

Okay. And, yeah, I mean, I guess OpenSea doesn't actually have a confirmation screen. Yeah. You know? Confirmation screen, probably a good idea for these things. Like, they should have it on purchase, too. Do you really want to spend this much money on something fucking stupid?

Yeah. Please blow into this tube to tell me if you're sober enough to buy this NFT. The thing about this, though, okay, people screw up all the time, blah, blah, blah. I was just amazed at how much the transaction fee was.

Well, these are the people really making the money. $2,000 or $3,000 for a GIF. Wrap your head around that for a second. $3,000 for a GIF. There was supposed to be $300,000 for a GIF. The transaction fee was over $30,000, so the guy could jump the queue and get his transaction done.

Or it's a bot that did it. Right. So, I'm like, okay, so if I went to the store and I bought a $50 poster, but I had to spend $5,000 on shipping, how does that really work out?

Well, once you're already in Fantasyland, you're on for the ride, right? You are in for the ride. GM, bitches. GM. Oh, man. So, it is what it is. Now, the next one, Nike buys Ertifurcator, a virtual brand that makes Metaverse-ready sneakers.

Now, this is RTFKT. They pronounce it Artifact, but when I read it, I just read Ratfucked. I just see Ratfucked. So, Nike just bought Ratfucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The problem I'm having with all this NFT crap is it's all the same thing.

There's a complete lack of imagination. And I'm like, okay, I can create any kind of avatar I want in the Metaverse. Do I really want something that needs Air Jordans or shoes? I want to be like this 17-armed Hydra with, you know, cloven hooves, and maybe I'll get my cloven hooves with Jordans on them.

I don't know. But this lack of imagination with all this crap is just like, whatever. It's a really smart move on Nike's part. I get why they did it. I totally understand it. And it's probably the only smart news in NFT that we've had since NFTs have been around.

They're positioning themselves for the Metaverse. They're positioning themselves for being able to sell their Nikes in virtual environments in the future when people actually get legs. Because so far, I've yet to see a leg on anybody in the Metaverse. That's true. Nobody has feet in the Metaverse.

The interesting thing, I couldn't tell from this article because it was so poorly written over at Design Boom. The brand already holds a patent for blockchain-enabled digital shoes filed in 2019. I wasn't sure if that was Nike or rat-fucked. I'm guessing it's Nike. Well, if they're saying brand, it's got to be Nike, right?

I'm guessing Nike. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. So that's fine. They're just, you know, getting a whole – they're buying a company that just will design them and market them for them. That's fine. Yeah, Design Studio is basically what it is. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Rat-fucked. Rat-fucked. I'll never be able to see that without thinking that from now on.

It definitely is insane. Like, Artifact does not leap to mind. You've got to start that thing with an A then. If you want us to think Artifact, you need to start your acronym with an actual A. Arr. And OpenSea has actually started working with Adobe to provide some digital provenance for their nifties.

Okay. That's smart. It is very smart, actually. It's very, very smart. So they're going to call it content credentials. So you can connect your crypto wallet to Photoshop. And so when you export the graphics, it can come back to your wallet and you can actually have a chain of ownership and things like that.

Now, what I want to know, Brian, is after you link your crypto wallet to your copy of Photoshop, can Adobe actually go into your wallet and extract the licensing fees for the cracked copy of Photoshop you're using? Yes, we need to see the chain of ownership of my version of Adobe Photoshop.

Exactly. Because I'm pretty sure most of these kids are not up to snuff with their Creative Suite licenses. I'm just saying. I was a kid once. I have had my fair share of cracked Photoshop. I spent the first 15 years of my life using Photoshop on cracked versions.

So. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. So I think this is, you know, maybe just play by Adobe to get people to pony up for Creative Suite. That'd be a good one. All right. Matthias wrote in here. I just need to hear your thoughts on this piece. And this Facebook exec blames society for COVID misinformation.

Long time Facebook veteran Andrew Bosworth insists that political and COVID-19 misinformation are societal problems rather than issues that have been magnified by social networks. Individual humans are the ones who choose to believe or not to believe a thing. They are the ones who choose to share or not share a thing.

He said in an interview with Axios on HBO. I wonder what tools they're using to share or not share those things. In his next sentence, did he say, and I have an NFT to sell you. Yep. And he says, I don't feel comfortable at all saying they don't have a voice because I don't like what they said.

Now, he's been leading Facebook's hardware efforts, including those in virtual and augmented reality. And he will become the CTO for Meta next year. So that's great. And he goes on. That's their choice. They are allowed to do that. You have an issue with those people. You don't have an issue with Facebook. You can't put that on me. Sounds a bit defensive there.

Preston, whether Facebook and others are amplifying those views, Bosworth characterizes it as a demand problem rather than one caused by the amount of misinformation on social media. Yes, it is the problem of people because they want to believe stupid ass shit. That must be it. Thanks, Bosworth. It's not your problem at all.

No, he's creating the virtual unreality. Yes. It's like this is it's unreal what's coming out of people's mouths nowadays. It really is. They're just it's it's insane. It's insane. You know, OK, let's keep in mind that these are the same people that own Instagram, which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to really, really, really fuck with young girls mentality and emotions and their their mental well-being.

