540: Viscerally Revolting

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Things have opened up. I went into the office a couple times this week. I went to a restaurant with friends and had beer. Wow. I know. I know it's no big deal to those of you in Los Angeles because I've heard that's just been open and people have moved on a long time ago and everything's back as it once was, but it's new here.

I don't know which Los Angeles you're talking about because not my Los Angeles. You don't leave the house. Well, when I do go out, everybody's still masked up. Hey, man, I bought a car this week. I spent a lot of time out of the house. That's true. You did. Yeah, but I guess mask mandates, even indoors in Los Angeles, are going out at the end of this month and things are starting to open up here again, too.

So, you know, it's nice to have a little bit of life back again. Don't get used to it. I know. It's going to go away again. Of course it will. Of course it will. We got a bit of follow-up. Jason and many, many, many other people have pointed out that my quote about elf needing food badly and wizard needs food badly was from the game Gauntlet.

I could not remember the name of the game, but that was it. I remember playing it at Disneyland. It was a four-seater and four people could play it once. Fantasy game. It was a lot of fun. Actually, probably the last video game I played. I remember seeing it at the arcade. I never got into it, though.

It was one of the few that I didn't get into, but the very few. A little NFT follow-up. I mean, it's just bordering on comical now. Finally, Reuters is on board. They've been getting better with their NFT coverage, and they have an article this week called Unreal Demand?

Irregular sales worth billions fire up wild NFT markets. And it comes back to exactly what we've been saying since the beginning. Is this from six months ago? I know. It's taken them long enough to catch up. But this is an article about wash trading and how everybody's just pumping up their NFTs to make them look like somebody wants them, and then offloading them and running away to Belize with all the monies.

Okay. Nice place, I hear. I hear. Especially if you've got all the monies. Yep. Wait, wasn't that where McAfee went to? I think so. Is that where he did his mask panty? I can't remember. No, I think the mask panty was in Switzerland. Okay. No, that's where he killed his neighbor because his neighbor was an asshole.

So his neighbor deserved it, by the way. But that's what you get in Belize. Okay. I mean, he killed the guy's dogs. He deserved what he got. Anyway, speaking of- Only Keanu Reeves gets to do that. Well, McAfee got away with it, so I guess he does too.

And speaking of things and people not getting away with it, Rivian. Yes. I just, yeah, they're not doing too well. Not doing too well at all. Well, you know, it's a good idea. By all accounts, I know somebody that actually got one and loves it.

But they only made, like, five of them. I know. That's the problem. Yeah. You got to ramp up your production before you know you should be worth $55 billion. I'm just saying, like, again, the speculation in the stock market.

And I guess, I suppose that there are probably grumpy old stockbrokers sitting around at a bar right now going, we should make a podcast because everything was fine until the great unwashed masses started investing. Probably, probably. Because, you know, you got to do your research and you invest in a company that has good fundamentals.

Producing 10 cars a year, that's for people that have stupid, funny money and want to take the risk. Well, I mean, this is just, like, it just drives home the fact that the story cannot carry a company. Yes, Rivian has a great story. Yes, Rivian has a great product for all six people that have one.

You know, their goal for last year was 1,200 units. They fell short by almost 200 units. So, when you're only making 1,200 or something, come on, guys. Yeah. If your stock is being, if you're being evaluated a $55 billion company and you make 1,000 cars, come on.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what they're worth right now. And that's after their stock has fallen two-thirds and is below the IPO price. So, I'm sure Scott Galloway would have something to say about that. I'm sure he does. Yeah. In the news.

Well, let's keep on riding that NFT train because it feels like the tide seems to be turning in addition to Rivian. I'm getting all our stories. Reuters finally catching on to the news from six months ago. You know, a lot of people are kind of souring on this whole thing.

Certainly, journalists are. A couple of great articles in a row. I'm not going to. They're all fun reads. I'll just hit some bullet points. First, celebrities and NFTs are a match made in hell. And this talks specifically about that cringeworthy clip from The Tonight Show with Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon basically blowing smoke up each other's asses and really awkwardly talking about how much they love their stupid fucking apes.

I think history is going to look back as that. That is the turning moment where the unwashed masses kind of turned on celebrity NFTs because it was so bad. Yes. As this article points out, it's gross. Watching two millionaires promote a mechanism of passive wealth accumulation while they unconvincingly pretend to be interested in art or community is viscerally revolting.

Viscerally revolting. This is a great article. If Hilton and Fallon and their celebrity friends are going to go out there and pump and dump their way to additional wealth, they could at least do the rest of us the courtesy of being a little more discreet about it. Instead, they sound like they think this is stupid and like they think the rest of us might be stupid enough to buy in.

Yeah, that sums it up. Yep. Second article. The crypto backlash is booming. When I spoke with Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum, and asked him whether he was surprised by the recent pushback against Web3, he seemed unfazed. People are just afraid of change, he said, and that's okay because as with any major societal shift, Web3 will be brought about in waves.

First, there's the builders, he said. The people who are building the next generation of stuff. I would like to interject here. Building what? Exactly. Exactly. I would like to know what has been built because I don't see shit. He goes on. Then there's a broader group of influential people who think quite deeply about how it is that they're living their lives.

Replace that with invested early and are pumping and dumping to make a fuck ton of money. That's what's happened. That's the second wave. And then it goes on. He goes on. If this second group buys into a coherent argument as to why the major societal shift is to their benefit, they will largely drag along the rest of the population.

And the article sums it up with, the being dragged along is what people really, really resent. And that resentment is becoming a force of its own. Yep. And the third article. The internet is just investment baking now.

And I'm not going to sum up any of this. This is just a great read. And this is basically just saying we cannot let this keep going because basically they want to put everything on the internet as a financial transaction. And that is fucking weird and no way to live your life. True.

