536: The Rational Prepper

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 I suppose we should start with a brief. How are you feeling, Jason? I feel like I had a stroke, Brian. Okay. That's about it. Glad we got that out of the way. If I miss a few words or mispronounce more than usual, that's why.

Okay. And if I do it, it's just because I hate everything. So basically, we're pretty much normal. Pretty much. I'm finishing up my final week of, hopefully, thumbs or fingers crossed. Thumbs crossed. Of homeschooling and, you know, trying to juggle schedules with my wife who's working full-time, me who's working full-time, and teaching full-time because homeschooling means we have to sit there.

So it's IT slash teaching slash stay on target. Oh, God. It's just a nightmare. Sounds like fun. Theoretically, schools are open again here as of Monday. And as I was talking to my boss briefly and, you know, giving him the update.

He doesn't have kids, but a couple, more than a few people in our office do. So I was kind of letting him know, you know, those of us with kids can actually work again next week. And he was like, yeah, until you go back, the kid gets Omicron, brings it home, and everybody's sick. And I'm like, you didn't have to tell me that.

Yeah, but that's going to happen. So it's all right. Yeah, we all know it's coming. So it is what it is. It pretty much is. You just have to be resigned at this point. Yeah. It's going to happen. Yeah. Just keep on keeping on. And we got a little bit of follow-up from Barrett regarding works that have recently been entered into the public domain.

He forwarded on a tweet from Tim X. Price. Please note that Disney's depiction of Winnie the Pooh is still under copyright. It's the character from the books that entered the public domain. Red shirt on the bear, artist beware. If nude he be, your Pooh is free. And I found a funny one that Reaper's Gale posted on our Discord channel, which was it's Pooh in the now public domain world.

And somebody meets him and he goes, hey, where am I? He goes, you're in the public domain now. You're free, Winnie. So he rips off his red shirt and joins an orgy of all of the other fictional characters who have joined the public domain. So, yeah, pretty much fan fiction.

Here comes Pooh. Yeah. I mean, the funny thing about this is for so many of us that our impression of Pooh is, of course, Disney. So that one is still under copyright. You do not get to do that. Oh, well. It's still going to be funny. I'm sure somebody will do something.

Maybe put a blue shirt on him. Maybe. Science officer Pooh. Yeah. Oh, God. So I do have to say, regarding the stroke thing, I'm a cyborg now. I think after we recorded last time, I had this heart monitor installed.

Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, I'm sure it does. Yeah. Basically, 30 days, I got a sticker on me with this little gadget. Oh, man, I forgot I was supposed to change the battery this morning. It might think I'm dead right now. Oh, and I left the phone in the house. It definitely thinks I'm dead. They give you an Android phone that has to be with you, you know, 24-7.

Mm-hmm. Well, here's the way she explained it. This is how tech works in healthcare nowadays. She's like, you need to keep this with you 24-7. The phone needs to be recharged every five to six hours because it's constantly transmitting data over cellular to, you know, the thing. You'd think that, I mean, I don't know, maybe it would have an option to turn on Wi-Fi to save some money.

But, yes, not. So, it's just, you know, sucking up cell data all day long. And, yeah, it does die after about five or six hours. So, I just leave it plugged in in the house. And here's the thing that gets me about this. So, somebody knew that this is going to be strapped to you.

You know, for me, it's 30 freaking days that I have to wear this thing. I get it, you know, it's annoying, but I'm getting used to it. So, my first night, I don't sleep with the shirt on. So, I get into bed and I close my eyes. I get cuddled up. And then I notice there's this light that's flashing in the room and it's basically lighting up the whole room.

And I'm like, what the hell is that? The designers of this stupid damn gadget decided to put a big old green light on it to let you know that it was working. Oh, nice. Yes. Yeah. Isn't that great? I got those dimmer stickers from Amazon. You should get some of those and slap a few on there because, you know, everybody that has created, we all have electronic devices everywhere now.

And so, they've all got annoying flashing lights and blinking lights or just very, very bright lights. So, you got to slap those things on everything now. Yeah. But you don't need to go buy specialty stickers. Just get black electrical tape. Nothing gets through that and it costs like 35 cents a roll. But I like to have just a little, I like to be able to see the time just a little bit.

Oh, God. Not enough to keep me awake, but enough that if I roll over and want to know what time it is, I can still see the time. You know, there are uses for these things, Jason. Okay. Okay. Sadly, though, there's a use for Facebook for me now, too. Mm-hmm. After all my bitching and moaning over the years, Facebook actually does have some decent groups out there, I have learned.

So, I signed up. I could have told you that. My wife is in about 7,000 mom groups and they get really granular, like Asian mom in Toronto with a half-breed child. Okay. There you go. You're set. I just signed up for a couple of the big stroke survivor groups and they're helpful.

They're actually quite helpful for me. I mean, that was the dream of Facebook, the community stuff. It's, you know, it's unfortunate that we got the erosion of democracy that came along with it, but, you know. Yes, and genocide and things like that. Yeah. I mean, that's what it's good for.

And that's, you know, what used to be on, you know, specific websites and message boards has moved to Facebook groups and they are good. They are good for that. Yeah. We traded PHP BB for, you know, genocide and a lack of democracy. What are you going to do?

Yeah. Seems fair. Seems fair. Yeah. Sounds legit. Sounds legit. Uh-oh. Something that is not legit. Web3 still. There's a great piece that's been going around called My First Impressions of Web3 by Moxie Marlin Spike, which I always read as Moxie mansplaining.

This is the CEO of Signal, well, soon to be ex-CEO of Signal. After he wrote this, he decided to step down, take a break. But it's basically his take on Web3 and it's fantastic. It's actually written for, you know, lay people for the most part, which I really appreciate.

But he did the NFT experiment that is just the greatest thing in the world, just trying to explain NFTs and how it is just, you know, basically a receipt and a link. And he just decided to say, hey, look, you know, I can do a little backend shenanigans and, you know, you can dynamically generate an image.

We've been doing it for 20 years, 25 years now, more than that, shit, almost 30 years based on input. Email postcards. Yeah. Yep. Megadeth, Arizona. That was the first one. Ah, fast. Anyway, so what he did was he looked at the referring IP and if it came from one NFT warehouse, Rarible, then they would get one image.

If it came from OpenSea, they'd get another image. But if it came from anywhere else, they would just get a poop emoji. So as soon as you bought this, you just got a poop emoji. And he explained how every NFT in the planet could just turn to shit at the whim of anyone. It was just a great demonstration, I thought. Yes.

Well, that's what happens when you sell a link. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. And the rundown he has of Web3 also is great. And, you know, I'm finally just about done with it because it's ridiculous. I was actually going to tell you as I was reading through our notes that unless there's some big NFT news, NFT has now hit Kanye for this podcast for me, in which there's no need to discuss anymore.