But you know what? It's their fault because they want to be there. Yep. Yep. Their fault. It's all their fault. Their fault. So we might be getting some help with this sort of thing, but I doubt it. A Senate bill that would facilitate social platform sharing data with outside researchers is being floated right now, which I think is a great idea.

This is, of course, coming from Klobuchar, Koons and Portman, and it proposes to use the National Science Foundation as the intermediary between sensitive platform information and requests for interested parties. I think this is a great idea. That's exactly what the National Science Foundation should be used for.

Fantastic. Thoughts, Jason? Okay. Not really? Here's the thing. No, because, I mean, you're going to have to have somebody inside the companies that actually will guarantee that the data that they're getting is the actual true data.

You need some kind of compliance officer inside of these social networks to have access to everything. Are you saying there should be regulation, Jason? It's getting – well, it's not even regulation. You can regulate, so if they're found guilty of it, you can do it. But to get real information, you need somebody inside that is going to say, hey, this is not true or you're going to have to – it's either whistleblowers or people inside the company who are compliance officers.

I don't see the compliance officers thing happening because that's pretty fucking heavy-handed dystopian right there. So I think that it's going to be – they can make these rules all they want, but there's nobody that's going to be able to really enforce them unless they have whistleblowers or people on the – I just don't see it actually doing anything.

It's more masturbation from the Senate. Yeah, unfortunately. I mean unless they're – yeah, unless the money and the balls are there to enforce it, nothing is going to happen anyways. But it is a nice thought. It is a nice thought. There's a lot of thoughts that are nice that just – oh, man.

So I found this one about – oh, God. Thea Mai Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist who had to handle Metaverse on Instagram, which was taken away shortly after the company changed their name to Meta. Now, okay, she bitched and moaned about it.

Nothing happened. Couldn't get her name back. Story as old as time. She only had 1,000 followers. Right. So whatever. And then she complained enough where the New York Times stepped in and made a phone call. Yep. And then immediately her handle was returned to her with an apology.

It was incorrectly removed for impersonation. We're sorry this ever occurred, said an Instagram spokesperson. Meaning we're sorry we didn't get away with it. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So here's what I propose. This is a new side hustle for New York Times and major publication reporters.

What they're going to do is they're going to find people who have been screwed by social media companies and hire the reporters to call and say, hey, we're going to do a story on this. Would you please make a comment on it? Then they get it reversed, and then they can pull the story, and then people go about their merry way, and they pay the reporters to make the phone calls.

That's the only way anything gets done anymore is if you get a major news publication to actually call somebody. Yeah, they used to be able to just publicly shame them on Twitter, but that's not even enough anymore. No, it stopped working. That totally stopped working. So I don't know how to get past it.

I don't know how to get past it. But yeah, it's the same shit different. And you know what? They were well within their rights to do that. If they wanted the name, they can take it. I've worked at enough companies that had username policies that if something came up and we needed the name, we took it. Yeah. That's just how it goes.

We'll give you another name, and we'll transfer all of your followers and all of your whatever. Fine. But if we need that name, we're taking that name. There's nothing you can do about it because we thought about it ahead of time and put it in our terms of service. And I bet if she read the terms of service for Instagram, it's probably in there too.

I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. Now, this next one I thought was interesting. The end of click to subscribe, call to cancel? One of the news industry's favorite retention tactics is illegal, says the Federal Trade Commission. This comes from Neiman Labs. Now, this is a scam as old as the internet.

It's basically you sign up for something, and the only way to cancel is to make a phone call. They're saying now that the FTC is going to crack down on this, which, as we just talked about, there's no internet police. Nobody is there to go in the car and put people in the paddy wagon when they do this.

Yeah. Now, is this just going to go after online companies that are doing it, or does this also go after SiriusXM, those rat bastards? That, I don't know, because, I mean, SiriusXM, you get the free deal with your car usually.

That's how I get all of mine. All my SiriusXM accounts have all come free with my car. You get it for six months, and then you do whatever. But if you have to re-up online, you should be able to cancel online. You are not. That's the rule. You always have to call.

Okay, well, you know, they are in breach of California law because California in 2018 passed a law required that online businesses allow people to cancel their subscriptions online. So it could be said that SiriusXM is not an online company because most of their work doesn't happen that way.

But the New York Times got caught by doing this, so they actually changed their tactics a little bit, only for digital subscriptions, though. So if you're a digital subscriber, whatever, but if you, like, subscribe to other services, you still have to call.

And this is how I got my, you know, my New York Times for cheap that I talked about a couple episodes ago because I had to do it. And their workaround also is they'll use online chat as a proxy for actually making a phone call now because you're still on the website, I guess. So they're faking it.

But, you know, in the old days, this was how a lot of smarmy companies made money because I worked in the porn website business for quite some time. And this is a quick story about a company that I had friends work at. It was not a company that I worked at.

The company was called Babenet, I believe, was the name of it. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure it was Babenet. But they had really questionable websites with, let's say, young women and farm animals and another site for underage girls. Right. And it was all suggestive.

You go to the website, it's very suggestive. And they're like, oh, our content is so extreme, we can't actually show you the good stuff. You have to pay and subscribe to get to the meat, you know, as it were. So people would put in their credit cards, then start to get billed, and then they would go to the website and figure out that, oh, wait, everything that they're showing me is exactly what they were showing me on the outside.