True. I mean, what was it? Look at Venmo. I mean, that's all you have to do is look at the case study of Venmo. That's all the blockchain is. It's just another version of Venmo. Yep. Anyway, speaking of NFTs a little bit more, the people over at BuzzFeed, for some strange reason, felt like doxing the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Nah. Yeah. I'm torrent on this one. To some degree, I hate these people, but doxing is fucked up. But it's not really because, I mean, these people are, you know, culturally relevant and newsworthy when you think about it. So, yeah, it's kind of gross. But then again, so are NFTs.

So where do you draw the line? And it kind of points out the whole thing that everybody that's against this stuff is kind of saying. You don't want everything on the blockchain. And when we were able to find out the true identities by going through the blockchain.

Well, doesn't that point out a fatal flaw in the system? Yeah. When, let's have everything anonymous, but record everything. Yeah. I never understood that part of it. I'm like, how is, how, how is this anonymous if all the information is in there for everyone to see?

Yes. Which the next set of stories will drive home. Dan sent us this. A bunch of other people did. And of course, you could not avoid it in the news. A couple arrested for laundering $3.6 billion in Bitcoin. I think this was from, which one was it? The Mount? Bitfinex.

Bitfinex steal. They used some of the Bitcoins to, of course, buy NFTs, which is eventually how they were tracked down and caught. This is Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, who started to make a career dispensing advice and opinions on cryptocurrencies, prospects, and the importance of safeguarding your stash.

Apparently, they decided rather than teaching, they would do the opposite and took advantage of people's foibles and stole a bunch and then tried to launder it. And guess what? The Justice Department apparently got off their asses and did a little research. And because of blockchain and the fact that all your information is out there, they got caught.

They got caught. And the lengths to which the DOJ went to get these guys is pretty incredible. I mean, the fact that these people did, you know, technically most everything right, you know, ran it through multiple exchanges, ran it through different currencies and back again, you know, transferred it to Monero and sent it around the world thrice Wittershins.

And they still got busted. Shows you that, yeah, maybe that anonymity thing is kind of bullshit, like you've always said. But my favorite part of the story has to do with Heather Morgan, the wife of this scenario. She has, I love this article about it, because what was unclear to us at the time was that an even greater crime had played out across Morgan's social media pages, her rap career.

So she apparently performed under the name Rosalcon. Seemingly spent all of her time, she was not allegedly shifting around $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency, shooting very low rent rap videos, which makes you wonder what they were using the money on because they were not using it on production. If you've seen Cutthroat Country, it provides an overview of Morgan's many talents as a rapper, her delivery is tuneless, the bars are cringe, and the accompanying music video isn't much better.

But the best part is that she implicates herself in the exact money laundering scheme she stands accused of carrying out in her lyrics. Spearfish your password, all your funds transferred, which sounds like a banger to me. She sings in the 236 mark of the song. So, awesome.

Yeah. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of folk. Do you? But I have not been able to watch the videos. I think I'm just going to let it go with it. Yeah, don't. Let the cringeworthiness, like, you know. I want it to be a mystery. I don't need to know. Just enjoy the schadenfreude without full knowledge.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to do. So, it's been all over the news that Meta says that they might have to close down Facebook and Instagram if the EU doesn't change their rules on data sharing. Yes, and I think the prevalent points here are what fucking balls to tell a country, you have to change your rules for us, and the better thing is the reaction.

No. Yeah, it's like, okay. Go away. That would be kind of nice is what they said. Now, if we don't change the rules, will you promise to leave the EU? Can we really get you to go? Is it that simple?

Because that would be lovely. Yes. So, called your bluff on that one, Zuckerberg. Totally called the bluff. It was amazing. I love it. It's probably, it's one of the first smiles I've had doing our tech podcast for quite some time. I know. I know. Yeah, and our Border Patrol is now going to start releasing robot dogs into the wild.

Can't wait for that one. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, it's apparently too hot for humans to be out there in the desert heat. So, they're going to put out dogs to look for humans that are out in the desert heat. Okay. It's apparently not hot enough for people who are trying to get in, but for the law enforcement folks riding the border, they say, eh, it's a little too much for us.

I might schvitz. So, bring in the robot dogs. Okay. Hopefully, non-lethal. I'm sure this is not going to go well. No, it's not. Yeah. SpaceX has lost 40 Starlink satellites to a geomagnetic storm. Yay, storm!

Yay, storm! Can we get a few more of you, please? Uh-huh. You got 2,000 to go. Yeah, almost all of the Starlink internet satellites that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried beyond the atmosphere on February 3rd will not reach their intended orbit because a storm took place that had an impact on liftoff, and they're not going to hit the right trajectories.

About 40 of them will reenter or have already entered Earth's atmosphere. In what they are claiming as a win, SpaceX is saying that, look how good our systems are because these deorbiting satellites pose no collision risk, and they will reenter the atmosphere and create no orbital debris.

No satellite parts are expected to hit the ground. Yeah. But thanks for all those carbon emissions for putting your rocket up into space. Although, wait a minute. I don't know if those use carbon. I thought those might be some other kind of jet fuel. Anyway. Yes. Still, they still shot a bunch of shit up that they didn't need to.

They've lost 40. There are still over 2,000 already up there. They are petitioning to get up to 30,000 satellites to provide global internet coverage. Oh, God. And, you know, as we've all been talking about, it's destroying the night sky, urban light pollution, all of that sort of stuff.

They have added what they call sunshades to its satellites in 2020 to make them look less bright. But according to Sky and Telescope, they do look a bit fainter, but they're still visible. So, no. Yeah. But we might have a solution. Grant has sent this article in. It's a Chinese space cleaner.