It's just dumb. Yeah, I think we have hit Kanye levels of stupidity with NFTs. Yeah. So we have a few news stories that are pretty fun. But after that, I think this will be an NFT-free zone hopefully soon because it is just ridiculous. I mean, most of the news that's out there now is everybody's just getting ripped off left, right, and center and getting their work reposted.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're on – what's that big deviant art or something like that? If you've been doing art for years and building a community and even selling your work, now you're just getting ripped off left, right, and center. And now they're trying to play whack-a-mole, you know, and it's not working because what we've discovered with NFTs is people suck.

Yeah, they really do suck. They really do suck. And the interesting thing is these are reactive measures that deviantart has put into place with OpenSea. It's like they have a system now that they've built that will, you know, scan OpenSea and match it to art that's on deviantart and let the artists know that their art has been posted on OpenSea as an NFT.

Well, why don't they work with OpenSea to make sure that the artwork is checked before it goes up? Well, that would make sense. Oh, that's right, shit. Plus, then they can put the button for the internet police to do something about it right next to it. Yep. Oh, wait. Oh, there's no real method to do anything.

Nope, there's not. So, yeah, that's that. But I highly recommend checking Moxie Mansplainings article out if you haven't read it yet. It is a must read for anybody that is sick to death of hearing about NFTs and Web3 and want an easy explainer for your friends.

Brian, I sent you this link because... I knew this got your ire up because generally throughout the week, we do not really talk to each other very much.

And to get a text of a new story from you meant that you were pissed. Here's the problem. I'm not allowed to get pissed off right now because I might die. Right. So, I have to take everything. I have to breathe. I have to take a lot of feels.

So, feels.com slash GOG, please. If you want to be where I'm at most of the time. So, I saw this and it was Dara Khosrowshawi, you know, the CEO of Uber and in an off-the-cuff remark in a fireside chat to the Swiss bank, he was talking about how well they're doing in Spain and the UK now after all of the rules that they have put into place.

They're saying, oh, you can't have gig workers. They have to have benefits and things like that and different driver classifications. And so, he says, while Spain's business is up to close to 40% on a year-to-year basis and Spain EBITDA margins are very close to our overall long-term margins as well.

And then he goes on to say, there's a lot of demand for our technology, our service, our brand, our safety, our reliability. So, any model can work economically for us. Now, I would like to point to everything that they've ever said since the beginning of a fucking time in the United States that says, no, we can't afford to do that.

Well, liar, liar, pants on fire. Exactly. And the real truth here, the bit he didn't say, is if forced to play nice and do the right thing, we can and we can still work as a company. But we're not gonna unless we're forced to.

Here's the thing. What the other unspoken thing that has not been said here is we can lose just as much money if we pay them as if we don't pay them. That's a good point, actually. We're still gonna be. It's not like we're doing well. Yeah, we're still not gonna be profitable, but we'll be just as unprofitable if we pay them as if we don't pay them.

Yes. Well, I saw this one story and it made me laugh. It's not terribly timely, but the reason it's coming out now is because lawsuits are not terribly timely and they take their years to work through the system. But this has finally come to light, Pokemon Go has long lost the viral status that it once had.

But during the early Pokemon Go frenzy, some two LAPD police officers who are generally not known for making good choices anyways, made spectacularly poor choices. They have fired officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell for ignoring a robbery on April 15th, 2017 because they were too busy chasing down a Pokemon.

Yep. They had to catch a Snorlax. Yes. Rather than responding to a radio call demanding backup for a theft at Macy's in the Crenshaw Mall, the policemen reportedly spent the next 20 minutes driving around to catch a Snorlax. Yep. And a Togetic. Whatever a Togetic. Yes.

Now, they've denied playing Pokemon Go and insisted they were only having a conversation about the game, to which my argument would be, you still didn't go to the backup call. Yeah. Your buddies were still asked to the win. I actually really don't care what you were doing. You could have been playing Wordle. We'll talk about that later.

You could have been playing Pokemon Go. You could have been looking up porn on Tumblr because they used to have that back then. I don't care what it was. If you got the call, you're supposed to go. You chose to ignore it. Now, the reason this all took so long is because they were basically trying to toss out the footage that showed that they specifically were doing these things over anything else because of a rights violation.

There was air quotes there. So. Yeah. Okay. And then I saw this story and I just had to chuckle because I actually randomly recently, right before I saw this story, I was talking with somebody about the whole Y2K coding thing and all that sort of stuff. Honda has some issues with their coders.

They are in a bit of a time loop right now since the start of this year, which would be 2022 for those of you not paying attention or just lost in our own personal time loop that's been going on for the last three calendar years. Yep. I have no idea what year it is anymore. But since the start of this year, apparently a lot of their vehicles are stuck in the year 22.

Okay. So they've lost to 20 there. The issue appears to be widespread. It's affecting Honda and Acura models with GPS navigation systems that were manufactured between 2004 and 2012. And this all comes down to how GPS satellites broadcast dates and bad coding error. And if you really want to get into it, you can read the notes in the show notes.

But yeah, it's pretty funny. It's just bad coding. And all of a sudden, there's no fix for it. There's no idea how anybody can take care of this, but their clocks have reset. And this isn't the first time back in 2017, both Honda and Acura models also reset back to 1998.

So, good times. Yep. They apparently have not learned anything. No. So they just can't bother to fix their code. The interesting thing is they probably don't even have coders in-house because what we learned this week is that, you know, the big chip shortage that has hit all the major car manufacturers did not really affect Tesla because Tesla has decided to keep their programming in-house.

So, when everybody else was outsourcing their chips and, for the most part, their software, Tesla was able to shuck and jive and basically whatever chips they could get, they could reprogram to do, you know, the terrible self-driving job that they're supposed to be doing.

And so that's how they kind of got around it. So, Tesla has definitely got a leg up here when it comes to that kind of thing. And I thought it was interesting that these car manufacturers were outsourcing the coding as well, which makes a lot of sense when you actually get in a car with a computer in it nowadays because it's terrible.

What was the Microsoft one, the first version that Microsoft had in the cars? Oh, I can't remember what that was called, but it was horrific. Yeah, I had the 1.0 version in one of my cars and it was just garbage. You know, I struggle a lot. Full disclosure again here, I'm a Tesla stockholder.

I have a fair amount of Tesla stock. I struggle with selling Tesla stock all the time for two main reasons. One, Elon Musk. You're greedy. Elon Musk is, well, I mean, I want to sell the stock because of two main reasons. I can't stand Elon Musk.

I think he's a horrible businessman and I think that he is completely unchained and the board of directors needs to do a better job just making him be an adult or kick him upstairs so he can't do any more damage and put an adult in charge. And the second thing is the self-driving thing, which I think is ridiculous and harmful and I think that should be unlawful what they're claiming and what they're putting out there on the roads.