And these girls are 30 years old, and these other girls are not having sex with farm animals. So people would call up in a huff and say, hey, cancel my account. This is false advertising. The people on the other end, the phone operators, were basically trained to tell these people, hey, when we put in this request to the credit card companies, we have to put a reason in with our cancellation, which I'm pretty sure is total bullshit.

But they would say to them, so your reason for canceling your account is that the women were not actually having physical sex with the farm animals. Is that what you would like me to put in your record, sir? Yeah. Click, except for, like, maybe 1% that would be like, yeah, you assholes, cancel my subscription.

I don't care, you know. But for the most part, that's how these companies made money for a very long time. And both parties here are at fault. Let's just be absolutely clear about this. This is the scammy vert, like, you scam the scammers. Scamming the scammers, yes. Yeah, so there's no tears shed there, but this is the kind of practice that, you know, the click to subscribe, call to cancel thing can go down deep into.

So we'll see if the FTC actually does anything about this, but I'm guessing they're only going to go after big players, like big media companies or anything like that. They're not going to go after the mom and pop shops that are skeezy and do things like this. Nope. So there we go. There you go.

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All right, Brian, I saw something you might like this week. The Mr. A and the Mr. M, the story of A&M Records. It's over on Epix. One of the first websites I ever did over at Box Top, the company we worked at together. I did the A&M Records website.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I remember when I moved here, too. That's when the studio was still owned by A&M. Now it's owned by the Henson Company. That's right. So they replaced the A&M sign with Kermit the Frog. Yes, and I've been to that studio many times in both versions. I like the Kermit the Frog one.

I've never gotten to go in. I always wanted to go in. Yeah, it's cool. Used to be the Chaplin Studios. That was the original home. Anyway, back to it. It's really good. I saw the first episode. Second episode dropped yesterday, which I haven't watched yet. But yeah, it's over on Epix. If you want to know about the history of A&M, it's a pretty good watch.

It's pretty fast-paced and interesting. Excellent. Very interesting. Excellent. I definitely want to watch that. I think it might be really interesting. I love all the old record label stories. They're fantastic. Yep, yep. And The Expanse Season 6 is out for its final six-episode run. Yep. First episode dropped.

What did you think, Brian? It was okay. It was fine. I miss the old Expanse. I don't care about Marco. I don't care about their son. I don't care about most of the stories that are being focused on. You know, whatever.

Fine. I'll see it through because it's only five more episodes. But yeah. My response to when it finished, I'm like, well, that was strange. It just didn't. It didn't feel like The Expanse. No, it didn't. They just stood around talking. Well, there was an EVA to an asteroid for a minute.

For a hot second, yes. Yeah. So, what you got? Yeah, yeah. So, The Witcher is apparently out. I guess it's out in the States. It's not out here. And for whatever reason, my VPN is not working with Netflix right now. So, I'm very frustrated. So, I haven't been able to watch it yet.

But, you know, I'm excited. I can't wait. I did watch the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery. And? And I didn't think I could get more annoyed by the show. Especially, you know, now that everybody's been kind of pointing out the things that we've been pointing out all along.

It's like reinforcing in my brain that these people are useless and all they talk about is their feelings. And Captain Kirk wouldn't even let them work in the scullery on his ship. I mean, you couldn't even be a cook. No way. No way. In the latest episode, spoiler alert. So, skip ahead if you don't want to hear this part.

It's not that plot freaking matters on the show or anything. Tilly takes some ensigns out on a training cruise. Bad stuff happens. One of the ensigns dies immediately and is never mentioned again. And it's all about their feelings about everything, not the poor guy that died.

I spent the entire episode. At the end of the episode, they're laughing about the growth that Tilly has experienced going through this whole thing. And I'm like, what about the dead fucker? You haven't mentioned the dead guy once. He died. He died right away.

And this is about your feelings. Well, you didn't notice the name tag. It was Ensign McGuffin. I was right. I mean, the red shirts got treated better at Enterprise. I swear to God. The show is so bad. I just can't. I can't anymore. Anyways.

No, I gave up halfway through episode two. I just, I seriously, I cannot watch it. It just puts me in a really bad mood. Yeah. And like everybody on the ship is stressed out and in a bad mood right now. So, it's like group therapy is coming. I'm like, you people. This is the future of the Federation.

You guys are wussies. No shit. It's unbelievable. Let's go to that mirror universe where Michelle Yeoh is like badass. Yeah. Anyways, the show's bad. Speaking of red shirts, though, the FC Bayern Behind the Legend documentary is now out on Amazon and Bayern Munich is my team.

It was my dad's team and it was just a, the whole series that they've done of these with all these soccer teams have been fantastic. I've enjoyed all of the different shows, even for teams that I don't particularly like or care about. But since this is my team, it was awesome. I absolutely loved it and it went back through the history and I saw, you know, they showed clips from all these fantastic games that I just remember being like six years old and being with my dad and my uncle while they watched that live.

And it was just great for all that. Total nostalgia trip. Loved it. If you're a soccer fan, check it out. Very cool. Very cool. I have to collect my thoughts on this one because this is very much like discovery for me right now.