A Chinese satellite was spotted in late January grabbing another long-dead satellite and days later throwing it into a graveyard orbit 300 kilometers away where objects are less likely to hit spacecraft. So, we've got a little spacecraft out there running around like the little guys in Star Wars.

We'll talk about that later. Yeah. Yeah. So, we'll see. It's a space tug. I wouldn't exactly call it throwing it away. It's just moving it to a less dangerous orbit. Yeah. Throwing it away would be, I don't know, tossing it into the sun, something like that. I don't know. Something like that. Something a little more fun. Yeah.

But, or recycling it, you know, something. But, yeah. Well, I mean, hey, it's a start. It's a start. It's a start. So, yeah. They're just trying to hit that 300 kilometer mark. So, you know, Richard Branson's little space joyride won't hit it. And, of course, you know, we can't just have what is objectively good news because it is the Chinese.

So, the whole rest of the article is, what if their satellite comes and grabs our satellites? Oh, God. What if? What if? I'm so sick of living in. What if Rivian actually made trucks? Come on. But this next one's no joke. What if DARPA decided to take a Blackhawk helicopter and make it pilotless?

Well, worry no longer. They have done it. So, they actually, yeah. It's called the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System. So, this is a thing that they can just basically drop in where a human goes and it can fly the helicopter.

Yeah. And they say that it's so pilots can focus on other priorities during missions rather than flying a whole helicopter. Okay. What was rule number one? We don't put weapons on bots. Well, that is not rule number one, Brian.

Well, it should be. Rule number one is you don't talk about Fight Club. All right. But, yeah. This is going to happen. At least we're getting closer to the Daniel Suarez, you know, Freedom TM demon timeline. Yes. So. I think they need to rebrand. I think that's the real problem here.

They should go for Pink Hawk. Something nicer. Rainbow Hawk. I don't know. Just make it feel more cuddly. Have you ever been in close proximity to one of those things when they're in motion? Either a Blackhawk or a Cobra? Why would I? I don't know if you've ever been.

I have. No, no. And I don't. There's no rainbow color in the world that is not going to make your sphincter clench up and want to run as fast as you can in the other direction. They are the most terrifying machines that we have ever created as far as I'm concerned. So they're neat.

Right. As long as you're. As long as you're. As long as they're not shooting at you. Exactly. Yeah. You see one coming for you. Yeah. It's over. It's just over. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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Media Candy. Brian, I watched a documentary on Netflix called The Tinder Swindler. This is one of those things that I have seen buzzing around. It's definitely gone semi-viral. I have no idea what it is. Am I going to enjoy the schadenfreude from afar?

No. Actually, you're going to want to throw something at your TV. It's basically a guy who is a scam artist who was getting girls to give him money. And then he was using that money on new girls who would then eventually give him money. And then get new girls that would eventually give him money. And so goes the cycle.

I am going to make an off-color joke here that will probably come back to bite me in this new woke culture. Bring it on. Would you call it a pussy scheme? I would. Instead of a Ponzi scheme? Yes. It was absolutely. Yes. His pussy's all the way down.

The problem with this guy is he's free. He's living in Israel, free as a bird, and actually doing business marketing videos now, even though everybody knows who he is. He says he's going to sue Netflix over it, but the long and the short of it is he got away with it.

Sounds like it. So it's very annoying. Yeah, pretty annoying. I have been watching Reacher on Amazon Prime. And they did fix the one problem with the Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher movie series. Have you seen any of those movies?

I have not. It's, yeah, not my thing. Have you read any of the books? Nope, not my thing. Also not your thing. Well, the thing about Jack Reacher is he's supposed to be a giant, and Tom Cruise is not so much. He's a very wee man. He's a very wee man. He wears lifts to reach up to most people.

Yes, that's not to say he's not talented and has balls of steel for all the stunts that he does, but little big man syndrome will not make you six foot five in a tank, which they fixed in Jack Reacher, or the new Reacher series. I love it so far. It's not great. It's actually kind of poorly written and woodenly acted, but it's fun.

It's one of those things that we can pop on and watch one a night, and, you know, it's good. Yep, okay. It's not as good as the Jack Ryan series that they just redid, but it's pretty good. As far as, you know, just popcorn, late night TV. I did finish The Beforeiners season one.

I don't know if I'm going to go on to season two. Okay. It was kind of, it seemed kind of hastily ended on season one, and I don't know if I like the way that it's going. I might if I get really bored, but it's not a, this is not a glowing review of The Beforeiners.

Okay. So, yeah. Sadly enough. I thought it was going someplace, but I think they suffer from Ronald D. Moore syndrome, where they launched the ship, but they didn't know where it was going to land. Yeah, that happens a lot. I'm waiting to see if that's going to happen to the show I'm watching or not.

But speaking of the popcorn, just fun, late night TV, I am all in now on Manifest. I've slid through season one, I'm into season two, and as far as I can tell, it's actually getting better. I'm hoping that they have some sort of landing. We'll see. I'm actually loving the show now.

I'm all in. I like it. In fact, I've gotten past the semi-wooden acting and the somewhat clunky writing, and now my only complaint is the goddamn music stings. They use them too often, and they use the same damn ones all the damn time. Okay. Well, maybe I'll check it out then.

It's not bad, man. I'm really enjoying it. Okay. Okay. Well, that's, you know, compared to my reviews, that's more than I brought to the table. So, hey, I'll give it a shot. Apps and doodads. Well, Apple is buying up some new stuff.

They got a new music startup called Infinite Music Engine. It's basically some AI music, you know, shenanigans where they're supposed to take your heartbeat and they adapt the music on the fly to it. And there was another app that I had for a while called Endle, which used, like, phases of the moon and biometrics from your workouts and all this stuff to create music for you.

