543: Doin’ a Little Off-Roading

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. Brian, I was thinking this week as I was watching the news and hanging out on the discords. For kids these days, these DAO things, the DAOs, I kind of get a feeling that it's this generation's BBS.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations? Yes, the DAOs. Because I've been hearing just so, so many, so many stories about the DAOs. You know, these are the people that tried to buy the Constitution and all that crap. Yes, yes, yes. And just hearing these kids talk about it and the technology behind it and like setting them up and just all this stuff.

I can see that glint in their eyes like when we would talk about our BBSs back in the day. And, yeah. So, you know, I can't begrudge them the fun that they're having. I just wish they weren't doing it with everybody's money. That's all. Yeah, we didn't involve money in this or trying to buy the Constitution.

Yeah, we were just trying to run more phone lines. That's all. That was our big money grab. Trading wares. Yes. It's always how you snuffed out the, or not snuffed out, but smoked out the new guy if he called it Juarez. Yes.

He really got a Juarez. Oh, man. So, speaking of money and the kids these days, I love this. This guy, Robert Armijo, he got ripped off. He got ripped off bad. And he is filing suit against OpenSea.

It looks rare and the company behind the board, Apes. Okay. Because he got phished and his stuff got stolen. Uh-huh. And, you know, this is one of those things where it's kind of worth it to go a little bit deeper and read the actual lawsuit.

Mm-hmm. I made it to page eight. I made it to page eight. Mm-hmm. But it's just fantastic, these lawyers trying to explain to the court what an NFT is and why it is actually worth anything. It's pretty fun. That is listening in to my wife on a day-to-day basis.

Okay. As a lawyer for a music company trying to explain exactly what is going on, which is basically, you know, nothing. Nothing. You buy a link to something. Is there any mention in this lawsuit about right-clicking and trying to suit the people that invented that?

I do not believe so. I do not believe so. Yes. Look, I mean, you know, you got phished and your NFT got stolen, but luckily you can right-click to get it back. Exactly. I don't know what all the kerfuffle's about, what all the hubbub's going on.

Well, the kerfuffle and the hubbub is he has lost his exclusive right to something that is not exclusive at all. But the only value is in the fact that he can claim he has exclusive rights to this. So now he can no longer claim he has the exclusive right because somebody has stolen the not exclusive right to have something that he never had anyways.

You know, he can put a screenshot of the time that it was that he did own the NFT. And then he could make an NFT of that and then buy that. Yes. Uh-huh. Yep. I'm so dumb. Oh, God. Hey, man, I'm just, Brian, we're all going to make it.

We're all going to make it. It's okay. Yeah, we're going to make it because we didn't buy any. And you also didn't buy any of the AP's NFTs. We were talking about the AP on the last episode and how stupid they were for doing what they were doing. And finally, someone over there got to somebody that needed to be gotten to, and they pulled the plug on that one.

And it wasn't a rug pull, but a plug pull. Well, that was a dumb idea. Shaming does still work, it seems. And we're going to see if shaming the oligarchs is going to work. We've got a lot of stories about that stuff coming up. But this is a follow-up on Jack Sweeney, the 19-year-old kid who did the Twitter account for Follow Elon Musk's Private Jet, which is actually quite a fun account to follow, I've got to say.

It's kind of neat to see where Elon at dot com. So now he's basically taken his bot and put it on to the Russian oligarchs looking for their aircraft and yachts. This is a ballsy move because Elon Musk, Bill Gates, not going to kill you.

These guys, they might. They just might. Yeah. But still, fun to watch. Yep. I mean, there's a certain amount of schadenfreude joy that I'm getting from opening the news these days and finding out yet another oligarch billionaire has had his yacht confiscated.

Yep. So good times. And just some long, long, long time follow-up. 10,000 steps. We've heard 10,000 steps matter. We've heard 10,000 steps don't matter. We've heard 5,000 steps is good. We've heard 10,000 steps is not enough.

You need 15,000 to 20,000 steps a day. Scientists finally actually did a study. And this is a long-term one. This has been going on for 11 years. So this research was recently published in JAMA Network Open. It followed 2,110 middle-aged adults who had worn a step-counting fitness device beginning in 2005 or 2006.

So that's a pretty decent study. What did they find out? Well, unsurprisingly, getting more exercise is good. Derp. Okay. 6,000 steps is better than 5,000. And 5,000 beats 4,000 for health outcomes.

However, I mean, that's the no-shit Sherlock portion of it. But what they did find out, and this is interesting, they didn't find anything particularly special about the 10,000-step number specifically. And as we've talked about before, that came entirely from a Japanese marketing campaign, the 10,000 steps, because it looked good and it sounded good.

So nothing special about that number. But what they did find is going much beyond it brought no additional health benefits at all. So there's, like, next to no point in walking more than 10,000 steps, except, of course, you're getting more exercise and you're going to lose weight, which is good.

Yep. And your brain works better and it's nice outside and things like that. But they did find that 7,000 steps seems to be the inflection point, that you want to definitely hit 7,000 steps a day. Okay. What's that in eggs? Because if they figured out how many steps that we've got, I need to know how many eggs.

What's my egg limit? 7,000 eggs as well. I can have 7,000 eggs? Yes, yes. It's quite interesting. So if you hit 7,000 steps a day, you have reduced your chance of premature death by 50% to 70%, which is significant. So I would tell you, you know, just in terms of health purposes, if you've been thinking about this and if you're getting under 7,000 steps a day, hit your 7,000.

Because 50% to 70% chance of reduced premature death, I will get off my ass for that. Yeah, yeah. So that's interesting because I find it hard to not hit 7,000 steps in a day, you know? And I'm not exactly what you call, you know, Frankie Fitness over here.