I love Dan Carlin. I love hardcore history. And for the most part, hardcore history addendum is pretty good. Sometimes. See, I've done quality sucks. I've done a Star Trek discovery with hardcore history addendum. I just don't listen to him anymore. I unsubscribe from the addendum feed.

I don't care. That I should have done that. I really should have done that because this latest one is with Elon Musk and this guy, Bill Riley from SpaceX. I have a really hard time listening to Elon talk. Yeah.

He physically bothers me to the point where my shoulders seize up and I kind of get ants under my skin. I'm not joking. His cadence and his delivery really physically irks the shit out of me. I particularly enjoy his new haircut.

Oh, what the hell's up with that? Man. He's like – him and Zuckerberg probably go to the same blind stylist. Right. Yeah. I got 30 seconds into it and I had to turn it off. So I don't know if it's any good or not. I didn't find a transcript so I couldn't read it.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was really bummed about that because I kind of wanted to hear it but I just – I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is about that. If anybody else out there has Elon Muskitis, let me know because there's something wrong with it. I don't know if it's like his robot vocalizer chip has broken or something but it's really weird.

He's like – it's kind of like a – it's kind of like Captain Kirk speak meets – I don't know. See, I can't even remember hearing him speak. I've gotten – as the web has gotten – we're contrarians at Nature, of course, obviously. That's why we do this podcast.

But as the web has gotten more and more video-centric, I've refused to watch any videos on the internet. I just don't hardly ever. Like if there's a news story, I want to read it. If there's a video, I want to read the transcript. I like to read things on the internet now. So I don't even know if I could – I'm sure I've heard Elon Musk's voice at some point.

You didn't watch the Saturday Night Live? Nah. Oh. Nah. Nope. Yeah. It's funny. When I'm watching him, it doesn't happen. But when I'm – if I'm listening to him like just in pure audio, like the Kara Swisher interview he did with him. Right. Not just because Kara Swisher is a terrible interviewer, but Elon was speaking.

And the whole thing was just – it was just a confluence of fuck this. It really was. A confluence of fuck this. That should be our new show title. Not just the episode title. We should rebrand ourselves. That should be our new show title. That's it. Oh, my God.

Anyway, moving on. This just dropped. It's a new trailer for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Okay. It's a new Michelle Yeoh movie. Mm-hmm. It's got multiverse and kung fu. Okay. And it looks awesome. What's Jenny Slate doing in there, of all people?

I love Jenny Slate, but that seems an odd cast. All right. Dude, yeah. You've got to watch the trailer. It is like – because it starts off completely different than it ends up. It's very Matrix-y. Cool. It is very, very Matrix-y in how it goes. So, yeah.

I am really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, we have to wait until March 25th next year. All right. Okay. Well, I'll watch the trailer. But, yeah, that's an intriguing cast. I'm very curious. Oh, and it's funny. Jamie Lee Curtis, too? Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah, and it's funny. It's really funny. Cool. So, can't wait.

Tops and doodads. Brian, you're a homeowner now. I am. Yeah. You've got to buy some homeowner-y stuff every now and again. I've got a garage full of it. Yep. Yep. I just bought the Victor M9012 Sonic 2 Spike Yellow.

Okay. I bought this because I just spent a lot of money redoing the grass in my front yard, so it's beautiful. And immediately, groundhogs destroyed it. So, fuckers. So, there are a couple ways to combat groundhogs.

And one way is to put dog poop down the holes and cover it up. Right. That is a tried and true method. But there are so many holes and I only have so many poops during the day, it's getting a little crazy. One of the side effects also, though, is toxic mushrooms can come up. It's a whole thing that you've got to deal with when you've got the groundhogs.

Okay. So, the spikes vibrate. So, you put them in the ground and the spikes zzzz and vibrate and it's supposed to scare them off. Does it call the worms? That's what I'm wondering, too. I'm like, can I get some spice? I mean, you were worried about your lawn.

Now, your entire house is going to be gone. That worm's just going to show up. Oh, where's my still suit? Shit. We do live in a desert. So, yeah, if anybody else has any groundhog tips, please send them to me. I will not do the poison.

I will not kill them. I'll take raccoon tips. That's what I've got issues with. Oh, you've got those. I'm in raccoon land. Yeah. Those guys are bastards. They are. Oh, man. And this one, this definitely falls under app. This is the Sarco.

This is the suicide pod that got the go-ahead in Switzerland for actual use. We finally found something that can't have a subscription model. But it does have a terms of service before you, because before you kill yourself, you have to do a test online to tell if you're of mental, if you're of sound mental judgment.

Well, that's probably a good thing. Why does it have to be online? Why do I, the last thing that I want to do before I die is look at a fucking web browser. It's what I did my whole life. Come on. Can you just have somebody come with it and actually administer a test? That, you know, maybe like in some kind of cool outfit or something to make it seem like it's got a little more gravitas than just a fucking BuzzFeed form, please?

By the way, this thing better have voice activation. If I can't walk up to it in my last moment and say, open the pod bay door, pal, I want my fucking money back. I know, I know. I love the name of the company. It's Exit International. That's great.

That's great. It should have been Exit Stage Left. But I loved it. Bruce Sterling called it the Die Pod. That's a great name. Great name. And since it's called the Sarko, I'm thinking, I'm like, Sarko, Sarko, Sarko. And I just, I was talking to somebody about the movie Argo the other day and that whole line about Argo, fuck yourself.

