547: Crush Your Goals!

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How was your week, Brian? Heard it was a little interesting. Well, it's been fun. You know, I guess apparently we're in the sixth wave of the coronavirus pandemic here in Toronto. They know that by testing our poop, basically.

There you go. Yeah. Since we've given up on anything else, they're testing our wastewater and they're discovering that cases have risen yet again. And apparently I'm sailing that seas of cheese. Maybe. Because you just don't know. I don't actually know. So I will Joe Friday this and present just the facts really quickly and then give you the three options that I can figure out here.

Okay. Okay. The facts being my son went back to school when we came back from March break. He wore his mask as required by the mandate right now, which is if you left the country, you have to wear your mask for two weeks upon returning to school. Okay.

Otherwise, masks were now optional. Yes. And on pickup, I saw a definite mishmash of whatever's going on. But it should also be kept in mind, they are also five and a half years old and they remove masks for snacks and they remove masks for lunch and they remove masks when they're outside. And they also just remove masks because they're five and a half.

Because they're five and a half. Exactly. So that happened. On Wednesday, we received a notice that there had been a COVID case within our child's class, which is the only time that they actually have to notify you anymore. If it's in the school and not in your class, you don't know. But if it's in your class, they tell you.

Okay. So that meant Monday, Tuesday, my child was with patient zero. By Wednesday, when we got the notice, he was still okay. He went to school on Thursday. By the time I had picked him up from school on Thursday, he said he was not feeling great.

By Thursday evening, it was apparent he was sick. We gave a – we had a whole bunch of rapid tests. So we gave him a rapid test and it immediately confirmed COVID. Okay. Yep. So he's out of school.

Fine. Cool. Okay. We automatically, you know, shut it down. That's it. We're not going out. We play snorted for groceries, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, we're all going to go ahead and quarantine. By Friday evening, I am feeling like ass. Uh-huh. I take a rapid test.

Negative. Saturday, I'm on death's door. Not so bad. It's just like – it's like a flu. You know what I mean? It was like an old school flu that none of us remember because we haven't had them for two years. So it was a flu. And I felt horrible on Saturday. Tested again. Negative. My wife tests.

Negative. She's feeling meh. She can tell something's coming. By now, Lucas is 100% fine. Like he rebounded so fast. He's bouncing around the house, but he's not allowed to leave the house. So it's a total nightmare because he's going crazy fine and I'm sick.

I start getting better. I test myself one more time. Negative. So I've had three negative tests. Okay. But I've had the same thing my son had. We have not left the house. There was no other opportunity for me to, say, get a flu. I'm breathing the same air.

We're not trying to stay away from him. He's coughing into our eyeballs. Yeah. There's nothing you can do. You know, I've got whatever he's got. Right. My wife has now got it as well. A couple of days later. So now she's got it and I'm feeling better. And now she's got a couple of days of this. So, okay.

Three options here. One, Lucas did get COVID. He tested positive. And my wife and I inexplicably did not, but somehow got a flu. Okay. Option two, we all just have a flu and Lucas's test was a fluke. Option three, we've all had COVID and my wife and I just did not test positive for whatever reason.

Okay. First up, here's my read on it. First up, any stock that you have in the company that creates those rapid tests because they're garbage. That's done. Yep. Okay. Just making sure on that one. You definitely had it. That's easy. Duh.

Yes. Yes. I don't have to put on my Poirot hat for that. And I'm glad you're feeling better. So, okay. Done deal. Let's move on. It's a win all the way. No ever met and required. I see it as it's a win all the way around because now, you know, we're pretty safe. Unless another crazy variant comes along and I did, you know, look into this a little bit and the latest, uh, variants apparently rapid tests don't work.

Uh, they're not entirely sure, but they're pretty sure that the antigen, the more involved ones aren't working either. And basically you almost have a, to have a genome test to detect it. So that's great. So at that point, does it really fucking matter? No, I guess we've gotten to the point where it really doesn't fucking matter anymore.

So no, there you go. All right. Well, glad you came through that one. After all of that hullabaloo for two and a half years, moving to another country, still got it. I did not move to Canada to get away from COVID. You moved to get away from Americans.

That's pretty much correct there. Let's call a spade a spade there. Yeah. Well, and let's also, let's, let's, let's doff our hat to science and, and the fact that everything has played out the way it is. You know, there were, I'm very glad that I avoided COVID until post vaccinations for both myself, my wife and my son.