Right. And I bought a year's subscription to it, and I listened to it for all of 12 minutes, I believe. So, you know, it was like five bucks a minute by the time I did the math on it. It's just it wasn't great. Yeah. It's not something I really dug. You know, I mean, I get why they want to do it.

The key phrase here, royalty-free soundtracks. That's big. That's big. Because if you're trying to launch a fitness empire and you want to use music, as Peloton knows very well, you've got to pay for that. And you've got to pay a lot for that. And if you can figure out a way that people like to do something that you don't have to pay for, that's great.

I've listened to some of these things, certainly. I can't stand the biking Peloton-style workouts. I have an echelon. And, you know, they just – the music is horrible. And I don't like the people screaming at me and telling me I can reach all my goals all the time. Shut the fuck up and just – I want to ride my bike.

That's all I want to do. So, you know, in theory, something like this sounds great. I like the idea of music dynamically shifting to kind of match the pace that I'm going at. I've listened to some of this stuff. It's crap. You know, just throw on some EDM and you're good.

Like, all you need is Knits or Ebb. Just license Knits or Ebb and you've got the best soundtrack for working out ever. Done. Actually, I beg to differ. There was a Crystal Method one that they did for Nike. Oh, that was good. That was really good. It was 28 minutes long. Oh, I listen to that all the time when I'm going out for walks. It gives you the ramp up, the workout, the cool down.

I think they renamed it – I think the album is called Into the Night Now. No, that's an actual album. I can't remember what it is. A little different one? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because what they did – originally, it was one 28-minute track. And then it disappeared for years. But fortunately, I had the wherewithal to rip it.

Yeah. So I had it. And then it finally came back as an album with tracks that you can get, I believe, on most of the streamers. Yeah, okay. This one's for free. I do like the one tracker. This idea is for free for all of you out there. For Echelon, for Peloton, for Nike. Instead of dumping all this money into this AI bullshit music stuff, why don't you – oh, I don't know – commission actual musicians to do things like that?

Because it was great. I remember that. Yep. Commission Underworld. Commission Nitzereb. Commission all these EDM artists to do 30-minute workout pieces with ramp-ups and hit the right beats and just do that. Pay a musician for once.

No, no, Brian, no. Sorry. That goes way too much into the bottom line. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Another Apple news. Apple source code was gone through on GitHub, apparently, and has references to Reality OS for potential VR AR headsets that have been rumored forever.

We'll see what's coming. So this came out of multiple sources in recent GitHub open source code and App Store upload logs. Of course, this comes with the warning. It could just be a remnant of somebody's pull request from a fake account. So. Okay.

Really doing the due diligence there. Yeah. Must have been slow news week. Okie dokie. Unreality OS. Okay. Adelente wrote in and said, hey, guys, I saw this and thought of you. Thought I remember one of you using Adobe. This is just horrible. Well, we both use Adobe.

And this is just somebody went through the entire sign-up project and shows how they use psychological tricks to try to trick you into a 12-month contract. Yeah. They use dark patterns and things like that. It's an interesting read, but it's one of those things where it's like kind of stuck using it.

You know? What else am I going to do? In the old days, I would just go steal it. But nowadays, nah. Too hard. It's too fucking hard. It's too much work. Besides, I could afford the $9.95 a month or whatever it is for the low package for all I need. Oh, that's $30 a month.

But the thing about it is, it's like nowadays when you go steal it, it's like, what brand of malware would you like with your files from Sweden? That's really the downside. Yeah. Well. And Dan sent in a link as well. He said, signed up for the beta on this new browser called Kagi or Kogi or Kagi or whatever, however it's pronounced.

I haven't finished the review yet, but sounds good so far. Yeah. Just again, I have limited time. I'm not going to use a browser that's in beta. I'm also not going to use a Tesla that's in beta. Yeah. Looks good.

It looks like a browser. You know? It's like, God, after going through all of the different ones, I'm tired. I'm tired. Vivaldi works right now. Yeah. This is a strange one. I don't know if you have this too. If I don't have a browser window open already with a tab open in it and I click on a link, it just opens up to the start page and will not go to the link.

Have you experienced that? No. I don't know what the hell it is. It's really annoying. It's really annoying when I click on a link and if I don't have a Vivaldi window open already. I know most people live with 150 tabs open, but I don't. I'm a very minimalist with my tabs.

So minimalist that the goddamn thing won't launch when I click on a link and like if I'm in Reader or something. It's so annoying. All right. I was wondering if that was just me and apparently it seems to be. Yeah. I was having some weird issue with Vivaldi a while, like maybe two years ago and you weren't having it. So it's, you know, it's a browser.

These things are complicated. They are complicated. But yeah, I think I'll pass on this one. And let us know when you finish the review, Dan. At the library. Ryan, I did finish Quantum of Nightmares, Laundry Files, book 11 by Charles Stross.

I dug it. Cool. I dug it. All right. And on the heels of that, coming on March 1st, we have Escape from Yo-Kai Land, Laundry Files, book 12 by Charles Stross. Well, it's not literally a book. It is a novella. I looked at the runtime on the Audible pre-order and it was an hour and 59 minutes.

I was going to say, that is fast for him to put out another book. Yeah, exactly. And Quantum of Nightmares was about 13 hours, I believe. So that gives you an idea of the difference in length. But it is about Bob. What about Bob? Bob is back in this one.

I'm going to need a Netflix-style recap because I don't even remember what the fuck has happened in that world. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. Because I was trying to think what the hell happened to Bob, too. And I'm like, something about taking over the other guy, the Eater of the Dead's job.