Like, if you walked up to it, instead of saying, open the pod bay door, you could say, Sarko, fuck yourself. It just kills you. Good stuff. Oh, man. And in this weekend, what the fuck did I buy at 2 a.m.? I seriously don't remember buying this thing.

And it showed up yesterday. This is the Arduino Uno Mini Limited Edition. Okay. Another thing that you're going to put in the corner and not use. Oh, yeah. Whoever wants it, just come on by. It's one of those things. This is getting given away. I got it. It's a very mini version of the regular Arduino.

It's black and gold and signed. There's a signed letter from the founders in it. Like, I give a flying fuck about this thing. Why would I buy an Arduino Uno Mini? Right. I had an Arduino. I gave it away. But it is sold out.

So maybe I can turn it into an NFT and eBay it or whatever the fuck the kids do nowadays. Whatever. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner 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. I guess you are also the co-host of the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast, but...

I suppose. A contributor, for sure. Yes. Yes. I don't co-host the whole show, but yeah, proud to be here in our little bubble. You have co-hosted the whole show before with me. That's true. That's true. It was great fun. Yeah. You've been here for, what, like five years now?

It's been like five years. Five or six. Feels like 15. Something like that. Yes, it does. It does. It doesn't feel a day more than 20. So listen, before we jump into cybersecurity news, and let me just say it has been a busy week for cybersecurity, as we will get to in a second, we must attend to more important things, which is, of course, Star Wars related and Disney related, that the Star Wars Galactic

Star Cruiser, which is the new hotel that they built down at the Florida Park, is just getting hammered with bad reactions to a couple of videos that they put out. And I'm curious if either of you have been following any of this, or this has been on your radar at all.

Brian, I know you're probably more of a Disney fan than Jason is. Yeah, I'm aware that this thing exists. I took one look at the price tag for the stay and kind of went, yeah, I'll wait. Also, you know, I'm not going anywhere near Florida until we're, pandemic is a good five years in the rearview mirror, because if it's going to reemerge anywhere, it will come out of that swamp.

So I won't be going there anytime soon. I watched both the videos, and I'm curious what exactly they are taking heat for. This is kind of what I would have expected. Yeah. Well, the videos, and there's two videos. One of them is a sort of a walkthrough of some of the things you can expect as part of your experience.

And it's with, oh, the young man who's not so young anymore, who's the co-star of the Goldbergs on ABC. Well, no wonder I thought he was familiar. There was something about him. I did not watch the show, so. But there's the synergy that you get from Disney Empire, bringing somebody from one of their There you go.

So they do their thing, and they go around, and they see some things, and they go to a bar, and there's someone singing, and all that sort of thing. And then there's also a welcome video that people received from someone who is from an alien species. This is for the people who've signed up for their rooms already.

Yes. Felt very Star Tours-y. Yeah. People are reacting and saying that they're kind of cringy, that particularly that the ship doesn't really look very Star Wars, that the ship looks more kind of Star Trek-y and maybe Fifth Element, but not getting a real strong Star Wars vibe in the ship itself.

And also, I think people are wondering, like, what the hell do I get for my six grand for two days? You stay in a themed hotel, which is all it was ever going to be, people. Yeah. I don't know what you were expecting.

An immersive environment that is, you know, going to be, like, whatever? It's a hotel. What are they going to do? They're going to slap some stickers on the walls. Put some dry ice in your cocktail. The waiters are going to wear funky outfits that kind of look vaguely 70s-esque, but futuristic at the same time because glitter.

And there you go. Right. You'll be able to order Bantha burgers in the bar. Yeah. There will be themed names on stuff. And, you know, the buttons in the elevator might be triangular shaped. Just, you know, look at that. I don't know.

I don't know what people were expecting. It looked fine to me. I think when you compare it to what Universal has been doing with their Harry Potter stuff and particularly how they hit it out of the park with Diagon Alley, how immersive it is. And it just, I mean, you go in Diagon Alley, it feels like you're in the Harry Potter universe.

But so does the Star Wars land in the park, which is, you know, built for people to just walk through and experience, not live in. There's a big difference. You know what I mean? Right. Like, how Star Wars-esque are the maid services going to be? They've got to change the sheets.

That's a really good question. Right. Does R2-D2 come along and change your sheets for you? Now, that would be something. Well, I mean, if you pay extra, you can get, like, Jedi Leia to come in, you know, in her gold bikini. Right. I do hope that all the masseuses in the spa are wearing that outfit.

I mean, yeah. Unfortunately, you know, you book the Leia and you get the Jabba. That's the way it works. It is Florida after all. Yeah. Well, you know, I was asking my son Jack about this because this is the kind of thing where we talked about it as a family because we're all very into Star Wars, very into Disney.

We have not been to Disney World in a long time, which is a regular place for us to go for vacations, obviously because of COVID, all those things that you already outlined there, Brian. But, you know, we could stretch and make this work. If we saved our pennies and really, really wanted it, we could do this.

GOG.show slash donate. That's right. But, like, my son Jack said, he was like, I don't know, Dad, two days for $6,000? I feel guilty for taking a nap. But that's part of the experience. That's your Star Wars bed.