And you know, the, the watering down of the virus itself. Like it is not as bad as it once was. Now for some proper follow-up here, I did find this and I, it just, it boggles my mind how awesome this is. This is the edited latecomer's guide to crypto.

Now, Kevin Roos, who we generally like, writes for the New York Times. He's a tech writer. He's been around forever. I always get him confused with Kevin Rose. I'm like, oh, Kevin learned how to write, like put more than three words together. That's amazing. Good for him. He'll get a star. But no, this is Kevin Roos and he wrote this crypto guide, which basically is a 14, was a 14,000 word puff piece, as they say.

I would almost have called it an advertisement for crypto. It is basically an advertisement for crypto. It's like he took everybody's, uh, you know, one pager and put them into an article and decided it was news. Yeah. Somebody needs to take away his, uh, his toys for a while and before he's allowed to call himself a journalist again, after this thing.

So, uh, Molly White, who is our, uh, our patron saint of, what is it? Web three is going great.com. Yep. Very similar. Talked about it for the last couple of weeks. Fantastic website. Uh, she put this thing together and it is 15 crypto experts, quote unquote experts, um, who, who annotate and comment on Kevin Roos's piece.

And it is hilarious. It is a very long read, but it is very funny and extremely informative. Yeah, it's extremely good. And this is a very much, I saw this as the learned and, uh, well over the top version of here's your headline. I fixed it. That meme that goes around all the time.

Yeah. I would, uh, I, I, I would dare to say if I was 20 years younger, I would be, uh, trying to date this Molly White because I, I watched her on Twitter and somebody was like, trying being the operative word. Trying. Absolutely. Yes. Cause this girl's right up my alley that she, um, she, she answered a question where somebody asked her like, Hey, what framework did you use to build that page?

Or did you like use HTML? Like, you know, an old school person. She's like, I just made it with HTML. I'm like, my girl, cause it is really well done. I don't know if you've noticed this, but that page is really well done. And she just coded it by hand. So good for her. Well done.

In the news. It's been a while since I picked on one of my favorite pet peeve companies, Uber. So here we go. Uber has secured a 30 month London taxi license following the years long dispute with the city transit regulator.

They have earned a 30 month license to continue operating in London transport. Uh, that's what they said on Saturday. Now, you know, this has gone back to 2017 when the agency said the company wasn't fit and proper to operate in the city and went on to revoke its taxi license. So what did they do when they got their taxi license revoked?

They went to court. Yep. Yep. That's what they do. That's Uber. Yeah. So even though, uh, the transport association had basically said Uber had failed to properly conduct driver background checks and report serious criminal expense, uh, fences. They appealed that and the court gave them 15 months to clean up its act while continuing to run.

Then they revoked the license again in 2019, noting at the time that it had shown a pattern of failures in the past, meaning they'd done diddly squat about anything. So Uber ran back to court and won another court decision in 2020. They gave it another, this time 18 month license that came with conditions designed to monitor its adherence to local regulations.

They say they're delighted. Noting the agency rightly holds our industry to the highest regulatory and safety standards and that it was pleased to have met their high bar. I would argue everything in this article states that they most explicitly do not hold high regulatory and safety standards and have not met any high bar.

They've just run to the court that's allowed them to keep trying to clean up their fucking act. So they're not fit and proper. They have a pattern of failures. So we can say that they have a fit pattern of proper failures is what they have so far. Well, you know, we'll see how this plays out. But of course, you know, the other, uh, the couriers and the other drivers have got together saying that this is bullshit because they're, they're letting this pass, but they're not actually requiring Uber to make people employees like they're, you know, their Supreme Court

basically said that they had to do. Yes. They have to do that as well, which they are not doing. Yes. You know, yeah. Because you know who is not pleased about this. Everyone. Nice. So additional Uber news. I saw this, uh, the other week and I just didn't get it in the show notes, but, uh, in, in New York city.

Now, if you call for an Uber, you can specifically request or will be sent. If no Uber is available, a yellow cab. Yes. The regular taxis are now in bed with Uber or at least part of Uber services. Now they are spinning this of course, as like, Hey, isn't this great?

Look at all this. We're, we're all getting along so well and all that sort of stuff. The real reason this is happening is because there are no fucking Uber drivers left in New York city. That's right. They have all quit, moved on, left the city, retrained, got other jobs and given up on this shit.