Something. I forgot. I don't remember. Something, something. Yeah. Well, I am still working my way through Termination Shock. I, as I discussed last time, had turned the corner and discovered that I actually really liked the book. I still really like the book. But, you know, even getting halfway through the book to discover I like the book means I still have 700,000 pages left to get to the end of the book.

So I am at, I think, 80% now, according to Kindle. So by next week, I hope to be able to say I finished. So we'll see. Good luck, my friend. Yeah. Good luck. And Raph wrote in and said, I really love this book, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

We have the link in the show notes. And it says, maybe you can post your all-time favorite books, ideally sci-fi. To which I say, once every year or two, we get this exact same request. And once every year or two, we've gone down the road and set up something, including like an Amazon book club thingy.

And then we did some sort of thing where I went through and posted a bunch of stuff. And then we did some other thing on social media. And then maybe three people look at it and comment, and basically there's zero reward for a lot of effort to do that. So we like Dune. Well, Brian likes Dune.

Yeah. There you go. I'm looking up this guy, Blake Crouch. He wrote the Wayward Pine series. So that's why I know his name. Because I watched the TV series, at least the first season. Right. Yeah, because they did a second one, and I was just like, nah, pass, hard pass.

I got through the first one. It was a slog to get through the first one. So I'm glad you liked it. But yeah, I don't know. I would say Diamond Age. If you want my favorite book, sci-fi based. Old Neil Stevenson. I love Dune.

We like the Bobiverse series for relatively new stuff. We like the Laundry Files with Bob, the first eight or nine. Foundation, I think, is solid. Still can't get to that one. Was it the Big End Trilogy by William Gibson? I love those.

The Case Pollard books. Yeah. Old Arthur C. Clarke, you know, 2001, 2010, are actually really great books. That whole series is really good. You know, there's a whole ton of stuff out there. We talked a lot about it. So you'll just have to do your listening. There's 539 episodes of us talking about books.

I'm sure you can pick something out.

Security? Ha! We're joined yet again by our friend Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan. And finally, he's the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

How you doing, Dave? I'm doing just dandy. Good to be back. How's everybody else doing? Peachy keen. So let's get into what one of our listeners has dubbed the Siffy section of the show, since we stopped talking about security and just talk about Star Wars. The Boba Fett season and or show finale we don't really know has aired, and I found it colossally underwhelming.

Yeah, you know, we watched the show. We were very excited to sit down and enjoy it. And when it was done, my son Jack turned to me and he said, well, that was kind of silly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was the big battle, the war, just involved a bunch of the alien guys showing up, getting shot, and then a couple more alien guys wandered through the frame, got shot, then a couple more alien guys.

And then the whole Boba Fett riding the rancor just looked bad and silly and stupid. And the Mandalorian, just as you predicted, ended up with Yoda in his little pod. And off they went, and no Luke Skywalker was to be seen, and we don't really know what happened there.

And we don't know if the show's coming back or if it's now just going to be a mishmash of plots that go through the Mandalorian. Who the hell knows what's going to happen now? Let's hope it doesn't come back. Let's just hope. Well, I suspect it will, because I'm sure it generated good numbers, enough numbers to bring it back.

So that's the number one priority there. You know, it's amazing to me how small it felt. Very small. Very, very small. Yes. And the entire village, the entire village was supposed to come and help, and the entire village was eight people.

Yeah, exactly. It's like they ran out of budget. Right. Yeah. Right. And the Vespa gang showed up with their little pea shooters. Yep. Pew, pew. Now, I don't know if you guys noticed this, but there's a problem with the editing in the action sequences.

They're just off. The timing is off. They stay for a beat too long, and they come in a beat too early. Because all of the fight sequences, there's these pauses that shouldn't be there in a well-timed, well-edited action sequence. And it started with the Vespa gang showing up.

It's like, it doesn't work. I guess it kind of started even, I think it might have been this whole show then, now that I think about it, the fight scenes with the sand people, when he's learning how to use the stick. Nice callback with the stick at the end of this episode. Yeah, that was nice. That was the only nice callback that I thought.

But the timing on the editing has just been off for an action series, I thought. And it has bugged me the entire time. And it was really prevalent this time, I thought. Yeah. And look, I know Wookiees are strong, but how many shots from a blaster can a Wookiee actually take? Yeah.

Seriously. I mean, my God. That guy should have been dead. And the poor guy, Marie. Everybody survives except for the poor pig guys who fell off a cliff. Yeah. I like that Wookiee character. I think he's pretty badass.

And so I hope we see more of him. Yeah. He's a suitable sidekick. I wonder, you know, are we going to see at some point Han Solo and Chewbacca? Will they make an appearance? It's certainly possible. Only if they bring back the guy from Solo, because Harrison Ford ain't going to do it.

No. No. I mean, I guess they could deep fake him the way they did Luke. Yeah. Speaking of, we don't need the actors anymore. Because, yeah, it turns out Luke is no, there's no Hamill to be found, even in the voice. So that was, that was interesting.

I thought they at least would have had him do his own voice, but guess not. They just got an AI to do it for us. Yeah. You'd think he would, he would have modeled the performance. If nothing else, they could base the AI off of him doing a performance. Well, maybe I guess they don't need that.

Yeah. They kind of, they based it off all of his previous performances, all of the ADR work that he did for Star Wars and books on tape. You know, they had a wealth to pull from. But, you know, instead of, you know, I don't know, writing him a check. Let's just. I mean, you know, it's. It was in the credits.

It's quite the callback to the software that we were talking about a couple of years back where, Dave, you were talking about, well, what if we just feed every single podcast I've ever done through this thing? Will it get my voice right? I guess we have the answer to that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's headed that way for sure. I don't know.