I guess so. Again, going to my point of how immersive can a hotel actually be. You know, I remember we went to Disney World when I was a kid. My parents took me and my sister, and I was probably 10 or 11 or something like that. And we stayed in the woodland theme one, which I thought was just genius.

It was the cheap one. It was the cheapest. It was basically log cabins, right? But, you know, they had Chip and Dale run through and do a little song and dance show at night around a fire pit. And you could, of course, probably – actually, I should ask my mom. I'm sure they didn't hand out s'mores. You probably had to pay for them so you could put them together.

But, you know, and it was a wonderful, cool thing and not anything more than you would expect. Like, it's a hotel. Okay? I don't know. Again, like, there's only so interactive you can make it. Also, you got to keep in mind not only are people living in it.

It's going to be a lot of kids. Kids like to grab and break and hit things. So you can't have anything too, you know, breakable out there because the kids are just going to destroy it. It's a money pit. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's going to be interesting to see how the reviews come after the first few weeks when folks are actually visiting there.

They are saying that they've seen some people dropping off their slots available where it was sold out for the first three months. Now that people actually have to pay the balance on their deposits that there are some slots opening up. So we'll see. I don't know. I guess I think you're absolutely right, Brian, that this may just be a matter of properly setting, properly calibrating your expectations.

Yeah, exactly. I think so. And if it were me, I would just stay at one of the other wonderful hotels that they have that are significantly cheaper and do a walkthrough. You know, I think you'd get all the experience that you would want to get just by wandering through the hotel once or twice and go bellying up to the bar.

That's an interesting question. Are you allowed in the hotel? Yeah, if you're not a guest there, are you allowed in? That's a good point. They do do that sort of thing these days. Yeah, if I'm paying six grand, I'm like, keep the riffraff out, people. Unfortunately, you're trapped inside with the riffraff. I bet you can go into the lobby because it's supposed to have this whole experience where, you know, you don't just get in an elevator to go to your room.

It's this whole thing where it's as if you're going up into orbit to get to your room. It's an elevator with blinky lights. Yes, exactly. Okay. Exactly. It's a Wonka Vader. Yeah, a Wonka Vader. Now, a Willy Wonka hotel I'd go stay at, that's for sure. Is there a Sarlacc pit for people who don't pay their bar tabs?

Oh, that's a great idea. If there was a Sarlacc pit, my kid would want to go so bad. That's like his favorite character. That's a great name for the bar. They should name the bar the Sarlacc pit. Yeah. So good. Actually, that's the hot tub, unfortunately. Oh, nice.

Nice. They better have a cocktail called Honshot first. Oh, nice. That's not canon anymore, unfortunately. Oh, well. I never made it to the Star Trek bar in Vegas, but they had the work core breach. Yeah, that was awesome.

Yep. That was fun. I was so disappointed when they took it away, and yes, I did have the warp core breach. Boy, were we fucked up that day. Yeah. What really sucks is my entire team at Paramount did all the design and graphics for that, but it's like they had just finished up when I got there, and they were going like two weeks after I joined the team, so then I wasn't invited, because it was like all pre-launch stuff to figure it out, and they just raved about it, and I never got to go.

Yeah, the Star Trek experience was a staple of my Vegas runs when it was around. It was one of my favorite things to do. Yeah, and I think that's a great example of something that was really immersive and paid off well. Mm-hmm. You know, that whole initial transition where they put you inside the ship, and it felt like you were inside the ship.

I mean, for a Star Trek fan, oh, so good. And Quark's Bar for a newly 21-year-old Star Trek fan. You cannot beat that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Now they have the Star Trek Discovery experience where you all just sit around and cry. Oh. Well, we'll circle back to that when we get to media, Candy, because I watched the latest episode, and I almost had as much of a bad reaction as the finale of Battlestar Galactica.

I was so pissed. Oh, my. Oh, I might have to watch it now. So bad. Okay, let's get to security. We need some security, yeah. Why not? We're 10 minutes in. Let's get this show on the show. So someone briefly compromised the Indian prime minister's Twitter account, which normally we would just go, eh, Twitter, who cares?

But unfortunately, people do care these days, and it is a world leader. Unfortunately, sadly, it wasn't for anything that I consider particularly interesting, like geopolitics and messing about with all that sort of thing. It was a freaking Bitcoin scam. They basically hacked in there to say that India had adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and pointed users to a scam website, and obviously that made Bitcoin go up a little bit because people believed it and all that sort of stuff, and somebody probably pumped and dumped and made some money.

So good on them. Yay. Nobody knows how this happened. Yeah, I think there's a little perhaps intrigue here that India also is a bit hostile to cryptocurrencies, and they've been going down a path of trying to have their own one-only cryptocurrency for the nation.

So this was sort of piling onto that as well, and I think something kind of thumbing its nose at that. Yeah, so basically the BitBros got to them. Yep. Yeah, and of course, you know, Twitter is supposed to have these special account protections in place for these high-profile politicians' profiles and things of that nature, but it didn't really seem to work.

Well, you've got to turn it on to make it actually do something, so they offer it to you. That doesn't mean you have to do it. Jack accidentally hit the off button on his way out the office, I think is what happened there. Well, but it's that age-old problem with executives who you're going to be the person who tells them what to do, you know?