However, having said that, they do make good decisions and they're way ahead of anybody. I mean, Rivian, come on, give me a break. They put two cars out. I mean, come on. They're just way ahead of everybody else and they make smart decisions like, let's be realistic here, people.

Cars are now computers. Should we outsource all of this stuff or should we build our own? They decide to build their own. They're light years ahead of everybody else and they will be for a long time. Yep. Yep. They need to start building their own chips instead of still buying those off the shelf like Apple did.

Yeah. You can't just go down to fries. Yeah. I miss fries. Me too. Yep. So on the, you know, the self-driving thing with Tesla, they now have an assertive driving mode that will do rolling stops in their full self-driving beta.

I used to get tickets for rolling stops. Yeah. Yeah. On the regular. We called it the California stop. I have a stop sign in front of my house, a four-way stop, and people roll through it every day. And you can often hear me on the street yelling, slow down, you fucking asshole. And I have gotten chastised by my neighbors many times because my neighbors have children.

Right. And they're like, can you tone it down a bit? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, oh, we're on your side, but just don't swear. Just get an air horn out there. I've done that. I actually do have an air horn and I have done that. At night, I have high beams that I flash into the people's cars.

I'm generally an asshole when it comes to people running the stop signs here in my street because we have kids. You could have just stopped, but generally I'm an asshole. Well, that too. And would have covered it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I'm trying to narrow down. After the stroke, I'm becoming a kinder and gentler Jason.

Okay. So yeah, they have the assertive mode, but the DMV here in California is quote unquote revisiting its approach on how they're going to regulate them because this full self-driving beta, you know, they're classifying it as a level two, even though it's called full self-driving.

Again, my problem. Yeah. My problem. Exactly. So what they're saying now though, is they should be, what they've done is with the full self-driving beta is they have turned these cars into a level four test cars with untrained test pilots behind the wheel.

So that's kind of a problem. Beta programs should not be on the road. Yeah. So what, what they're saying is it's like, Hey, look, if that, this is the case, then you're going to have to start reporting all of the data from all of these people because they are technically doing beta work for a level four autonomous system, which is by, by the story that we had last week that they're fighting back against, you know, the reporting regulations.

They need to step up and get, you know, get their shit together or change the name. Words are important. One of our biggest, uh, biggest pet peeves on this podcast. Words are important. So there was a big kerfuffle the other week with Mozilla.

For those of you that still use that crappy ass browser, uh, they announced that they would accept cryptocurrency donations. And, uh, they've now put that on hold because everybody kind of came out and said, what, uh, they announced the new policy with a jokey tweet saying folks who dabble in Dogecoin or are hoddling some Bitcoin and Ethereum can donate their crypto directly to the foundation.

I want to stop you right there before they keep going. This is actually an older policy. They just came out and said, Hey, they were, it was a reminder tweet that they do it. So they've been actually doing it for quite some time, but nobody paid any attention until, until they came out and said that. Little terms of service who goes to the fact to read the new thing about the new browser update that comes every other day now.

Mm. Yep. And it was met with a caustic reply from Mozilla co-founder, Jamie Zewinski. Uh, fuck you and fuck this. He tweeted. Everyone involved in this project should be witherlingly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet incinerating Ponzi grifters, which I a hundred percent agree with.

Uh, Peter Linds, the designer of the Gecko engine that powers Firefox chimed in as well, telling Mozilla that you were meant to be better than this and that's gotta hurt. Yeah. Yeah. So they backpedaled now and said this led to an important discussion about cryptocurrency's environmental impact.

There is no discussion. We know there's no discussion. There are facts. So. Oh, not, not, not in the, not in the crypto world, not in the NFT world. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Remember, Brian, it's a train. That train is going to be running no matter what. So. Yes.

Got to remember, you got to remember the train. It's all about the train. Yes. Oh God. And, uh, speaking of the train, somebody is, uh, no, I will stop that joke right there. Cause that was going to get a little, uh, yeah, I know. Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather are being sued in a class action lawsuit about Ethereum max, which, uh, basically was a pump and dump scheme.

And, uh, they're saying that, uh, yeah, they were, uh, complicit in this pump and dump scheme. Uh, duh. No. Yeah. We know that. Yes. Yeah. Every celebrity that is pimped in NFT or Bitcoin should be, you know, or any coin alt coins mainly is what these people have been doing. Uh, should be taken out back, put against the wall and shot.

So if not, if not, uh, literally figuratively. So that's what the lawsuit's about. Yep. Yep. I agreed. Yep. Saw this one coming. Saw this one coming. Um, and, uh, in, are you fucking kidding me? News, the Associated Press is starting its own NFT marketplace for photojournalism.

Right. There's a, not a lot of info out there about this, like, oh, how much money the, uh, photographers will get paid and things like that. You know, the key points that you would want to know. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. But, uh, whoever at the Associated Press is doing this needs to be, uh, taken out back with the aforementioned Kardashian clan and, uh, set up against the wall or at least fired for piss poor judgment, piss poor judgment.

Well, if that's not enough. Wait, there's more. But wait, there's more. Not sold in any store. Tech startup wants to gamify suing people using crypto tokens. Uh, this is a company called Rival. And I can't wait for somebody to sue Rival because this should a hundred percent be illegal.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, they basically want to become the stock market of litigation financing by allowing everyday Americans to bet on civil lawsuits through the purchase and trade of associated crypto tokens. Oh, God. Yes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, we can't even theoretically legally gamble on sports in most places. In most places. But we're going to go ahead and allow this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they basically want to be able to finance litigation.

For some of these people. Just what we need. More litigation. More litigation. To be fair, I would have, I would have thrown some, all of my crypto on the Theranos case. A hundred percent. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I get old Theranos. That's a, Ooh, we can't wait for that sentence.

They, they, they, they put a date out, uh, this more yesterday morning, I believe, or maybe it was this morning. Time is strange when you have a stroke, by the way, Brian, it doesn't exist. It loops back on itself. Time becomes a loop. Um, that there, they have a tentative sentencing date for Elizabeth Holmes for September 6th.

Okay. I'm like, uh, can you take some more time there, buddy? I know. She's out on bail right now on $500,000 bond against her property. So, uh, what's going to be interesting is though, I, maybe they're waiting for the sentencing hearing because her partner in crimes trial is going to be starting somewhat soon, I believe.

Oh yeah. That actually makes some sense. Yeah. Yeah. See how that plays out before they, uh, throw her in the who's cow. But, uh, yeah, they both need to just go chill in federal prison for just a little while, at least. That's my humble opinion. My humble opinion.

Okay. Uh, there was a big kerfuffle this week too, about Norton antivirus, uh, putting an Ethereum miner inside of their product. Yes. And, uh, the Verge actually did a nice write-up about it because everybody said the sky is falling, the sky is falling. And, uh, turns out it kind of wasn't really falling.