No, but you've got dogs and stuff like that. That's true. You have things that keep you out and about. You're not sitting and playing video games all day long. Like for me, it's super easy to hit 7,000 steps too. But, you know, I walk when I go into my office. I now have a four-story house and I'm going up and down steps all day.

I walk my kid to school. I go pick him up and walk him back home. It's pretty easy to hit 7,000 steps a day for me too. But, you know, believe it or not, the chunky, grumpy old geeks live relatively active lifestyles. Yeah, that's amazing. It's amazing. Out of all the people, we were probably voted most likely to wake and bake and not get out of bed and play video games all day.

At least I was, probably, I'm guessing. So that was unexpected. But here's another unexpected thing. And this is a little bit of an older article that I missed. It's over at Gizmodo. It's called, Bitcoin's inequality problem is putting the dollar to shame.

And it's very interesting because everybody talks about the one percenters in the United States and down with the billionaires, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it turns out Bitcoin is just a little bit worse when it comes to wealth consolidation because out of the 27% of Bitcoin in circulation, it is owned by 0.01% of the buyers.

Wow, the 0.1, the 0.01 percenters. Yeah. Yes. And they own 27%. If you think that they can't just get together and say, let's move the market today, then you're crazy. And they do, I'm sure.

And they do. I am sure. I know in the old days, you know, we've seen it. So, yeah. So this whole cryptocurrency thing, I think, is not turning out the way people think it was supposed to turn out, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, it's definitely not. Yeah. Web3, NFT, crypto.

You know, these are the three horsemen of the apocalypse, as far as I'm concerned right now. None of these things are good. In the news.

Brian, I thought this was some interesting news. Amazon is planning to sell digital advertising space inside of its physical stores. Like, they didn't have enough. Throw up a TV and run ads on it, basically. Apparently. Okay. Apparently. Probably specific to you, I bet, too.

Because, you know, once you go in the store, you're tracked. Right. And they know who you are because it's in the app and all that. So maybe you'll get your own customized, you know, what was the Tom Cruise movie? Minority Report. Minority Report style ads. Yeah. But I thought that was an interesting turn for them to do, especially when I saw the next article, which is that they are closing 68 of their physical stores, which is most of them.

So, you know, the Amazon bookstore, the four-star store, their pop-ups, all going away. Okay. So, I don't know where they're planning. I don't think the right hand is talking to the left hand on this one. Well, what stores remain will have digital ads in them?

Very funny. Right. Apparently, the Amazon Fresh store is still going to be there. So I can go get advertised to there if I want to. All right. Well, last time I was in an Amazon Fresh store and I looked over at my NFT of a milk crate or a milk carton, I found out that somebody is missing, Jason. Who dat?

Satish Kumbani, the founder of crypto trading platform BitConnect, who was charged last week with defrauding investors of $2.4 billion in a Ponzi scheme. I don't think they need to add Ponzi scheme anymore. Just say crypto trading platform. That's the same thing.

Yes, exactly. Yes. So, the SEC is in a bit of a bind because they have to serve the 36-year-old entrepreneur, they should put that in quotes, with his court papers. But they can't find him because he's left the country. As one does when one steals $2.4 billion.

Yeah. Yeah. He should have talked to the oligarchs, though. I think he's going to find that $2.4 billion ain't going to get you what it used to get you. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be a bit of a problem. So, yeah. I mean, we're, you know, Ukraine and Russia at war. Been going on for the last week.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. What are we going to say about that? But we have an awful lot of tech headlines as they relate to this war. So, I'm just going to run through a bunch of them here. Apple has halted sales of all of its products in Russia. Facebook will be demoting Russian state media across its entire platform.

Demoting, not removing. Meta blocks Russian state media from running ads worldwide. You can't run ads. And we'll demote you. Yeah, better. TikTok follows fate. Oh, okay. So, Engadget, I've got an issue with your headline here. TikTok follows Facebook in blocking RT and Sputnik in the EU.

Facebook has not blocked RT and Sputnik. They have demoted RT and Sputnik. YouTube blocks RT and Sputnik channels across Europe. Reddit has decided to hide the thread for Russia from search and recommendations due to misinformation.

Again, not removing, just hiding it. Which, fair enough, because I'm sure plenty of people use it for other things, not just misinformation. Netflix is refusing to carry Russian state TV channels. Microsoft is also banning Russian state media from its platform. The company is also working to spot cyber attacks and all that sort of stuff, because Microsoft does really good work in that area.

And they're doing it. Let's see. You've added one here yourself. Crypto Billionaire Pussy Riot, joint effort to give Ukrainians money. Yes, the crypto is strong now with the Ukrainians. Yep. And a hat tip to Barrett here. Pornhub cock blocks Russian users. Yes, they have banned people coming in from Russia and put up a message of solidarity with Ukraine.

So, well done, Pornhub. Yes, unfortunately, Twitter has decided to fight back with that one. And if you go to Snopes.com, you find out that the Pornhub block never happened, sadly. Well, that's unfortunate, because that would have happened. It was fun while it lasted. Yes. It was fun while it lasted. But speaking of dicks, crypto exchanges are refusing to freeze Russian accounts, as Ukraine has asked.

So major crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, are refusing a request by the Ukraine to freeze all Russian accounts, saying that doing so would harm civilians and be counter to their ideals. To unilaterally decide to ban people's access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists, a Binance spokesperson told CNBC.

That is what we call saying the quiet part out loud. You are correct. Letting ogliarchs, criminals, and authoritarian governments weasel around international sanctions and financial blocks put in place to stop their criminal war actions is exactly the reason why crypto exists.