Like, if they say this multi-factor is a pain in the ass, turn it off, you know, how many times are you going to say no, sir, before they replace you? Yeah, no, exactly. I had that experience working just with musicians, like, especially when Twitter first came out, and I was just like, you cannot have access to your own Twitter.

Well, he's also my boss. So if he says he wants access to his own Twitter, I can just say, I really don't think you should do that, particularly after 17 gin and tonics, but he's the boss. Right, right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So the library problem, the log4 shell that has happened everywhere, log4j, which was a big deal. I'll let you take it away, Dave, because I know this is a very big deal. It's, yeah, it's a biggie. It's one of the biggest. It's huge.

It is huge. So this log4j is a logging library. So, and please feel free to jump in here, guys, since you guys have a little more actual coding experience than I do. But the logging library, that's basically one of the most popular open source libraries there is.

Yep. It's a JavaScript library. It is used in just about everything. Because it was easy. Millions, yeah. Yeah, it's easy. It's been around. It's stable. It works. It sits there in the background logging things, which most people would think is benign.

Little correction there. It was stable, and it did work. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. An important point, indeed. I also want to point out the other correction. It's Java, not JavaScript. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, that's true. Thank you. That's right. JavaScript is even worse.

Thank you very much. So, yep. Thank you very much. No problem. So, yeah. I mean, it's just all over the place. And the big problem is, is that this gives folks the ability to execute code on your machine without having to log in. Yeah. By basically just posting remote messages, which is pretty crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Not good. But there is a fix. No. It's low-hanging fruit. It's easy for anyone to use. Yeah. Well, there's many. Yes. There is a fix. But as with these sorts of things, there's multiple versions out there, and the fixes only work for certain versions.

And, of course, there are so many things that this is installed in. Not all of them are easy to update or even do people know that it's installed in things. Yes. Yes. My favorite note here, we actually had this in the Cyber Wire today. We wrote, so how widespread is the log for shell vulnerability?

It's literally interplanetary. Log for J is on the code aboard NASA's Ingenuity Mars probe, the one with the helicopter. Which just crashed. Well, it just started logging Bitcoin, or mining Bitcoin. Mining Bitcoin from Mars.

Indian one coin. Not just mining the surface of Mars. So, I mean, this just comes back to the fact that this happens every so often. It's open source. It's an open source library. Everybody picks it up. And eventually, it either falls out of maintenance or somebody gets into it and puts in some bad code.

There's a great XKCD comic called Dependency. I recommend everybody go check the show note for the links. But basically, there are millions of these libraries out there that nobody thinks about because they just kind of work, but they are just attack vectors for everything.

I mean, look at WordPress. I get notifications a couple times a week that, okay, this library was penetrated, this one, this one, this one, this one. Because everybody sees it. Like ImageMagic. ImageMagic was a huge one. Still is a big one.

But, you know, once that thing gets breached, because they look for the ones that are installed everywhere. They try and attack that one. Boom. They're in. It goes on and on and on. And then my whole point is everybody forgets about it in a month. This is not the first time.

It will not be the last time. Everybody gets their panties in a bunch. This is a really big one. So, their panties are really in a bunch right now. But eventually, they're going to forget about it and go back to business as usual. Well, it's just, as you point out, it's modern architecture now. And especially, all these libraries are everywhere.

They were meant to make programmers' lives easier. And programmers use them because it's easier. And there's also, you know, there's also the argument for standards. And it's great for standardization. But as you point out, if everybody builds on one little peg and something goes wrong with that peg, everything comes down.

So. Yeah. It's a big game of Jenga. Yeah. A lot of people also have been rightly making the point that there's this notion with open source software that it's more secure because so many people have their eyes on it. And, yeah.

It's like trickle-down economics. In theory, it's supposed to work. But in actuality. Which is more secure, the iPhone or the Android? Mm-hmm. Evidently, this vulnerability was first talked about back in Black Hat 2016, I believe.

Whoa. And it was researchers at Alibaba who first officially reported the vulnerability. And they did it in all the right ways using responsible disclosure. But the folks over at Cisco Talos, among others, started seeing signs that the bad guys were on to this about nine days before the official announcement.

So it seems as though there are some leaky channels or whatever. But – Well, an engineer in Alibaba saw his opportunity for a zero day and probably sold it. Could be. Could be. Definitely could be. I mean, not to sound very criminally or smarmy, but that's a big one and you can make a nice paycheck out of that.

If you know that it's going to get disclosed and there's going to be that window of opportunity, you put it on the market and cash in before it happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and everybody, of course, is getting hammered by this now.

So if you haven't already patched – Do so. Good luck to you. Good luck. Are they sending up a USB stick to the Ingenuity probe to have it update? Right, right. Well, and one thing I think an interesting little bit that I've seen some people saying is that if you go into your system and see that it's already been patched, follow up and make sure that it was you who patched it.

Yeah. Because a lot of the bad guys go in and they put in whatever they need and then they apply the patch once they're in. So just be extra careful with this one. It is a biggie. It's a bad one and it's easy to use. Yeah, definitely.