You did have to opt in and turn it on yourself if you wanted to do it. Uh, but they, they came out and said, yeah, we tried it. Uh, it doesn't work. Uh, you're not going to make any money on it because the cost of electricity is basically about the same as what you would make back. And then you still have to pay gas fees and all that other crap. Yeah.

So, uh, the only people that would profit from this is Norton. Yeah. So skip it. Which is why they put it in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're like, like you don't need enough reasons not to use Norton products. Come on. I know. They've been horrible for years. Anyways.

Decades. And, uh, speaking of the, uh, whole crypto thing and Bitcoin developers and the Bitcoin ecosystem, uh, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, well, no longer former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, uh, wants to start up a nonprofit legal defense fund for Bitcoin developers to protect them against lawsuits and similar legal pressure.

Why doesn't he buy rival? Why doesn't he buy rival? Why doesn't he buy rival? Just buy rival. There you go. He's worried that too many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem are being sued because they're shit or they're doing illegal stuff. So let's, let's, let's make a fund.

Let's have, yeah, let's lend them a hand. So let's lend them a hand. So that's a, obviously this is a little bit self-helping because his company block is heavily involved in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. So the flurry of lawsuits that he helps block for smaller people will help his larger business without him having to get involved in lawsuits by destroying the precedents before they ever get around to getting to him.

So a little self-serving there. But what really grinded my gears about this story, Jason, is the fact that the funds board, which currently includes, uh, Jack Dorsey, chain codes, Alex Morkos, and an academic Martin White, uh, would choose cases to support with.

Here we go. Part-time and volunteer lawyers providing the initial defense counsel. You can't even fucking pay your lawyers. You're asking people to do it for free. Yeah. Yeah, you are.

You asshole. I know. I, I, you know, where could they maybe find somebody with, I don't know, billions of dollars to fund this? If only they had money. If only they had money. If only money wasn't their actual business. That plucky little startup CEO, Jack Dorsey, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, not a dollar to his name.

That rapscallion. Ah, Jack the rapscallion. Oh. Share a shilling, sir? Share a shilling? What the, what the actual fuck? I completely missed that. I can see why you're, uh, yeah. That was, that was text worthy to you.

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Media Candy. I finally got to sit down and watch all of the Matrix Resurrections in one go. And? I don't know why it exists. But it was fine. See, it was fine. It was fine. It, it, I, I already, I couldn't even tell you what happened anymore.

That it just came in and left my brain like, like that. Which, you know, not good for the Matrix. First Matrix, uh, groundbreaking, amazing movie. Uh, next two, memorable for being awful. This one, not memorable at all. So, this is, so, we are, we're on an upward trend.

This is actually an upward trend after two and three. Come on. That's true. Uh, I, I seriously doubt they're going to do any more. I think that's definitely that. But, uh, it was fine. It was great to see Keanu and Carrie doing their thing. Uh, everybody else completely forgettable. Uh, plot forgettable.

I don't even remember how it ended anymore. Yeah, I don't, I barely remember how it ended. Those scenes with the kids, like, you know, brainstorming and, you know, uh, blue skying, as it were, was just annoying. That was just garbage. Yeah. So, speaking of garbage, uh, if you hear it in the background, people, I'm sorry.

Our new recording day, uh, puts us right at prime garbage time. So, apologies. I don't know. We'll have to see how the numbers are, if they're going to actually do another one or not. But, I don't think it costs that much. I mean, Keanu's probably the big money in the whole thing. But, you know.

Yeah. You know, artistic integrity from the Wachowskis. I think that's it. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at two and three. I don't, you can't, you can't claim artistic integrity at that point. But, I have to say, Keanu was on, uh, Stephen Colbert, and Colbert asked him, like, what other character that he would like to revive.

And, he did say John Constantine. So, that makes me happy. All right. That, uh, I would, I would love to see another Constantine film, because I love that movie. I thought he did a great job. Right. And, Barrett sends us, and, Jason, you need to add this to your Nicolas Cage Film Fest. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait till April, though. And, this is over at ewe.com.

Nick Cage plays Nick Cage in first look at comedy thriller The Unbearable Weightness of Massive Talent. Uh, um, so, uh, did I say weightness? I think I did. I did. Stroke. Yes. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Um, it looks pretty funny.

It looks like a funny movie, so I, I will definitely watch that. Nick Cage taking the piss out of Nick Cage sounds pretty fun. He seems to be taking the William Shatner late career path, which, you know, fair enough. Yeah. Did you see Pink yet? No. And, I won't, so. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Just from a standard movie perspective.

It's really good. All right. All right. I found my version of, uh, crapper sci-fi books, uh, in TV. Uh, I watched the All or Nothing series on Amazon, which is really good. They do a whole bunch of sports, uh, and stuff of that nature. I watched the Bayern Munich, which is my soccer team, won last week.

And, uh, this week I binged Manchester City and Juventus. And, uh, if you love soccer, you will enjoy these. They're incredibly well done. They follow the team throughout, uh, a full season. And, uh, it's just really good stuff. And I found it actually riveting. So, highly enjoyable. Awesome.

Apps and doodads. I'm going to do the rare follow-up on an app. Uh, the Magnet app for, for, uh, Mac, which, uh, moves your windows around and all that. Uh, I bought it for $7.99 a long time ago because I wanted something that had that kind of functionality.

I've never used it once because it doesn't actually, it doesn't actually have the functionality I want. I have very specific windows setups that I do for different tasks. Uh, Magnet is really good if you want things snapped, uh, and add exact specifics like three, two thirds of the screen, one third of the screen, one sixth of the screen.

I want very bizarre things like I need this in the middle and it's going to be about, oh, I don't know, nine seventeenths of a screen. And, uh, this does not do that. What I need is an app that will actually, you know, recognize the exact position that I put a bunch of windows in and save those sets and let me page through them.

So I'm going to actually uninstall an app I bought because it doesn't do what I need it to do. So, yeah, I bought Magnet too with the same hope. Um, I think the version we got, I don't even think they did this. You could save sets. I don't think there are sets in the version that I have, but it's still, it doesn't, it just doesn't let me put the windows where I want them.

Like I have to, I have to do the grid that they use. Yeah. I don't want the grid because like, yeah, I use, uh, iZotope RX advanced and, uh, like there's a, like 10 different sub windows. Yeah. That need to be specifically placed. And I, I definitely want that.

I would just want a set that says, okay, save these window positions and reload it as, you know, the whole set next time. I want an editing set. I want logic here. I want, you know, iZotope here. I want, you know, my plugins here, uh, but you just can't do that. So if you find one, let me know if, or if you're listening and you know, something like that, please let us know.

Please let us know because I would buy, I would buy that app in a second. It would be very useful. Me too, me too. Uh, so I got the new iPad pro M1 12.9 inch this week with a terabyte of storage. Okay. Um, mainly I didn't want to cause my old 12.9 was doing fine.