You are correct, sir. All righty. Now, on the heels of that one, I find this one, I got to throw this one in the show notes, because I found this on the loo this morning. And I just, I had a little tear fill up my eye. I was laughing so hard. Senators ask if Russia can use cryptocurrencies to skirt sanctions.

Brian. Do I have to go any farther than that? Nope. Yeah, that's it. Okay. Leaving that there.

Media candy. Well, since you reminded me last week that Star Trek Discovery had returned from their hiatus slash let's stretch Star Trek out so that there's always a Star Trek new episode coming along, so I never get to cancel my Paramount+. I did go back and watch all of them.

The finale comes out this week. I haven't seen that one yet. They managed to almost kind of save the show a little bit. A little bit? I've got to say. A little bit. It's still not great. It's still probably my least favorite Star Trek show ever, even, like, I like lower decks more.

But they came back from the, even the computer has feelings and needs a therapist to actually do some decent action and a decent plot. Now, of course, they're basically just retreading, you know, the Star Trek movie where Kirk finds God past the end of the universe.

But whatever. At least I didn't hate watch it. That's something. That's something, I guess. Yeah. I mean, not much. Come on. And fingers crossed, by the time you hear this, the first episode of Star Trek Picard's second season will have aired.

Please, please don't be stupid. It's so weird. Last night I went to go sit back and I was going to catch up on the end of Picard season two because I could have sworn that there were two full seasons of that show. And no, there's just one. Just the one. Yeah.

I thought there were two seasons of that show. We will be getting three because as part of the promotional process for Picard coming out, I did see that they shot seasons two and three simultaneously. So we are guaranteed a third season. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that too because I was trying to figure out why I couldn't find Star Trek or Picard season two.

Right. Because I'm an idiot. Yep. Time. She's funny that way. She's very funny that way. Yes. And the Marvel Netflix shows that we all love, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, not so much some of the other ones, but those two are really good. Punisher was fantastic. Punisher was very good.

Okay. So there was only one bad one. Yeah. I can't remember what it was called right now. That's how bad it was. Yeah. The white guy. Yeah. What was that? The white Kung Fu guy. Yeah. Yeah. No good. Okay. That's all I got. They're all moving over to Disney Plus, which is, of course, no surprise as they own the rights to all of that sort of stuff.

So they've worked out some sort of deal with Netflix. They will be there, as you imagine, or, you know, Disney Plus, a family-friendly thing. And these are somewhat darker content. Definitely these are the most violent of anything in the MCU as far as I'm concerned. Well, I mean, I guess not if you count destroying CGI stuff.

A lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. Does killing cartoons count? Yeah, that depends. So they will be—when this appears, starting in the U.S. on March 16th, there will be first time you sign in. From that point onward, you'll be asked to update your parental controls just to make sure that when your kid grabs the remote to go watch Encanto for the 7,000th time, they won't see Jessica Jones beating the shit out of someone.

Yep. Well, that's good, at least, I guess. Yeah. I'm actually excited about that. I'd go back and re-watch Jessica Jones. I really like that show. And Daredevil. But here's the point. It's like, okay, when these things move sideways from platform to platform, does anybody really care? Because everybody's got all the platforms now.

It's like, if you really gave a shit about Jessica Jones, you could have watched it at any point in time up until now. This move actually does nothing to, you know, up the value of the Jessica Jones that was already available to you this morning. It's just consolidating the MCU in one place.

Yeah, something that you generally hate. Yes. I only like the MCU when dusted by Netflix dust. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Super pumped. The tale of Uber on this new show on Showtime.

I had a really hard time with it because, you know, I've been through the Silicon Valley meat grinder. And I know how a lot of meetings in Silicon Valley go. Not a single one of them ever happens like it does on television. It's just like when they show clubs in movies.

I've never been to a club like a club in a movie ever. And I've been to a lot of clubs. Yeah, I've been to some pretty good clubs, too. And, yeah, nothing like the movies. So this comes to you from the mindshare that is Brian Koppelman and David Levine, the same guys behind Billions.

And there's a lot of billions in this as far as just the way the dialogue is delivered. It's really getting to be kind of caricature and annoying. The story is really messed up because they've got Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Travis Kalanick. But they've got this other guy, Kyle Chandler, in there who looks exactly like Travis Kalanick.

So I don't know why they didn't have him play him. I can't. It seems to me really bad casting on not only on the on the physical appearance level, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt is just kind of like this. You can't help but like him character. That's a problem. Yeah.

Kalanick's an ass. So complete. So we started and stopped it a little bit. And then it got to the point where even my roommate was just like, this is really terrible, isn't it? I'm like, it's God awful. So we went and watched reruns of Guys Grocery Games instead of watching the new highly anticipated Uber tale.

Right. Super pumped. So we were not super pumped. I'll take a pass on that then. Take a hard pass on that. Yeah. Yeah. Call a lift on that one. Okay. I found this podcast the other day because Molly White was on it and it was called Crypto Critics Corner by Kaz Piancey and Bennett Tomlin.

Pretty good show. These guys hate crypto as much as we do. And they're pretty good. One guy's a data scientist. The other guy's a journalist. So, you know, they actually have a very distinct. They have a learned opinion. Well, yeah, they actually have the distinct talent set that we do not have, but we talk about the same thing.

It's pretty good. And then they just did a new limited series called Blockchain City. So links to both of those are in the show notes. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. I recommend them if you hate the crypto as much as we do or if you're confused about crypto. If you're crypto curious.

Learn why you should hate it. Exactly. Exactly. And speaking of things people hated, Pee Wee Herman, they hated him for a little while because he liked to touch himself. That was a very long time ago. In an adult theater. I mean, I'd argue if there's any place you're going to do it, that would be the one spot.