So the Uber basically had to go, where the hell are we going to get some drivers? Oh, what's that over there? Oh, those people we tried to put out of business. They're still around. I guess we could use them. So we're going to see how this plays out in New York because, you know, as they say in the article, Uber for Uber, it's all about the money.

I love that. The Uber is just like, it's just about the money, man. We don't care. I honestly see this as a perfect solution. What have we always said about Uber anyways? What is Uber as a company? An app. It's an app. That's it. So logistics app. And what couldn't the taxi companies get together?

An app. That's true. Here we go. This is, this is actually working in concert with Uber's app and the taxi company's app. So it's not just using Uber's technology. It's going to be like, it's just sharing, you know, ride resources between the apps. The one interesting thing is, you know, okay, so I pop onto my Uber app.

I can book a taxi in New York and it bounces me to one of the other apps who handles, you know, payment and infrastructure for those people. The interesting thing is it doesn't work the other way around. Like those companies in their app, they don't have to show possible Uber drives. So, you know, it's, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

They've got, the article does break down good for and against arguments, which I thought was pretty interesting because that's, that's really what it comes down to. It's like, you know, I don't think they really know because most statistics are made up on the fly. So we'll see how this kind of runs once they get some data under their belt.

I'm definitely interested in this because there is talk of them doing this in California too. So the difference in California, of course, is there aren't tons of cabs. This is why Uber actually worked incredibly well in Los Angeles is like, it's not like New York city. You couldn't fucking get a cab to save your life in LA before Uber came along.

Well, I mean, it started in San Francisco, which I have to say was way worse than LA for getting a cab. I mean, it was way worse. I was there right before Uber started and I read, I remember the frustration in the city about cabs and why it was a perfect time for Uber and Uber was a godsend when it started too bad.

It just turned into, you know, Satan's taint, but you know, something's happened that way. Yeah. Speaking of Satan's taint, Waymo is back in the news. They have started doing fully driverless rides in San Francisco. Now they can't charge for rides unless that there is a safety driver in the car.

So they do have, you know, they do have the go ahead from the state of California to do driverless rides that they can pay for like they do in Phoenix right now, but they're not doing that yet. They're trying it without the safety driver employees only, which is, you know, interesting.

It's not a full rollout. This is just an employee beta test, you know? Well, good for them for not going the Tesla route and beta testing on everyone. Yeah. Yeah. This is the fail open or fail closed state. They failed closed, not failed open like Tesla.

So, yeah, we'll see how it goes. And, you know, I hope that the people, the employees, the quote unquote test crash dummies get some at least hazard pay out of this. That would be the right thing to do. But it is Waymo. You know, they won't. Yeah. Waymo, way won't.

You're not getting Waymo money. That's for show. Yep. And Meta is in the news again. And shockingly, it's not good for them. But unlike, you know, just this is this is that John Oliver. We got a moment, but we didn't get him because this is going to end up meaning nothing, even though this is really bad.

The Washington Post has obtained emails that says it reveals that Facebook's parent company Meta is paying the major political consulting firm targeted victory. What a name to run a smear campaign against TikTok. The initiative reportedly promoted dodgy local news stories, opinion pieces and letters to the editor blaming TikTok for harmful team behavior, whether or not it was truly responsible.

So, you know, they pushed out sludge media and dragged them through the mud. And it's on record and everybody knows about it. And no one's going to care. So here's the fun part about this. The first comment in the Engadget piece that you linked to, I thought you left because it says, what?

Facebook spreading misinformation? Shocking. I saw that, too. Oh, my God. D and NYC is a fellow traveler of ours. It's funny, too, because I was I was so excited this week because I saw that Tim Ferriss actually got Mark Zuckerberg on his show.

And imagine how crestfallen I was when like 10 seconds into the into the show. Tim comes on and says, you know, I didn't want to rehash what's already in the news. I wanted to find new and exciting evergreen topics, aca a an hour and a half of fucking softballs.

Now, you knew that was going to happen. There was no way. Oh, my Tim Ferriss had such a chub that he was actually going to be able to talk to Zuckerberg. There was no way he was going to attack him, even though I know. So, yeah, I know. It's a wasted moment, but I can't fault Tim for it.

But I was I was, you know, sorely. No, no, no, we can't fault him for it. We really can't. No, I'm not faulting Tim. I'm not faulting Tim. I am just sad that somebody I know got a chance to sit down with Zuckerberg on a podcast and did nothing. You know, I just you know, it's it was not not a good interview.