The 2018 one I had, except for the battery, the battery would only last about three hours a day now. And I'm like, oh, this thing's going to just, it's not going to, it's not going to make it. And it's out of, you know, Apple care. Actually, I didn't, I don't even buy Apple care for my iPads. So I checked the trade-in value and it was 500 bucks for it, which I thought was pretty good.

And so I, I bit the bullet and did it. So it was like 1400 bucks total with the trade-in. Um, I have to say, I don't care about the speed that everything that I use it for the speed doesn't matter. So I haven't actually tapped into any of the M1-ness and I don't even think there are any apps that really take advantage of it at this point, but I have to say, I've been watching, uh, TV on it at night in bed.

This is the most beautiful screen I have ever seen in my entire life. It is unbelievable how good the screen is. Now I've, now I've hit a crossroads because I always get the paper-like, uh, protector on it because it feels really nice to write on and draw on with it, but it's going to degrade the performance of the screen, which is gorgeous.

So now I've, I'm at a crossroads. I'm like, do I paper-like or do I not? I bought it. It's sitting there next to it. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to now because it's so damn pretty. Right. But I got to say, it's a, it is nice. Oh, that was the other thing. When they first announced this new 12.9, they said the old magic keyboards would not work with it.

And I'm like, I just bought this thing for 300 bucks. Come on, you know, cut me some slack here. So I, I still kept my magic keyboard. When I got it, I popped it on, tried it. It works just fine. There's like one millimeter offset is what they said was the problem. I can't tell where that one millimeter is, you know, so it works just fine.

Attaches just fine. It literally is just fine. So if you have an old magic keyboard for the previous iPad pro 12s works just fine on the new ones. Don't believe the hype. There you go. Good to know. We have a bit of magic leap news. The company that did nothing and disappeared and then went, we're just going to be B2B.

Well, they're doing it. They provided a group of healthcare companies with early access to its second generation augmented reality headset. Wow. Companies that do things like 3D models of a patient's heart while they're operating on them and some sort of mixed reality viewer software that'll be available on magic leap too.

You will never see this unless you're sick and a doctor's on top of you doing something. But I would freak the fuck out if thinking, I would freak out if, you know, my doc came in wearing one of these things. So I'm like, okay, is he just playing putt-putt instead of, what's he doing?

Is he doing a shoot-em-up or is he shooting me up? What's happening here? Yeah, seriously. Okay. So this warms the cockles of my heart. Canon printers now think Canon's own toner is fake because of the global chip shortage. They can't put that stupid DRM chip in their own cartridges.

Yep. So there's coming back saying, hey, this isn't good. You might be using fake toner, man. So Canon has had to put out how to bypass that, which basically says, just ignore it. Just ignore the warning and hit the close button.

So thank you, Canon, for telling us right now that we can just bypass your stupid crappy ink. Yes. I'm waiting for you, Hewlett Packard. Me too. Me too. I got two HP printers here and come on. Come on. We've all known forever that it doesn't matter where we get our egg from.

Yep. Yeah. I've discovered that you are playing Wordle, just like everybody else on Twitter. It seems to have taken over the world by storm. I shall, you know, not as I do. You're a word guy. I thought you'd love it. I know. It's so much fun.

I don't have the time right now. It takes less than two minutes to play around a day. That's it. I don't have the time. Okay, fine. Actually, I just don't want to. I'm being contrarian again. No thanks. Yeah. I'll pass. But the funny thing about this is it's not an app, right? So it's just a thing.

But now, of course, because, you know, the internet and everybody's awful, the Apple App Store has been flooded by Wordle clones. Oh, it's the new Flappy Birds. Yes. Including Zach Shackett, who created an app called Wordle, the app, which is, you know, basically being mistaken for it.

He asked players to sign up for a pro subscription that costs $29.99 after a three-day free trial. And he's a bit of a jerk about it. He tweeted, this is absurd. 450 trials at 1 a.m. last night, now at 950 and getting a new one every minute, he wrote in a tweet that has since been made private.

12K downloads ranked 28th word game and number four result for Wordle in the App Store. We're going to the fucking moon by cashing in on somebody else's idea. And a whole bunch of other ones have come out. And there have been updates to this story since I posted it. They've all been taken down by the App Store, which is why it's good to have Apple's App Store, not Androids.

Yes, and I believe the guy has come out and said I was a dick. Yeah. I think he has apologized since then. So, yeah. Because the entire world said you're a dick. Just because you can do a thing does not mean you should do a thing. And speaking of just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

I saw this and my jaw dropped to the floor about how fucking stupid this is. Alexa can change the weight on NordicTrack's adjustable dumbbells. Okay. Okay. I have adjustable dumbbells. Yes. They are very convenient. They are very useful because you don't have to have 7,000 weights and you can go between 5 and 50 pounds or whatever on each one.

And all you have to do is you put them in the base and then you turn a knob to change the weight. Well, now you can ask Alexa to do it for you instead. They're selling this as, look how much faster this would be. If you're in the middle of a workout and some of them are fast-paced and almost kind of, I have to pause some of my workouts to be able to switch weights in between, say, a back exercise and a tricep exercise.

That happens during workouts. Some workouts build in time for you to, you know, give you a little break in between. Some don't. So, they're saying, well, now we have this great way to do it. Except for the fact that you still have to stop, walk over to the base, put the weights in the base, then instead of simply turning a knob, you go, Alexa, change my weight from 50 to 5 pounds and then wait for the wireless to connect and then wait for your weights to adjust and then pick them up.

How is that any faster than just turning the fucking knob? In fact, I would argue it's probably slower. And how many times does Alexa turn on the light instead of adjusting your weight? Yeah. This is just stupid. Well, that's progress, man.

That's progress. Yeah. I can't wait to go buy these. So, is there a motor in the things that turn it? How does it work? Well, some of these particular ones, yeah, it's like it's an electronic dial that you adjust to change the weight and then they motorize it and blah, blah, blah. The ones I have are actual, you know, mechanical adjustments, which is nice.

Which is the way it should be. And the way it should be because it won't break. Security? Dave Bittner is back. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

And finally, he's the co-host of Recorded Future, where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence. Hi, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. How are we all doing? Not bad. Yeah. I've been thinking about you a lot. I've been thinking about you a lot, Jason. I hope every day is a little better than the day before.

No, it doesn't work that way. Aw. Well, it's your positive attitude that I admire. Yes. On the plus side, as we were discussing a little earlier in the podcast, Dave, Jason has decided to pick lanes to be an asshole about anymore rather than being an all-around asshole.

So, you know, improvement. Oh, really? So, yeah, you're a specialist. You could do consulting work now. Exactly. On assholery. Yes. When you have limited channels and energy that you can, you know, deploy on a given day, you have to be very smart about the energy where you are an asshole because it does take extra energy to be an asshole.