My son was telling me that for the Mark Hamill stuff this time around, ILM actually hired one of the YouTubers who had done a better job than they had in one of the, you know, previous, I guess in the finale of The Mandalorian.

Yeah. Someone did a better job on a YouTube channel. They hired that guy? That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I saw him fix it like when the finale and he came up with a video where he fixed all the bad stuff. And I thought it was pretty good. So I'm glad he got a job out of it.

That's good. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, sporting of them to say, hey, this is better. Let's use it. Right. I mean, that's the way it should work. Yep. Yeah. Keep these kids off the street instead of making, you know, low rent porn. That's right. Or, you know, riding around on a Vespa with little pee-poo guns.

Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. I mean, whatever, you know, I'm going to watch whatever they put out there. Yeah. So that is my fate. But it was not an impressive finale to this season. I guess in a way this finale was representative.

The unevenness of this finale was representative of this series as a whole. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a pretty simple algebra for it. The less Boba, the better. That seems to be the way it works. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody take the book of Boba back to the library where it belongs.

Still no book, by the way. Yeah. No book. No book. It's true. There is no book. Hmm. Hey, but we do get Obi-Wan Kenobi, May 25th. Well, I am cautiously optimistic and very excited about this. Easily. I mean, the best actor in the Star Wars fold at the moment, returning to take on a character we know an awful lot about.

I'm excited. I think this is going to be really good. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Again, optimistic. I guess my optimism for Ewan McGregor is a bit tempered by my caution from, what's the name of the other guy, the Darth Vader guy?

Oh, Hayden. Hayden Christensen. Hayden Christensen. Yeah. Harvey Menfringen's engine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. He just doesn't seem to fit inside the Vader costume to me. Like, Vader was a big guy. And, you know, that's because of, I suppose, the prosthetics and all that kind of stuff.

But I don't know. It just never- Yeah, he's supposed to be a towering force. Yeah. Never believed him inside the suit. Yeah. So, we'll see. I mean, again, I'm going to watch it. So, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my hope for that one is Obi-Wan has a long storied history.

I don't know how much of that history, I think none of that history is canon anymore. But as we've seen, he does, they do seem to like to bring in stuff and make it canon eventually. And Obi-Wan has a big long history with, what's his face? Darth Maul. So, my hope is we see a little Obi-Wan-Darth Maul battles.

We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was the worst waste of a great character in episode one. It's like, the best guy you've made in 20 years and you kill him in the first movie. Great. I have to say I'm a little Tatooined out.

Yeah. Yeah. We could use, I mean, it's an entire universe and we just keep shooting in a desert with mud huts. Right. Yeah. Right. Somebody said, I saw on Twitter, one of my pals said that, you know, for a far off part of the universe that no one ever goes to, that planet sure does see a lot of action.

Yeah. Yeah, seriously. Well, I do have to apologize because the people who are cutting down trees in my neck of the woods have decided to, now is a perfect time. So, if you hear some tree cutting in the background, that's what that is. Dave, I did want to dive into Prepper Corner for a second before we move along.

Sure. And this was driven home to me this morning as I turned on the TV and Laguna Beach was completely on fire. Yeah. I was thinking about you. There's a drill that I've done every year, except before, years before COVID, because when COVID hits, it's like, whatever, let it burn.

The 15-minute fire drill, literally. Don't tell your family about it. Pick a time where you have at least like, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes that nobody has anything planned that you can sneak this in. And then do a fire drill, a literal fire drill where you have to have everything ready to go and in your car, packed in the seats in 15 minutes.

See how it goes. See how much your family can hate you. Exactly. See how many family photos are left behind and pets are left to burn. That's the, if you, if you really want to, you know, put your feet to the fire, do that.

That will show you exactly, you know, where your holes are, what you need to shore up. And then you should get it down to five minutes. I can tell you right now, I will be sitting in my car by myself for about 45 minutes. Okay. Not really the goal of the exercise, but.

At least I know I'll survive, right? Right. Yeah. Sit out there listening to some podcasts. That's right. No, it's a, it's a really good way to, to test your, you know, test your preparedness. Because around here, we, that's what we get to leave. It's a, you know, if it's, if it's coming over the hill, you got 15 minutes to pack up and get out.

So now when, when you guys were kids, did you actually do fire drills at your house? No, just the school. Just the school. Yeah. Yeah. Us too. Just the school. Yes. And annoyingly in the businesses I worked in, in high rise buildings, those were the best. Working on the 26th floor.

Thanks guys. Right. When you're fixing some code and you just had a brainstorm about it and you're not going to remember it, time to go downstairs. Yep. Or you just did a launch and it's, it's like, you know, the servers are creaking and crumbling and you're trying to figure it out. And then the lights come on. I will admit sometimes we did hide under the desk while they cleared the floor and got back to work.

But what are you going to do? We had one here in this building and in the midst of doing an interview, it went off. And the fire alarms in this building are no joke. They have to be at least 120 decibels. It was, I had, I could not leave my ears uncovered.

It was painful. And I guess that's how they get you out is just make it so that you can't stay in the building. You've got an MRAD in everybody's office. Yeah. I mean, yeah, really. I mean, I need some of those workman's headphones that, you know, the noise can't, the noise, just the physical noise blocker ones.

Right. It was awful. If that doesn't make you leave, then they play the brown tone. Right. They lock all the bathroom doors and put the port-a-potties outside and then just play the brown note and everybody's got to go. Right. There's a few stragglers skulking out of the building with their stained pants.

Exactly. But since we've been talking about prepping and my car was up for renewal, I ended up changing up my vehicular strategy. I did have a really nice Explorer, like a loaded Explorer, but my lease was up.