I thought I just I thought Zuckerberg I thought Zuckerberg came off slimier than when I went in. I was hoping that, OK, if Tim's going to like try and show the human side of, you know, Android boy over here, maybe we'll get something out of it. And it was worse than I thought. This guy just has no soul.

No, there's nothing. There's nothing behind those eyes except maybe beans. No beans. OK, so now we know that Meta is out there, you know, doing this disinformation smear campaign against TikTok. Now we might know why we're getting these types of articles still in the Wall Street Journal.

Here's one titled teen girls are still getting TikTok related tics and other disorders. Now we've, you know, we recovered this beans when it first came out a couple of months ago. I think it was back in November when girls who watched inordinate amounts of TikTok were starting to get these Tourette's like tics, but especially around the word beans.

Now, there's new research out and they say new research supports doctors earlier theories that girls who developed tics during the pandemic had pre-existing mental health issues, making them susceptible to other disorders, AKA the bitches was already broke.

Sounds like some targeted beans to me. Yeah, I love that. I love, yeah. The University of Sydney researchers said that basically is coming from a mix of cumulative stress in addition to social media influence. You know, crazy from the get is about it. So we can see where, you know, articles like this who basically come out and say that, okay, we were right the first time.

We just need some more articles that go against Facebook and it's the Wall Street Journal. You know, that research firm is pretty much doing its job, I'm guessing. I hope they got paid well. Well, I think it's funny too that, you know, the right wing fucking shield bangers who are always saying, meta, Facebook, they hate us.

They hate us. You guys are dining at the same trough because they're using the same people your people use. I'm sorry. There is no differentiation here. So just shut the hell up and sit back down, mega boy. Might lose the listener there like I did last week.

We'll see. Yeah, you did. You did. Hey, you know what? The option is to keep the 50 cents per show that he was donating to us or like not speaking my mind, I'll lose the 50 cents. I'm cool with that. Well, actually, after fees and well, here's the thing.

You lost me 35 cents. Sorry, bastard. Sorry. You owe me. You owe me. This one, I just, I am. I'm scratching my head over. I am not surprised. And this is very much like Tim and Mark Zuckerberg.

Visa is dipping its toe into the NFT land because they want to cut because that's what Visa does. Visa wants money. They see anywhere that they can go. They see an awful lot of money being traded around that they are not dipping their beak into. And that, that galls them.

Jeez. That pisses them off. That pisses them off. What gets me is somebody didn't tell the head of crypto over at Visa. What's his name? Guy Sheffield. That cryptocurrencies were invented to get around people like them.

The entire point. Yeah, that's why cryptocurrencies were invented to, to circumvent two things, you and governments. And, uh, yeah. So they just want, they see all this and they want people to be able to go in and use their Visa card to buy NFTs.

So they've got this creator program is what they're, what they're essentially doing right now. That's what all the news is about. So they have this creator program where they're going to bring people in and give them access to people. And I don't know what else, a Stripe account, who the fuck knows, and let them.

What I think creators, I think Visa. I do too. That's right. Yeah. You know what? It's funny. I remember that, uh, Visa wanted to buy one of my photos. I think this was like an episode of God, season one or two of Grumpy Old Geeks.

We never stop enough to have a season. I just go by whatever year it was. It'd be season 2014 or something. Uh, Visa tried to buy one of my photos to be in one of their ads. And I, I never sold it to him because there was too much paperwork involved for that $180.

Right. Yeah. Anyway, but that was all about creators back then. So I think they've been, the fact that they've been trying this hard for this long and nobody's paid attention, they might want to give up the ghost. Maybe, or, you know, throw us some money first. We'll give you some NFTs. I'll sell you some ads right now.

Definitely. Uh, Microsoft is also in the news in a, not a good way. And this is a rare black eye in this kind of area for Microsoft. You don't usually hear, uh, people, this kind of thing going on with Microsoft. But, uh, in an essay published Friday on the whistleblower platform, Lioness, former Microsoft manager, Yasir Elbad, alleges that Microsoft fired him after he alerted leadership to a workplace where employees, subcontractors, and a government operators regularly engaged in bribery.

So he's saying that basically between 1998 and 2018, which is a rather significantly long period of time, uh, there was oversight into a business investment fund that he had, which is, was essentially a slush fund to cement longer term deals in mid, mid East and Africa.