I see. Well, if you had to choose one area of expertise where your assholery is particularly applicable, what would that be? Well, we've discussed this and we are now putting to bed Web3 and NFTs, so I need to re-target on that one.

I see. I see. So, it's a bit topical. It's a moving target, Dave. It's a moving target. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Fair enough. And the people who run the stop sign in front of my house are going to start getting a pass. So, that's changing. Okay.

Yeah. I don't know. Look, if anybody has any suggestions for new targets that I can... ...that I can go after, by all means, let me know. All right. Let's move on here. First, I have to ask, since we have a new recording date and it comes basically the day after the new Boba Fett episodes are released, did you watch the latest Boba Fett, Dave?

I did. Good. We can discuss it. From your tweet, I was going to say, from Dave's tweet this morning, I know he watched it. That was a classic tweet. I'm like, nailed it. Nailed it. All right. So, I will start my commentary with Boba Fett. Boba Fett, where?

And we'll go from there. Okay. This episode was a mixed bag for me. There were many things in it that I enjoyed. I like the badass Wookiee. I think he's pretty damn cool. I like the Rancor showing up.

I think that's interesting and a little dangerous. We'll see where that goes. It's like having a Rottweiler. I can get behind that. I do have an issue with the guy that's basically slinging tacos and creating a taco empire in LA being the Rancor keeper, but okay.

Yeah, well, machete. Now, I'm just imagining you riding your Rottweiler into town, you know, as a crime boss on the back of your Rottweiler and everyone bowing down to you and offering their tribute.

That's how I saunter up to Trader Joe's. We just kind of amble up. Amble up with our masks. Bam Bam wears a mask now, too. So everybody has to wear a mask. Nobody makes eye contact. They know what's best for them. Exactly. So all those things were good.

I thought the whole thing with the little gang in town with their little space Vespas, as you put in the show notes here, that left me a bit cold. I understand where they're coming from. I think it's a tip of the hat to George Lucas's love of everything American graffiti and all that kind of thing.

But that whole chase segment with the folks, the kids on the Vespas and all that, first of all, it seemed unnecessary. And it seemed slow to me like it was slow motion. Yeah. I just I just want to I want to point out what I thought was just a spectacular fail on production design with that, because the whole look at aesthetic of all of this has been the Star Wars

aesthetic, except for the prequels, has been the kind of broken down, dirty things, barely holding together aesthetic. And then you've got these shiny, colorful Vespas like what from a bunch of unemployed kids.

Yeah, right. So, yeah, it made no sense. It literally made no sense whatsoever. No, it should have been the equivalent of, you know, kids who have either their skateboards or their BMX bikes that are, you know, hobbled together from all sorts of different parts.

And they've got stickers all over them. Yeah. Beat up old speeder bikes. Yeah. Well, yeah, like, yeah, like, like old Honda 50s, you know, that we all had as kids. Those things. Yeah. Right. Not some hipster ass coffee swigging Seattle Vespa riding twat, you know, which is basically what these were.

Yeah. And they were slow. They were slow. So I think I came to a bit of an epiphany last night watching the show. And to be fair to me, I had had at least two very high alcohol content beers while watching it, but what I realized is, is don't get me wrong.

I do like the show. I'm enjoying it. But what I've started to realize is that what the show I wanted was about kick ass bounty hunter Boba Fett in his prime, not midlife crisis Boba Fett that starts to hang out with a biker gang, buys a Peloton and grabs a trophy Fennec.

That's about it. That's kind of what we got. Yeah, I think that's right. It's almost a different character in the same way. That Mandalorian is a different character. And, you know, I mean, can we sort of think of Mando as being that kick ass Boba Fett that we wanted?

I guess we'll see what season three brings us. Because, you know, yeah, we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I get why they did it. And I like the concept of the show. And I get why it had to be Boba Fett. But, you know, for those of us that came of age with the four minutes of screen time that Boba Fett had and him becoming culturally iconic to us and the best character, to get this version of Boba Fett is just kind of a bit of a letdown.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I can't disagree. It's funny, though, because like you, I am enjoying the show. And I wonder, I mean, is it as much that I'm enjoying all the stuff that's getting filled in in the Star Wars universe with the Sand People and the Rancor?

Yeah. All that. The Hutts. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I love the twins. They're just delightful. But in all that is in spite of what they're doing with good old Boba Fett. Yeah. The thing about the Hutts that I love is watching the looks on the faces of the people carrying the sled that they're on.

Yes. Miserable. They are miserable. They're like in any minute they might drop it. They're just like, they're just holding on for dear life. Yeah. In a world that has hover capabilities, they're being hauled around by manual labor. To show the power. They explain that.

Yeah. To show their power. Exactly. Yeah. No, I love the female Hut with her little fan. Yes. And the fact that she's actually like the cutthroat badass one and he's more like the I'll be lenient. Yeah.

So good. So good. All right. Let's move on a little bit here. Um, Adelante sent this in. Hey guys, I guess there are some benefits to all this surveillance, huh? And this is a story about an Italian mafia boss caught after Google Maps sighting in Spain. Uh, he was living under the name Manuel and a Google Street View shot showing a man resembling, uh, I'm not even going to attempt the first name.

I'm not that great with Italian, but we'll go Camino. I can do that one. Standing in front of a grocery shop was key to tracking the fugitive. He escaped a Rome prison in 2002 and was sentenced to life in jail the following year for murder. So they got him there and there was a photo of him talking to a man outside of a restaurant that triggered an immediate investigation.

So they, they, they confirmed it and they found photos of him all over the place on a Facebook page of the now closed restaurant. And, uh, there you go. And as, uh, Adelante points out the best part after his arrest, he reportedly told police, how'd you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years.

Now, the thing about this story is I actually had to check the date because I'm positive. We had this exact same story a couple of years back, or at least something very similar about a wanted criminal found in a different country through Google Maps. So you got to be careful out there.

Remember, you're always on camera. Yep. Right. But how, how would you know if you were on a Google Maps shot without some sort of facial recognition? I'm curious, how did, was, was it the Google Maps shot?

Was that the first thing that led them to this guy or was it a piece of supporting evidence? Right. Here's the thing. Yeah. There's a lot missing from this story that we don't have Intel on because aren't most faces actually blurred on Google Maps now? Because I, I haven't seen a person on Google Maps in a very long time, which makes me think that somebody like, you know, uh, tipped off somebody who then got in touch with, you know, Interpol, which then got in touch with Google, which then, you know, maybe they just released the photos.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause maybe, maybe there's just like a backend thing that's running on Google Maps all the time with facial recognition. That's like matching against a series of wanted criminals. We don't know that there might be. So there's, and you know, if, was there a tipster that tipped them off?