Right. And the option was, you know, turn it back in for nothing or buy it. And they gave me, you know, some option to get some money out of it because, you know, they knew it was worth more than what I could pay for to get it out of the lease, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But they had this really nice red Jeep or orange Jeep. It's a red-orange sitting on the driveway at the dealership for a couple of weeks now. And I drive by it every day and I'm like, I kind of like that thing. So, of course, I go in and I do a test drive. And, of course, I really like the thing.

And ended up coming home with the least technologically advanced vehicle that I have owned since 1989. Wow. Look, I used to have a Jeep. It was by far my favorite car I've ever owned. It was, yeah, the least comfortable and least technologically advanced car I've ever owned, but the absolute most fun to drive.

Yeah. Yeah. This thing is actually pretty comfortable. I got to give it that. It's a Willys. I got a Willys Jeep. Like, I think it's a Wrangler Unlimited, but it's jacked up. It's got big Falcon shocks on it. It looks stupid. It really does.

It looks like no car that you would ever see me in. People are like, they're just staring at it when they see it on the street. But, to your prepper concerns, you will be able to drive over the masses. Yep. The zombie apocalypse. You will just drive right over them. Yep. Yep.

And I will be doing it alone. Point A to point B in a straight line. Yes. And I will be doing it alone because it's so tall, there's no way I'm getting the dogs in there. At least Bam Bam. Poor Bam Bam's going to have to run alongside. And it's funny because our friend of the show, Brian, I was talking to him because when I was talking about trading my car and I'm like, I can't get anything higher than this one that I have now because Bam Bam won't be able to jump in it.

And then when I got the Jeep, I'm like, well, fuck it. It's daddy's car. She's staying home because it is fun. It is just a ton of fun. But I do miss heated seats and safety measures like, you know, collision detection and things like that. Yeah. Because it's big. The knowledge that your car won't tip over if you take a quarter too tight.

Yeah. Yeah. It does have roll control, though. So there's that. But it also comes with a monstrous roll cage. So this thing looks zombie prepper. You know, I just need to slap on some cans and things like that and some, you know, put a deer head on the front and I'm ready to go.

But I don't have a whole lot of experience with Jeeps. But I did have a friend who had one and somehow we ended up taking a couple hour road trip. And I have to say that cured me of my desire for Jeeps because at highway speed, we literally, we had to yell at each other to hear each other.

It was just definitely loud in there from all the tire noise. They are not comfort vehicles. No. This is not a vehicle that I would take on a cross country adventure. Back country, yes. Cross country, hell no. The only other thing I will say about Jeep, and you probably are already aware of this, Jason.

They are awesome cars. But about the time that you hit the five-year mark, sell it. Okay. Because that's when they start to fall apart. Well, I only got three years because this is a 2020. I got it used. So, yeah. And they did such a good job at the dealership with their new car scent spray that they hose them down with.

It wasn't until two days later that I realized that the previous owner had been a smoker. And you found a few french fries down in the end. Pretty much. Well, congratulations. Thanks. Fun car. Yeah, it's so much fun.

I can only drive it for like 10 minutes a day because still post-stroke, I can't drive that far. But someday, I'll make it around the block twice. And it turned out to actually be cheaper than my Explorer. So, I actually saved money and got a midlife crisis mobile.

Perfect. Well, good for you. Yeah. And in no small part, the only reason I'm bringing up here in Prepper Corner is no small part is because of the discussions we've been having. Damn it. You got it back in my head. Well, and to your point, you had a fire alarm this morning.

So, not a crazy decision. No, I got woken up by my roommate going, Laguna's on fire. Laguna's on fire. Run, run. Laguna is not exactly around the corner from you. No, it's not. All of Los Angeles will have to burn to the ground before the fire gets to you.

Exactly. There's a long way to go. We could walk to San Francisco by the time the fire got here. Ah, okay. So, we talked last week about the IRS and ID.me, and that was the shortest lived story I've seen in a long time. It was fast. That was a fast turnaround.

So, no more ID.me. That's pretty much – everybody was up in arms. They're like, hey, you shouldn't be doing that. And I guess they said, okay, we're not. We won't. Done. Next. Yeah. Yeah, I think Senator Wyden kind of led the charge on that.

And he's the usual suspect for these sorts of things. So, yeah. I'm surprised IRS didn't dig in, but good for them. Yep. And something that we've been talking about a lot here is the crypto and the NFTs and blah-da-blah-da-da-da-da and how anonymity is not really a thing when it comes to the blockchain apparently.

And I have said from day one that these crypto millionaires who love to talk about it online are really, really stupid, and they should kind of watch their back. Well, as we've said so many times, told you so. People are starting to get kidnapped and robbed because of their crypto.

They're now being kidnapped and robbed over a drawing of an ape. There you have it. Yep. There you go. Please, please, somebody kidnap Paris Hilton next. That's all I'm going to say. What a world. What a world. But it's going to keep happening. So, yeah, take some of that filthy Bitcoin that you have and hire some security.

That's all I've got to say. And maybe don't crow about it online. Yeah. Just a thought. That's the better part. Shut the hell up already. So, yeah, there you go. Speaking of Senator Wyden, Twitter has informed him that it is transitioning away from using Biddo AG services to deliver 2FA codes to its users.

This is a Swiss tech firm. They're an established provider of automated text messages that many big companies have been using to send out not just 2FA codes, but also sales promotions and appointment reminders. Unfortunately, one of its co-founders operated a secret surveillance operation that helped governments locate users through their phones.

Ka-ching! Company COO Ilya Goralik allegedly sold surveillance technology firms access to the networks, allowing them to track people using their mobile devices. These companies then, in turn, contracted with government agencies. Aside from Twitter, clients also include Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, Tencent, and Alibaba.