It's not like he was in fucking McDonald's. This is true. Look, I got nothing but love for the man. So I don't think he did anything wrong. You know, this is another another nipple gate type of situation, but long before the nipple gate. But now he's trying to make a comeback.

And there was a pretty interesting read in Hollywood Reporter about it. And I thought from knowing our audience and people our age, some people might find that find that like a good read. Did you get a chance to check it out? I did. This is another, I think this is a case of, I don't know what it is exactly, but know your audience, I would say to Paul Rubens.

And what he is proposing to do, I don't think, I don't know, is there an audience for that? I don't know. No. I would like old Pee Wee Herman style stories. I don't need a dark Pee Wee Herman. No, we don't need dark Pee Wee. We definitely don't need dark Pee Wee.

It's like an ego project, I'm guessing. I'm guessing. Because, you know, you should know what it is the people want from you and give them that, not this.

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I would have thought that I would have at least seen one or two screen captures of a Trump posting from there somewhere on social media. I'm beginning to think and hope it's already gone away. I think a war happened. That also sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the room. But yeah, nobody's posted anything. Trump keeps making his statements.

He's been doing a lot of press recently. So I guess he hasn't felt the need to promote his own social network by posting exclusively there. He just flaps his jaw to everybody else. Yeah, I'm still on the wait list at 312,238, which has not moved.

So the other thing about Ukraine is maybe a lot of their developers are kind of busy right now. It's true. That's true. It's possible. I'm sure it wasn't an American team that built it. Yeah. You'd think they'd... You'd think, but they don't.

I don't know. It might be. I have no evidence the other way as it were. So I've been going through the Impulse Brain Training app since the stroke, trying to go through it. And it's great. I've maxed out 90% of the puzzles.

I've basically got my money's worth out of this app, except for one game called Robotic Flows, where level 73, it is an impossible puzzle. You can't bypass it. You can't get to the developers. Nobody answers their fucking email or their tweets. And you're just stuck on level 73 because it's locked and you can't get past it.

I'm not alone in this frustration. Come on, people. Fix it. Please. It was not a cheap app. If it was a $3 app, I'd be okay, but it was like 40 bucks. That's pricey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's real money. It's real money. Speaking of real money, Amazon is going to start rolling it in.

Probably not because this is a gaming play. Their new Prime Gaming, also known as Amazon Luna, has launched. Okay. I started to get it set up on my iPad last night before I zonked out, but it's one of those ones where you basically play the game on somebody else's computer and it streams to you, which I've been dying to try because I just don't know how they deal with the lag.

And I've heard tell that it really works with the, God, I'm going to flake on the name, the gaming device grip that I got for the iPhone begins with a B. I'm not going to remember it right now, but tell on Reddit is that it's pretty good.

Like the controllers work pretty good and it's not too laggy, but they've got different channels that you can get from a family channel for $299 to some other higher end offerings. Some from Ubisoft, they go up to $18 a month, which is quite a lot, quite a lot of money.

Cool. But yeah, I want to check it out. It might be one of those things too for you with the kid, you know, free games. Yep. Yep. He's getting to that point now. He's right now. I've been able to steer him towards more educational games on the iPad, but the idea and the thought that there are games that are just for fun has certainly occurred to him and it's, I'm not that far off.

So. Okay. And you've got a Fire TV, right? Yep. Yeah. So all you got to do is buy the controller and you can actually play straight, straight to your TV. Pretty cool. All right. Yep. And this is something that I thought I would, I just blew my mind. There is a, a sub group in TikTok called Book Talk.

You know, I guess it's just one of those things where a lot of book insiders get around and talk books on TikTok and it's moving just a ridiculous amount of product. I know a lot of authors who have never even heard of this. So I've been passing it around because I thought it was, uh, it's just one of those things that's going on that you never would have thunk.

I didn't read the article. Is there a direct correlation between TikTok and the, the book sales surge that has occurred in 2020 and 2021? Do they have, they made a direct connection between it? Because there is one other big event that has happened in the world in 2020 and 2021 that required a lot of people to stay home a lot of the time, which would lead to an increase in reading probably because you would have more time to do so when you're at home.

So, so what you're saying is correlation is not causation? I'm just saying that there is a very large event that occurred in the last two years and has been going ongoing for two years that required people to sit at home. That might have impacted book sales surges, maybe more than TikTok.

Well, Brian, there is a hashtag book talk and, uh, people have printed out the hashtag and put it on a sign and put it on shelves at, at, uh, bookstores that people do go into. So, um, I guess maybe that, that could be it. Maybe. All right.

Well, so much for that one. Next up, uh, Isotope, uh, which is a company that makes audio software, which I love to death. They are responsible for a lot of this show. Finally, uh, RX9, their flagship product that I use day in, day out has finally, finally come out for Apple silicone.

I guess it'd be silicone. Silicone would be boobies. Apple boobies. Um, works great. So much faster. Oh my God. So much faster. Uh, if you're not running RX9, then you're going to have to upgrade to get it, but it is worth it. If you do it, I took some time this week and I learned, uh, Hindenburg, which is kind of a strange name for a piece of software.

That was my only comment is if you're shooting for branding, I don't know if that was the best choice. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's audio editing software specifically tied for journalists. They, they want journalists to use it. And, uh, you know, I, I do know that, uh, they use it over at dark net diaries and there are a bunch of other shows.

That use it. Um, I spent the day, I did a, did a full show, a three person show with lots of cross talk. It was, it would have been hard in logic if I'd have done it in logic. So I wanted to really give it the, uh, give it the once through, uh, first up it is slow as hell because it is not, uh, set up for the, uh, Apple silicone yet.