Check your fingerprints on your software for sure. So did you guys talk about the Gloopteba botnet? I'm guessing that's how you pronounce it. Gloopteba? Sounds like a delicious dish. Your guess is as good as mine. Yeah. Speaking of Wankovision.

This has got to be some noodles and sauce and some stewed meats. More Gloopteba. We have touched on it. I don't think we've spent a whole lot of time on it. I do remember the story coming by, but mostly in passing. We've been busy with other things this week.

You think? Really? Okay. Well, this was – I mean this was – had a million Windows machines infected or devices. But the thing about it is that they're worried that – like Google got behind it and kind of like put the kibosh on it, blah, blah.

Same as usual. You know, everybody gets together, rallies the troops, and knocks it down. But the interesting thing that I saw in here was this quote. This action will have a significant impact on Gloopteba's operations, Shane Huntley, the director of Google's threat analysis group, said in a separate blog post.

Although, however, the operators of Gloopteba are likely to attempt to regain control of the botnet using a backup command and control mechanism that uses data encoded on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now, that's a scary thought if they're going to start putting their command and control stuff on the blockchain.

Don't you think? I guess. That might be one of the downfalls of Bitcoin right there. Well, I guess. People have to start blocking access to the blockchain because the botnets are on the blockchain using – it's great.

Yeah, I mean I guess it depends on are they just putting the commands on the blockchain because it's immutable. It's a convenient place to stick the commands where you know they will not be taken down because blockchain. Yeah.

Except for the fact that we learned last week that, oh, you can edit a blockchain. Yes. Thanks, Steve. Crypto slam! Yeah. But, yeah, I mean you could basically embed probably a key phrase with IP addresses to look for new machines.

Well, I mean this has been kind of the worry about the blockchain from day one, right? People were up in arms going, they're going to put pedo porn in the blockchain and it will be there forever. And they have. So, yeah. It's there. It's there. So, but I mean they're always trying to figure out ways to do command and control things that go under the radar.

We've seen Twitter. We've seen in-game chat use it. This is just another vector for them to use but it's – Hiding it inside graphics files. Yeah, steganography, things like that. Technology is going to save the world. So, I just thought – I thought that using the blockchain as command and control, I just – that was like, hmm, that's next level.

Oh, crap. Just an – It is clever. I guess I wonder how is it that different from hanging it out in any other public in plain sight sort of place where they hide things. So, I guess – I mean there's the immutability of it. But you could put it in an image file that you put on Flickr similarly.

Yeah, but you can block – you'd have to basically block access to the entire blockchain but there are so many websites out there that have records of what happened on the blockchain that you can go search. So, they would have to like block all of those in the antivirus software to keep your machine from talking to them and block those IP blocks, block ports, things like that.

That would be just, I think, a killer whack-a-mole problem. And if you're a security expert, write in and tell me if I'm completely talking out of my ass. But it seems to me like that would be a hard problem. I think I'm following your train of thought here, which is that it's – you can't take down this infrastructure.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm with you now. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, because it is just basically a big spreadsheet, so you grab the spreadsheet for one of your keys and say, okay, well, we found somebody to look at.

Let's look for this IP block or some string to trigger something else, but it's not going away. Botnet activate. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Jack – Jack. This is my – this is my – telling you I'm dyslexic.

The guy was like Jack, Zoe, and Matt. It's Matt, Joe, and Zach. Mo. Mo, Zach, and Jack. Mo, Zach, and Jack. Fuck. It's early. I got hit in the head last weekend. It's – whatever.

Move on, please. Help me here. Throw me a fucking lifeline. Thump, thump, thump. Worm's coming, Jason. I know. Over at PayPal. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Mark, Jen, Smiles, Sherry, Derek, Linda, Natalie, and Edward. And over at Stripe, we've got John L., Jason S. with the $30.

Woo! And Q., Andrew S., Jeff R., Linda M., and Theodore L. Maybe I just need the last initial to keep them in line. Maybe. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's been a long time since we've had this. We've got a lot of dead people this week. None of them were our fault. That's true.

Yusuke Uemura, the creator of the NES and SES, SNES, has died at age 78. Good run. All right. Yeah. Also, Michael Nesmith, at the same age of 78. He kicked the bucket, too. Yeah. Do yourself a favor and go listen to some Michael Nesmith songs and some monkeys. Good stuff. Good stuff.

Oh, yeah. I still love the monkeys. I haven't – Yeah. They were good. They were good, even though most of them didn't play the instruments. But it's good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. And sad for you, Anne Rice has hit the bucket. Yeah, I'm bummed out about that. I love her early work, very much so.

And, you know, she's a very interesting person. And what a life she lived. Pretty interesting. And just a quick shout-out to my Toronto friends and family here. We lost a good friend of ours, Andrew, yesterday. So we're all kind of reading from that right now. Yeah. That sucks. But, you know.

Very sorry. Yeah. And we did get an interesting voicemail from Matt that we will not be playing on the episodes ever. We could, but Matt might actually end up in the obituary section if we actually played these.

He might be heading there anyways from the amount of slurring that was going on and the sheer amount of alcohol that must have been consumed before those voicemails were made. I hope you're all right out there, Matt, and I'm sure that you bought out all the Advils. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you're recovering from that hangover because it's got to be a doozy.

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. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Just look for that little share button.

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