Basically, everyone. Former clients. Former clients, one would assume, yes. So, I mean, again, it just goes to show it doesn't matter how solid your technology is. If there's a bad actor, particularly if they happen to be running the company, you're fucked.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. The supply chain is long. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I just want to close with this fun little story here. It turns out some folks who drive Mazdas in Seattle found that their entertainment systems were bricked simply because they listened to a particular radio station.

That NPR, man. I mean, come on. Wouldn't it have been more poetic had it been some sort of heavy metal station or something like that, right? Yeah. Imagine someone listening to the soothing dulcet tones of their local NPR station, and they say, we'll be right back after this.

And then the system goes dark, and that's it. The infotainment system went, finally, I can't take another one of those music beds. I'm bricking myself. Right, right. The infotainment system commits suicide. Yeah, dulcet suicide. Yeah, but it's a fascinating thing.

Now, folks who track these sort of things, you may have heard, I don't know, it was over a year ago, that some folks found that there were episodes of the podcast 99% Invisible that were crashing Mazda infotainment systems. And they weren't bricking them, but they were crashing them.

If you played certain episodes of that podcast, your system would crash and reset. And I think they tracked it down to the actual characters 99% caused some sort of problem in the system, the way the system interpreted it.

Yeah, they were probably trying to, like, de-encode it. It was probably, like, you know, HTML entity encoded or expected it to be, and then it wasn't, and then it, you know, retranslated it to something else, I bet. Yeah. In this case, evidently, the radio station sent out, like, an icon image.

You know how radio stations will put out a little? And they put out the image without a file extension, and that was all it took for the Mazda system to find itself in an endless loop. That's some good code right there. That's some good code.

Oh, my gosh. I know, right? Now, I drive a Mazda. Mine is outside of the range of model years that end up being an issue here. But I will say that the one disappointment I have with my car, and I do love my car, is the infotainment system.

It sucks. Hey, at least yours works. Don't look at it. It works. It works in the mouth. Oh, it's so slow. It's just so pokey slow. But Mazda, to their credit, has said that if anyone finds that their system is bricked, that they will do a free replacement of it.

Evidently, there's some board in there that they need to swap out. Yeah, absolutely. As they absolutely should, yeah. Now, supply chain issues mean that these parts are not easy to come by. So there's that. But I don't know.

I found this is both fascinating but also kind of hilarious. Everything. Everything is run by a computer now. That's the craziest thing. Not my Jeep. Not your Jeep. There's a little family of squirrels living under the hood.

That's right. As long as I keep them in nuts, I'm going forever. Yeah. I mean, I remember like 20 years ago, my dad complaining that like you can't just pop open the hood on a new car anymore and tinker with it. You got to take it somewhere and they plug it into a computer. And I mean, that's our reality now.

And it's just it's funny because we just keep finding all these weird little things that happen with just slightly bad coding. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about like clocks that couldn't set properly because they didn't code correctly for GPS that it was receiving and like all these weird things.

All the bad code is coming to light. Yeah, we still made it through 1999. Yes, we did. Oh, well. We did. Mostly because of Prince. God rest his soul. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Nick. Welcome, Nick. Thanks, Nick. At PayPal, we've got David. Oh, boy. I'm always bad at pronouncing these. Wu Wan. I'll just go with that. Breed, Jens, Mark, Ralph. You'd think I'd be better with the Chinese wife who speaks, you know, Cantonese around the house.

Yeah, you'd think. You'd think. But I'm horrible. Yeah, over at our tip jar, we've got Linda, John, Daryl, Jeff, Andrew, and Anne. Woo-hoo. We actually got some reviews this week. Andreas, first, is a five-star rating. Why not? Just as you take a trip to my home country for free movies and or TV shows, I listen to your pod ad-free in the same country.

To Brian, good for you that you embrace the culture of Canada. To Jason, I wish you a great recovery and good luck with the new show on the tube. I am going to watch it for free with no ads. And yes, I will add to the tip jar someday. Not today, but someday. I do like it when people tell you that they're stealing your stuff for free, but someday we'll give you some money.

Eh, you know, someday's better than no day. Yep. And JW4847 came in with a five-star. Says, great tech show with sci-fi, Siffy, sprinkled in. Siffy. Siffy. Jason and Brian are amazing hosts delivering great tech content.

I especially love Jason's detail to the quality of the podcast that they produce, as there are many podcasts out there that sound like crap. They are informed and do their research and don't fly by the seat of their pants for the most part. Little you know, my friend. They're buying it, Jason. They're buying it. They bought it.

My favorite part is the Siffy. Sorry. No, wait. Security section with Dave. You guys make me laugh every week. Keep up the good work. Well, we shall. We shall. And I do want a huge, huge, massive shout-out to all of the donators to the Jason Get Well Fund. I haven't written anybody back yet because PayPal, when they send me the emails, do not put your return address in.

So I have to go to PayPal and scrape them and find them, and then I will email you back. But one of the interesting things that comes out of stroke recovery, which they tell you in the books, is we have half the energy of normal people, yet everything we do takes twice as much energy.

So I'm running on quarter impulse most of the time, so I don't have a lot of gas in the tank. Once I get a little more gas in the tank, I will write back to everybody who has sent something in, and I appreciate it so fucking much, guys. Thank you all to the ladies and gents who have sent in.

It really, really helps. So much appreciated. Yes. Thank you, everybody, for doing that, and thank you for separating it and thus making our finances a bit easier. We appreciate that. A little bit easier, yes. Yep. And I want to give a shout-out to Travis, who basically sent me a short novella about firearms and whatnot and their legality in Canada.

I appreciate all that information. Thank you so much. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFellippo. 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.

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