So it's running through a Rosetta, which makes it really slow. And if you're like me and you need to move fast because time is money, uh, it's just a hindrance. Um, it's, we, it's got a weird pricing model. You can buy it for $300 or $400 for, you know, the perpetual version.

But I do think that they put a cap limit on the point rev, which is kind of sneaky. Um, or you can get it for like 10 bucks a month if you buy it for the year. So 120 bucks a year. So I put that up against what I use day in, day out, which is logic pro 10, uh, versus Hindenburg and logic pro has more features.

It's faster because it's built for the Mac. Um, it's just got better tools as far as I can tell for fine grain manipulation for clips and things like that. Better manual for logic. I sent you a picture or I sent you the link for the Hindenburg manual, which is literally hundreds of thumbnails with a sentence that's trying to find what you're trying to actually do.

I found it more useful to search for Hindenburg problem name on YouTube and then, then I find the link back to it because YouTube is a much better search engine than just doing command F on a page. Um, so all in all I can say is Hindenburg is not worth the money.

It does nothing really that, uh, that logic doesn't do. Um, I, I, I have not seen the, uh, the, the usefulness of it. So, uh, I've paid $299 for logic once and, uh, has had all the updates.

So it's cheaper than Hindenburg and more feature rich. So there you go. If you're looking for something to edit with, skip Hindenburg. All right. I will. Just letting you know, Brian, in case one day you want to, you want to start doing this yourself.

Um, Apple has patented a new magic keyboard with an integrated Mac inside. I saw this over at nine to five Mac and I was just like, okay, I'm down. I'd buy that. I mean, oh wait, I already do buy that. It's called a Mac mini. It's kind of the same thing just without the keyboard, I guess.

Um, this makes sense. I mean, it's, they could, I don't see this ever actually happening. I think it would be cool, but I don't see it happening either. I mean, it's basically a laptop without the screen is literally all it is. So, but I, I, why, why?

I don't, again, I, to Pee Wee Herman's point, uh, what's your audience for this? Who would want this? I can't imagine. So. I can't either. And I know right now that, uh, was it a Raspberry Pi has come out with something extremely similar and I don't know if it's flying off the shelves or not.

So we'll see this last one I got, I thought it was very strange. It's, uh, it's, it's weird. Uh, tweet bought 7.1 for iOS ads, background notification, refreshed icons, and more. Uh, I thought that, uh, third party Twitter clients were dead in the water after, you know, the great reckoning of the API way back in the day and everybody shut down.

I didn't know some of them were still scrabbling along. So I went out and I grabbed it and, uh, I dropped six bucks a year for the, you know, just to throw a few shekels because it's pretty cool. I mean, the stock Twitter app does what it's got to do. Um, but this is, it just does feel like going back to an old friend.

Cause I used to use tweet bought a lot. Yeah. It's a, I just use the stock Twitter app on my phone cause it does everything I need it to do and it does it well, but I liked a tweet bought for my Mac. So I wonder if they have a new desktop version or if they put any more work into that. Cause that would be nice.

Oh, that would be cool. Go check them out. And because, you know, we have the internet in front of us. I took a quick look. Uh, I have like the original version of tweet bought still, or actually I have version two and they are on version three. So they have been updating it. So I wonder why I never got an email or a notification that a new version was, uh, available.

I will have to go check this out because I do enjoy tweet bought. I like it, uh, for my, for my Mac. So cool. There you go. It's a nine 99. You can get it either direct or through the app store. I always recommend buying direct when possible because they get more money. Yes.

Unless it's a, unless it's a, I can't speak today. I ran out of water and my lips have gotten dry and I will not say subscription. There we go. Unless it's a, I can't do it again. Fuck it. Forget the point. Who cares? I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to.

At the library. Okay, Brian, I took a detour. I couldn't take it anymore. I got a new book. I could just, I, for some reason I got seven that I could not finish that I just could not get the gumption for. So I got the end of everything. Astrophysically speaking by Katie Mack.

Did you learn about that from book talk? No, I didn't. I learned it from book. Turr. As I found about it on Twitter. So it was book. Turr. But it's really funny. It's really good. And it talks about exactly what it says on the tin.

Katie's a very funny writer and she's very funny on Twitter too. So I highly recommend following her there. But if I, I think this would be up your alley. It is very cosmological. All right, I will put that in the queue and then talk about it on my private TikTok.

Okay. And it is out, Escape from Yokai Land, The Laundry Files Book 12 by Charlie Strauss. I am, I picked it up. It is on my Kindle. I am a little bit into it. It is, it's given me the feels because it is Bob. So it's good to have Bob back.

Good, good. And I did get a notice that there is a new Peter Klein's novel that came out the same day called The Broken Room. So I bought that also for my Kindle because for my recovery, apparently reading is better than listening all the time. So. Right. It's, it's cool. So I'll let you know how the Peter Klein's is because he does good stuff.

All right. And I am about halfway through the nineties by Chuck Klosterman. Jason, you're going to want to read it. It's, uh, if you're of our age, if the nineties were an important decade to you, um, it's phenomenal first, uh, not just the memory lane, but like the looking back at it and, and going kind of, what was, what was all the fuss about this, or here's what actually ended up happening about that.

Or here's what we discovered about this much later on that we didn't know at the time. It's really good. It's, uh, I'm, I'm completely enthralled with it. Okay. So the nineties have legs. I was, I was worried it wasn't going to be as good as we remembered.

So I have a, I have a thing here that I want to talk about real quick, since I have both

of you on the horn and you're both gentlemen of a certain age now over the years, we've, we've all been part of subcultures. Like, you know, Dave, you were in, you know, rollerblading, rollerblading and that, and that's a very good, I was in skateboarding.