We don't know who the tipster is and they're never going to find out because that person would probably be dead because, you know, mob family. Right. In fact, we probably shouldn't even be talking about this story. We've said too much. Yes. We've said too much. We've said too much. It's a great story, but I wish I knew all the info behind how it happened.

My next story that I've got is only kind of tangentially connected to security, but we have talked about in the, in the past about how open source software can be not good. If you're trying to maintain security in your personal applications or in your company or things of that nature.

And Vincent sent in this one about an open source dev who had just had enough. And my thoughts went to you, Jason, because this is something that you definitely would have done. An open source developer corrupts his own files, impacting millions. A GitHub developer has corrupted two important open source files he created with an update that triggers infinite loops, impacting millions of users who access the libraries for software development.

He gave a hint that this might happen back in November 2020, when according to a GitHub post founded by found by Bleeping Computer, he wrote that he no longer intended to support Fortune 500 and other companies with his free work.

There isn't much else to say, take this as an opportunity to send me a six figure yearly contract or fork the project and have someone else work on it. So he just uploaded these things, the updates and the updates were just put in and bricked all the applications that were using it.

Now, the thing about this is, yes, I would have absolutely done this when I was, when I was a kid. I'm that kind of guy. But I think what GitHub did when they, when they basically, you know, took his account down for this was way overstepping the line.

I think GitHub is down. I think what he did was, yeah, it's stupid. He fixed it. He put it back up. But eventually after the outcry, but what GitHub did by banning him from GitHub is, I think, not a good stance for GitHub at all. Yeah, well, I mean, it gets into the legality of it, right?

Like, can you do that? Of course he can. It's free and he's posting it for free. But what do you do? How do you, if you destroy, I see why GitHub did it. I get your point, Jason, but GitHub had to do it because they have to be a trusted resource.

Do they though? But if you want to be a trusted resource, maybe you should pay people. Yeah, but that's not their job. Their job is basically to host source code. That's their job. And yeah, I mean, if you went through GitHub. But if you have someone who you, you have someone you know is acting maliciously.

Yes. Replace GitHub with Facebook or any social network. But I mean, how much shitty code is on GitHub that doesn't work? He just added, he just made something that didn't work that's in his repository. Well, slightly different. He made something that has worked for a very, very long time that he actively promoted that back in the day, he wanted people to use.

He just changed his mind and got annoyed by it. What you do in that case as a normal human being is you say, you know what? If I don't get any more donations for this, I'm just not going to keep it up anymore. That's what you do. Yeah. But still, it's a very sticky situation.

It's a very sticky situation. It's a very sticky situation. And I think GitHub actually acted out of turn on it. They should have discussed it with him, figured out a path forward because he's in a bunch of different repos.

So now he can't even do like, you know, regular stuff. So I just think it's, I think it was a little bit scorched earth on GitHub. I don't think that there was a lot of discussion. I think there were a lot of panic conference calls. And what do we do? And pull the plug. And that's that.

So I'm sure GitHub will revisit this at some point after more, after a mea culpa or something like that from the developer. Something like that. Yeah. They'll send them a fruit basket or something. It's Microsoft after all. So I put this story in here because it leads to a different conversation that I want to have with the two of you.

We covered over on the Cyber Wire this week as a lot of folks have been covering the increased tension between Russia and Ukraine. The threat that there could be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia and our particular interest, which is how there could be fallout from that into the cyber realm.

Cyber security is combat support in these sorts of scenarios. And this was brought to a focus when the U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, the organization we all know and love called CISA.

They issued a joint warning with FBI and the NSA about threats to critical infrastructure, and that is in response to this increased tension, potential responses from our nation to them and so on and so forth.

I saw several people on Twitter, security pros on Twitter saying, hey, everybody, when CISA and the FBI and NSA put out a direct alert like this, pay attention because they're few and far between.

So first off, any reactions to that happening, that alert being put out there from us personally? Yeah. Yeah. I buttoned down our RSS feed. I mean, it's worrisome.

But I mean, the thing is, and I was talking to my wife about this yesterday, I feel like for the past five years, and I'm sorry for people that have come back to the show after the four Trump years that hated us talking about Trump, but just a brief mention. For the past five years, ever since Trump basically won the election, I have been in heightened alert, fight-or-flight mode, and my system is so destroyed by it that this barely makes an echo.

Even though in normal times, if we hadn't gone through four years of Trump and eroding democracy and none of that going away and worried about the next election, in addition to going into year three of a pandemic and lockdowns and what the hell is happening to my kid, this would freak me the fuck out.

But right now, now it's almost like, oh, God, we're almost out of coffee. Brian officially has no more fucks to give. Basically, it's gotten to that point. Like I said, I understand this is very serious, and we should be very, very worried.

But I've got so many other things I'm very, very worried about and are very, very serious, and I have no fucks to give. Jason? I see this as other people's problems at this point. One of the things that the stroke has done for me is also laser-focused things that I actually put energy to caring about.

And there's nothing I can do here to actually help the problem. And if there's nothing I can do to help the problem, I will generally not give a crap about the problem anymore. That has been a very, very profound shift in how I think about a lot of this stuff.

And yes, it is troublesome, and there are people that are smarter than me who are working on it, and there are also dumber people than me who are working on it as well, which is why I'm trying not to be concerned about it. But our infrastructure definitely needs some boostage, and who knows?

Maybe it's time for budget reassessments. So they take this news, try and rattle the sabers a bit, scare the people, get a few more bucks out of Congress, and so they can now put a few more asses in seats. I don't know which one it is. I don't know if Putin's on the warpath or if somebody just needs a few more dollars.

It's really hard to tell, so I try not to care about it anymore. I mean, I think it's a legitimate concern, even if Putin isn't on the warpath against the U.S. per se. If Putin wants to do something in the Ukraine, what you want to do is you know the U.S. is going to be against it.

You want to distract the U.S. What better way to distract the U.S. than knock down some critical infrastructure that we'll have to deal with? I mean, it's a very plausible scenario that toes the line between warfare but kind of isn't. So here's what this has done to me. Combine this news – I also saw something on Twitter from – it was an insurance executive who was giving a presentation somewhere, and he was saying that they were tracking that deaths among working-age people are up 40 percent.

And this is tracking deaths not necessarily related to COVID. This includes COVID, but beyond that. But just they're tracking a large increase in the number of people of working-age who are dying. That can be things like suicide.

It can be all sorts of things. So where my thought process is going is I don't have a good sense for how deep the bench is when it comes to the folks who are keeping the lights on, keeping the water flowing, keeping all those critical infrastructure things running.

So the questions I'm asking myself, the impulse that I'm struggling with is to what degree do I go down the prepper pathway? And so serious things I've been thinking about and checking on is, like, should I get myself a little electrical generator so I can keep my refrigerator running?