Brian was in hitting on strange, you know, girls on vacation at Disney, whatever that was much creepier than it actually was. I was going to say the rock and roll lifestyle. I was going to say rock and roll lifestyle, but okay. So as I've mentioned on the previous show, I have this new Jeep and I, you know, I was warned that I wasn't, not so much warned, but I was told that, you know, Hey, did you know about this, this culture where everybody waves at everybody with the Jeep?

And I'm like, ah, that's gotta be a, whatever, that's gotta be a thing. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Getting there. Yeah. I never didn't notice it. And then the other morning I got, I saw a guy coming up, up the road and he gave me the nod and gave me the fingers, you know, the two fingers.

So he was like, sup brother. And I'm like, Oh, is this real? Is this a real thing? So I went home and I, I Googled it and yes, there is the Jeep wave is what it's called. And I did not sign up for this. I did not know that I was going to be forcibly indoctrinated into a new subculture at my age.

Jason, baby, people want to be nice to you. Exactly. Exactly. First off, it's a really nice thing. When I had my Jeep, I engaged in this as well. By the way, there is also a Vespa version of this. It's not so much a wave, but you do beep your little Vespa horn when you drive past them.

I experienced this when I had my Vespa. Oh, you were a Vespa owner too. Yeah. Okay. Well, I had the Yamaha knockoff of a Vespa, but yeah. Oh yeah. Well, we kind of thumbed our noses at you a bit then. Well, the Yamaha people waved at each other, so. But as I was going to say, those of us who have been, who know Jason well, you are not being forced into anything.

You are the contrarian. I'm surprised that you were even slightly bothered by this. You should just ignore them as you do all other things. Well, here's the problem now. Here's the issue. When I did Google this, I found that there is a hierarchy. The person who initiates the wave is supposed to be the Jeep owner of higher rank in this new hierarchy.

So now I feel like I'm being judged every time. And what if I see somebody's Jeep? It's a janky POS. And then they give me the wave. And then I'm like, wait a minute here. Then I have to stand up and defend my Jeep. It's honor because, you know, this lowly scum who has like a stock, you know, 1998 Wrangler thinks he's better than me.

Come on. This is this is out of hand already. And it hasn't even begun. That strikes me as as counter to the Jeep wave culture that there would be a pecking order like that. That that just doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, that doesn't track either. I think I mean, Brian, you said you had a Jeep.

So did you when did you have any sense of any sort of tracking of status when you were waving to people? No, we were all in it together. I did not sense any status at all. We were a merry band of people who knew that our cars would last for exactly five years and then fall apart.

OK, in the meantime, because those five years were glorious. Yeah, I remember right. All the stories about Jeeps were about them pulling Hummers out of ditches. You know, that's I think to me, that's the high point of being a Jeep owner when you can pull someone's Hummer out of it or out of four inches of snow or something, you know.

Right. OK, well, if the hierarchy is not a thing, I'll get used to it. But just wave to the people, Jason. Give people a friendly wave. We all need it. Maybe you can get one of those window stickers with the little thing on a spring that automatically has a little waving.

Oh, yeah. I remember those. Those are great. Just get yourself one of those. Problem solved. Right. Right. Waving as a service. Now I just get one that's internet connected so you can just press a button on your phone, not extending the actual energy.

See? That's what I mean. It's got to be net connected, live, 24-7 cam on Twitch. So, you know, we have WaveCam. That's a new product offering. We're set. Maybe you can hit a button on your phone and four out of the five fingers go down, leaving one of the fingers remaining up.

So, depending on your mood, it can be a whole-handed wave or just simply a single finger wave. It's interesting. All the motorization broke on all of the fingers except for one. That one never seemed to move. I have no idea how that happened, officer.

None whatsoever. None whatsoever. Oh, and then, but hey, you know what? We could solve this other problem, too, with the hierarchy because then we could have Jeep detection software built in. So, you know, you could either say, it gives you an out and say, oh, I'm sorry it was out of battery or, you know, a bird pooped on it because I was out.

Off-roading too hard and I apologize so it did not wave or you can, you know, look down on them and go, of course it didn't wave at you, peasant. You know? Right. It gives you options and choices. Yep. Absolutely. I think you're on to something here. All right.

Before we get to security stories, I have to go off on a little bit of a rant here today. I think, like a lot of people, I have attempted to automate my home using IoT devices. I am bought into the SmartThings brand of gadgets.

Samsung originally made that. They've since handed it off. So, basically, you have a hub in your house and you can control your lights. You have sensors on doors. You can measure temperatures. I have like a water sensor where my hot water heater is and switches and, you know, and here's the thing, when it works, it's great.

Just great. The problem is when it doesn't work and the problem is when it doesn't work for the other members of your family. When you're the tech support person. So, I got a couple of new switches or I guess outlets would be the better way to say it.

This thing, you plug into an outlet, then you plug your device into this device. So, you can, for example, turn a lamp on and off, but also dim the lamp. So, I thought this would be great and I went on Amazon and I looked it up and it said, works with Siri, works with, you know, works with everything, works with Google, works with all of them.

So, I think to myself, I'm in great shape here. This is just going to work. So, they showed up yesterday. I got, so, first I have to download the app from the specific company who made this thing, right? Like, okay, well, that's all right. That's reasonable. Get it on my network and recognized.

I do that. That goes fairly smoothly. Then I need to connect it to the SmartThings app and there's a simple way to link the two things together. That goes fine. Now, I can control things in the SmartThings app. Now, I have to link it to the Apple Home app, which is sort of the center of the universe for how our family members control things around the house and that is where we came to a screeching halt.