Yes. Right? Answer there is yes. Mm-hmm. I have one in the garage. Dave, you want to get – Would you do that? I do. I have one. I have one in my garage now since I moved here. And I've got to be honest with you here. Partially, part of my move, part of the decision-making process, not all of it, but part of it to move to Toronto was doomsday prepping to some degree.

I wanted out of the U.S. I have serious concerns about not just what you were talking about, enough people to keep the lights on. I'm concerned about the whole process of funding the people and the organizations that keep the lights on because they're being attacked systematically by people that don't seem to care or get it.

Like, funding is being cut left, right, and center. It's insane to me. The fact that we're battling over rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure alone terrifies me. So to some degree, I moved to prep. I wanted out. Yeah, I mean, honestly, when it comes to, you know, the prep thing, I used to be, you know, big into that.

And I never really went super crazy with it. It was more fun to, you know, just kind of game it out and think about things like that. But we have two weeks worth of, you know, supplies at all times, no matter what. Just because, I mean, we're an earthquake country, so that's a smart thing to do.

I will never have a fully electric vehicle because if I want to get out, I want to be able to get out, you know. And there are little things like that that I definitely think that, you know, especially you living where you live, you should have the same type of level of prep and anxiety about that.

Just the basics because, you know, you're pretty close to the nation's capital. If there is, you know, those kinds of attacks, you know, you're definitely in the sights in that area. So why not have that stuff? Yeah, no, I'm a stone's throw from NSA, which certainly has a big gold target on it.

Oh, you'll be vaporized anyway. It doesn't matter then. Forget it. No, speaking of that, have you seen the cheery topic of our friend of the show, David Teeter's risk assessment maps for nukes? Oh, yes, I was talking to him the other night. He's actually going to put it on GitHub very soon.

So you'll be able to take the data and download it yourself. Yeah. So, you know, catastrophic. We're all dead, but. Here's the question for our listeners then. Which is, is there a source of rational prepping that doesn't go down the crazy path?

I don't think there is anymore because when you go online, the only way to get the views is to be insane, right? Like there's no, there's no Reader's Digest, the rational prepper. There's just, fuck it, we're all going to fucking die, get this knife. Right, right.

You can't go on the wire cutter, go on the wire cutter and find the top 10, you know, prepper things. But if people do know out there, I would be interested in such an article because, you know, I've, or just, you know, talk to Jason off the air about this and then, and then dial, dial Jason's back by about 20%.

Actually, you don't have to dial mine back. I'm fairly rational about it now. I mean, I have, yeah, I've got, I've got a, I've got a power thing in the garage and I've got some, some jugs of water stored about there, but I don't have like food for two weeks or anything like that.

Like I've got to step up my game a little bit because, you know, I got out of the US, but I'm US adjacent and in a major city. Yeah, but for you, it's easy to go north. That's true. Yeah, that's true. Jason, you should put some sort of Amazon wishlist together that, you know, Jason's prepper purchasing guidelines or something like that.

I would, but Amazon cut off my, my affiliate account years ago with no explanation. So screw those guys. I see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if, if, if, if people, if you mean, if anybody really wants that kind of thing, I could do a, you know, a special GOG prepper bit about it.

But, uh, so write us in if people are interested. Well, I want it. Yeah, I want it too. I want, yeah, I want it. So we can have at it, man. And we still, we still, uh, I don't know what you did to get the Amazon associate personal one, uh, removed, but we still have a GOG one that gets us like, I don't know, 30 cents a month.

I've never seen the check, so I don't know. Okay. I'll send over the, I think it is. It goes into our PayPal. He's holding out on you, Jason. Okay. It goes into our PayPal, Jason. Lighting cigars with $100 bills. Yeah. Yeah. All 10 cents goes into our PayPal. That's why you haven't noticed.

Got it. Got it. All right. Well, I'll look forward to that. All right, guys. Well. Cheery as always. Yep. Talk to you soon. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we welcome Julian, Michael, and R.

The Mysterious R. The show for this week is brought to you by the letter R. R. And over at PayPal, we've got David, Stephan, Jeffrey, Aaron, Miles, Ralph, Linda, Derek, Natalie, Shari, Mark, Jens, Breed, and The Whales over at PayPal.

We've got Jacob, who sent us $50. Grump's been listening since 2013, and you've been a weekly staple. Just made a PayPal donation to help out Jason. Thanks for everything you've done and the amazing content you've produced. Get better. I know that the brain is an amazing organ. There's a really good chance you can rebuild those connections and get your eyesight back.

Take care. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you. Andrew sent us $75. Deanna sent us $100. Kevin, Gregory, and Chris all sent $100 as well, as did Dan, who said donated $100, and that's meant to be all for Jason's medical bill. Good luck, Jason. Thank you, Dan. So I guess I'll parcel that out for you.

Don sent $120, and Andrew, Andrew, sent $500. Thank you. Andrew! Jeez. That's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you to everybody. Seriously. I really, really need it. So thanks. Thank you very much.

I haven't gotten the full bill yet, but I know the range that it's going to be. Keep it coming, guys. Keep it coming. We need the $500,000 donations for that, I think. Pretty much. Yeah, we're going to need Jason's indentured servitude level on Patreon pretty soon. And over at Stripe, we've got Glenn, John, Linda, Dylan, Alberto, Nicolai, Marcel, Lucio, Andrew, Theodore, Anne, Jeff, and Alden, and another $50 from Elaine that says, I just sent you guys some money after listening to your latest episode.

Wishing you a full and swift recovery. Take care. Regards. Thank you very much. And thank you to everybody. Seriously, it really means a lot and really will go a long way to helping out. It really, really, really will. And I do have a shout out to our friend Thomas. I don't know if you remember Thomas, Brian.

I want to say his last name is Inge, I-N-D-G-E. I never got the pronunciation because Thomas was our friend at Fireside, the Fireside Conference up in Canada. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him. Yeah, Thomas was running the podcast recordings up there, but he was also the first listener of GOG that introduced us to the Fireside guys that actually got us invited up there.

Right. So Thomas is a musician living, I believe he's still in London, but he's been putting up a lot of his music on Instagram. He's really, really good. I mean, he's like- Is he the guy we gave the signed Blue Yeti to? No, I think that was a guy from Eastern Europe that got that. But no, Thomas, I mean, he's a legit musician that plays in the West End in London and shit like that.

So it's like real stuff, not like some guy in his basement. So check out his music. Links are in the show notes. I've been really enjoying the stuff he's been posting. It's really good. Cool. And until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And thank you to everybody, honestly, who's been sending in notes and money. Really appreciate the money and the notes.

If I haven't gotten back to you, it's because I'm just tired a lot. And I've got a lot of them. So there you go. Yep. And I'm Brian Shulmester. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help us keep on the lights 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 536. 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 we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay rationally prepped and grumpy.

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