It's like going around the elbow to get to the asshole. I'm like, come on. Yeah, exactly. But this is the thing, like all these hoops to jump through. So, yes, it'll work with Siri, but that's all it'll do. Like, and it's sort of a kludgy sort of workaround to make it work.

It works, but go ahead and try sharing that. Go ahead. Anyway. The compatibility on these things is not good. Yeah. So, me being me, I went way down the rabbit hole and after spending lots of time on various Reddit groups and discussion forums and this, that, and the other thing, I did come up with a workable solution.

Now, the challenge is going to be transplanting that workable solution onto the mobile devices of the rest of the people in my home so that they don't, you know, give me a hard time about it, which they would like to do.

So, I'm going to go ahead and pull some of my content from the apps and doodads section that Jason and I have not recorded yet because we started a bit late. Uh, and I will, um, pile on to your complaints because I had an old Eero, uh, router that decided, uh, after many years of great service to shit the bed over the weekend, which it promptly did.

So, I ordered a new Eero Pro 6, which arrived and I have to say it is very, very good for a router. It's very easy to install, very easy to get up and running. Uh, and, uh, you know, got to spend a blissful weekend reconnecting absolutely everything to the new, the new network that I had created and all that sort of stuff.

So, a lot of fun. Um, I also have bought into the smart home idea. I have many, many, many, many connected devices. Um, we decided to change our wireless network name. So, I had to go around and reconnect everything. I too have the smart things app because I have some Samsung TVs and sound bars and things of that nature.

Uh, I currently have eight separate customer support threads with smart things because it does not recognize my TV. It will not register my sound bar, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Yep.

I have a customer support thread open with iRobot because my Roomba will not connect to my network anymore. Um, yes. So, I am, uh, right there with you. Smart things can, uh, take a fucking big dump as far as I'm concerned. I hate that app. It's horrible.

Uh, the fact that you have to go through smart things for Samsung appliances instead of them being able to connect to something like, uh, uh, an Amazon, uh, you know, echo network, uh, directly is, is bull crap. Um, I have five different apps on my phone for different switches and devices that I've bought over time.

Uh, let's see. I've got a smart things. I've got Casa. I've got smart life. I've got smart house. Uh, not only do I have to connect them all through that, then I have to make sure that they're in my Eero app and named correctly. And then I have to go over to Amazon for my, that app.

And then I have to do, have that do a search, uh, it's hit or miss whether Amazon will find the devices or not. Sometimes I have to connect different skills to Amazon for say smart things, uh, and different things to be able to do that. And then I have to rename them in that.

And then when I've done all of that, and it is working correctly, which is a wonderful thing. I am the only person that it works correctly for my kid just uses it to turn lights on and off randomly for no reason whatsoever and change their colors. And my wife can never, ever, ever phrase out her timing well enough for Amazon echo to understand her.

So she just gets angry and starts yelling at it. Yep. Yeah. I just, you know, I think I might just go back to regular light switches. I was going to say, I feel like the smart thing. Yeah. I've never, I don't have any of this and I feel, I feel like the smart thing now.

That's great. Thanks, Brian. You know, it's kind of amazing when I can just sit in my living room and tell my nest thermostat to change the temperature. And then I can tell my Amazon echo to turn on my TV downstairs and turn it onto Netflix before I even start walking down the stairs. When it works, it's great.

I was going to say when it works, it's, that sounds awesome, but yeah, just, just being able to turn off the, the bedroom lights without having to get out of bed, you know, or, or dim them or whatever. That is like when it works, it's great.

When it doesn't work, it is torture. We have the technology in the seventies. Dude, the clapper. Yeah. We, we've had this. Yeah. I know. So. I know. And the thing is, see, here's the other thing is that I think for, for folks like us, they lure us in because we think it's going to be fun, right?

Because hooking up things and new gadgets is going to be fun. And when it works, it is fun. But when it doesn't work, we can't let it go. And it is, yes, that's the can't let it go thing. My wife is just like, who cares if the Roomba connects to the, to our network?

I'm like, I care. Exactly. Exactly. Because my life will not be complete until the Roomba can talk to the home network. That's right. It ruined my weekend. Right. Yeah.

So that's where I am right now. I got one thing working and I'm trying to decide if I'm going to continue down this path and, or. You know, you're going to. Well, my only other option is to throw more money at it and try to find a different, you know, switch.

Because now, fool me once. Now I know that I can't just trust the fact that because it says it works with Siri, that it's going to work with the Apple Home app. So I need to be more, you know, vigilant when I do my shopping, but I don't know. But you're right. I will. Yeah. You're absolutely right.

Yeah. Who am I fooling? Amazon will be delivering something to your doorstep within days. I promise. Right. Exactly. I'm going to end up spending $3,000 to be able to turn on a lamp remotely in my living room that I never go in and, you know, like. You will do it.

You will turn that light on absolutely, at most two times to test it, to make sure that it worked and then you'll never do it again. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I will sit down victorious knowing that I won. Exactly. The satisfaction of knowing that you did it.

That's right. That's all I need. I'm not too proud to say that. God, we're stupid, aren't we? We really are. We really are. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to some, what's that? iRobot just sent me a message and as per usual with support these days, they have sent the three steps that I've already told them I have done twice.

Yeah. And asked me to do that again. So that blows another day on trying to get my stupid Ruba to connect. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to some stories here. Sometimes you get a vacuum in the floor. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, the security. Yeah.

Really interesting article one of my colleagues here at the Cyber Wire sent around. He is a former naval officer, naval academy grad, and he sent this article around from the Modern War Institute at West Point, which their name says what they do.

Yeah. But it is actually, I thought, a really interesting article. It's called Seven Strategic Lessons from the First Days of the War in Ukraine. So, it is sort of an analysis of what's going on here on the policy side from a military point of view written by a military historian.

I'm not going to go into all the details. It goes into a lot of things about how nuclear deterrence works and what it does and doesn't do, how the great superpowers have related to each other over the years being nuclear powers, what that, like the unintended side effects of that reality and so on and so forth.

Just a lot of interesting things in here, things that I did not know, had never really considered as part of the big picture. So, if this is your thing, I'm going to include this in here. It's worth a read. I thought it was really interesting. Very cool. I'm definitely going to read that. And then on a lighter side of things, the Ukrainians have mustered up a bunch of digital warriors to be on their side and the world has heeded the call.

And one of the things that they were able to do was hack the electric vehicle chargers on one of the main highways in Russia to the point that the vehicle chargers, not only do they not work, but when you go up to one on the LCD screen on it, it says, Putin is a dickhead.

Very good. Very good. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes. The folks who own these chargers say that they're going to reset them and on and on and on. But you know what? This is the kind of hacking I can get behind. Oh, totally. I also saw that like, well, okay, say you and I or Jason, you know, we're going to do some work around the house.

We're going to do something new, something we're unfamiliar with. We all go to YouTube, right? We go and watch somebody just like run through the steps of what you need to do with this new thing that you're trying to do. There are now all these videos on YouTube from people explaining how to drive and operate the stolen Russian tank that they managed to liberate.

Yeah, yeah. It's unbelievable. I saw yesterday somebody listed one on eBay, a tank. Yeah. We've seen videos of farmers hauling them away and yeah, I mean, it's just, it's really something, you know, again, some of my colleagues have experience in the military and munitions and so on, and they're just scratching their head at how awful Russia's army is, how this

is revealed, how unprepared they are, how corrupt it has been, how in bad shape their equipment is and the bad morale of their soldiers. Nobody expected it to be this way. They still have size on their side.

They just have a ton of resources, which in the end may serve them well, but it is not going as well as well as they'd hoped for sure. Definitely not. We had some coverage on the Cyber Wire I thought I'd share that was just about ways that some of the big tech companies have been pushing back against some of the Russian disinformation.

Apple has shut out Russia. They're not going to be selling their products and services in Russia for the time being. That's a big deal. It's a big market. YouTube has banned Russian media outlets, RT and Sputnik, which are the big Russian disinformation networks that they've been taken down.

I think it was a DirecTV also took RT off of their offerings. So that seems to be pretty much universal. Facebook has demoted Russian media content and they're tagging it. Rest of world, remove it. Facebook, demote it.

Yeah. Well, exactly. No surprise there. So I think all of the tech companies see the way the wind is blowing when it comes to this and I don't think any of these moves are particularly brave at this moment in time, but...

No, a lot of them are somewhat self-serving or make sense. I mean, okay, you're not going to sell stuff in Russia. Well, the ruble has collapsed. Their financial system is gone. Nobody has money to buy an iPhone right now anyways.

You can't get insurance for shipments in and out of the country, so you can't insure the products that you'd be shipping in anyways. You know, points to the appearance of supporting the Ukraine, but the reality is most of these choices were purely financial.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out because I think part of the flip side of this and I think the case that Facebook and Meta is taking is that if you do a total shutdown, that can be a bad thing because a lot of people are relying on these platforms to get information when the Russian media is actively squeezing the amount of information that people can get.

And I think that's a valid point. And it's a fine line to walk. And unfortunately, you know, certainly look at a company like Facebook. Their track record is not the best. But I think the point is well taken that shutting them down completely, I don't think, is the way to go.

All right, gents. That's what I have this week. Awesome. Excellent. Check in on the state of the war next week because God knows it won't be. Yeah. And I'm going to start waving at Jeep drivers just to mess with their heads. Yeah. Thanks. I got to go exercise my waving hand.

That came out all wrong. That came out all wrong. It's quite a euphemism. What's he doing? Driving his Jeep. I was really getting into it. He's driving his Jeep in the bathroom again. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Chris Rock, RJL, and The Wayne. I was so happy when I saw The Wayne come through because somebody went out of their way to name themselves The Wayne on Patreon and send us money. So thank you very much, The Wayne.

Also, Chris Rock and RJL. I'm glad we got the original one. You know, finally, The Wayne showed up. The Wayne. That's right. Not those other ones. Over at PayPal, we've got Thomas, Charlie, Matt, Simon, Nicola, Thomas, aka Fruit Cup, Michael, Jonathan, Matthew, Shaleen, Judge, Nikolai, Doug, Melissa, and Jens with a big 100 bucks.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Over at Stripe, we've got Ashley, Matthew, John, Mario, Anne, and Adam. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody. We really, really, really, really, really do appreciate it. Sad news. Ethernet co-inventor David Boggs has passed away at 71.

He was a pioneering Xerox PARC computer researcher, and he's best known for co-inventing the Ethernet PC connection standard used to link PCs in close proximity to other computers, printers, and the internet over both wired and wireless connections. So, yeah, sorry to hear that, but he's the guy that has caused you all the problems with your printer.

That's it. It's him. Don't blame him for PC load letter, though. That was the other guy. And I do have some special shout-outs today for Elizabeth D., Jason B., Jason V., Joe Ressa B., and Philip M. The Three. Also, Gregory R., Mike M., Mike S., Michael S., Jonathan H., Stephan N., and Brady W.

Thank you all very much. These are all the folks that donated specifically to the Jason get-out-of-hospital bill-paid jail hell free card. So, thank you. Just so you know, he used the money to buy Hindenburg. No, I did not.

30-day free trial, baby. And all that shit's a write-off anyway. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies.

It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 543. 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 grumpy and wave to that Jeep.

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