So, you know, that's kind of business development one-on-one, which can go off the rails very quickly with, uh, some bad actors. And he saw some, uh, suspicious and unusual payments to seemingly unqualified partners. Uh, after examining several independent audits, he discovers what he believes is a common practice.

After setting up a large sale to entities in the region, a discount would be baked in only for the difference between the full freight costs and discounted fee to be skimmed off and divided between the deal makers. This is called business. It's kind of business as usual. Yeah. It's, it's the dark side of business.

It's why. But it's business. It's why salesmen are typically, uh, portrayed in media as slimy because that's how the deals get done. But it is also kind of illegal. So. Well, maybe. Ish. I mean, look, everybody, everybody investigated this.

He took this shit to the DOJ and the SEC and Microsoft has investigated it. Um, here's the thing that you, what you said at the beginning is we don't hear about this from Microsoft very often. Yes. It's being done every single day.

Yes. Because that's just business. And honestly, I don't see anything wrong with it. I look, Microsoft needs to sell software. Some people need software. Some people, some people didn't need software, but that's a different issue. Some people didn't need an awful lot of software that they paid for.

That's right. But here's the thing. This, that's not on Microsoft. That's on the guy who bought it and took the kickback. That is not Microsoft's problem. If, if somebody wants to, you know, somebody wants to buy 5,000 licenses of word and stick them in a closet so they can go sit on the beach in Barbados, whose problem is that?

Is it Bill Gates's problem? I don't think so. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, I don't, I don't think it was, it's, it is, it's sales tactics. It really is. It's grease in the wheels. Yeah. So. And yeah. And this guy got fired cause he was probably fucking annoying. Sounds like it.

I mean, he's like, guys, guys, you know, he just, I don't know. He's just one of those kids that just can't break the rules. It's like, you know, dude, just go, go over there and play with your marbles. Come back later when the big boys are done. You know, come back later after I've sold 7,000 copies of Excel that nobody's ever going to use.

Yes. And I've gotten on my plane. See ya kid. Oh, and finally to wrap up the news in the, what could fucking go wrong category here we have over at the next web. Scientists think they can control the weather using chaos theory.

Of course that is a clickbaity headline and, you know, designed to evoke Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, uh, Mr. Mr. I need some more buttons on my shirt. Um, they want to use infinitesimal perturbations in the weather to actually change, uh, big events, basically, you know, embracing the butterfly effect, which, you know, is a, is an interesting concept besides being a terrible movie with Ashton Kutcher.

Everything with Ashton Kutcher is terrible. Including himself. I'm trying to think there was one thing I thought he did was pretty funny, but I can't remember what it was, so it must not have been that funny. So anyway, yeah, I, this is, it's interesting. It's still like kind of in the lab, but I, I, I want to keep an eye on this one because I think this, if it works, cool.

Yeah. I think it could be cool. It could even be neat, but, uh, it's just one of those things. It's just like, so silly. We have really run into like, they're dipping into the sci-fi book pile, thinking of anything that we can do now.

Yep. You know, that's really what it's come down to. It's like, okay, what did they write about in the sixties that we can, we can try to, to save our ass. Soylent green.

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I think this is on HBO, uh, gaming wall street. And this is all about, uh, the meme stocks and all that sort of stuff that happened. And, uh, it's very much worth the watch. However, I will say, uh, they very, they attempted to, uh, you watched the big short, right, Jason?

Yes, I did a long time ago. Incredibly well done. Right. Very, very good. Uh, very experimental filmmaking in the way that they did it. Uh, they desperately tried to be that and failed miserably at it. So the production quality is absolutely horrible.

Uh, some of the ways that they did this thing were very cringeworthy. However, the story itself and, and the, you know, the facts that are presented and the way that they present how everything kind of played out and how it actually worked and why it failed and why it happened in the first place, extremely worth it for that.

So I, I enjoyed it. It was good. Okay. I saw something similar this week, uh, called trust no one, the hunt for the crypto king on Netflix. And we started watching this yesterday and got about a half an hour into it. And the whole, you know, the whole premise at the beginning is, oh, this guy who ran a crypto exchange in Canada faked his death in India.

They said he died of Crohn's disease in India. His wife is now off the grid, but the whole big thing is with him died the keys to the crypto wallet and all the crypto was locked up. So of course, everybody that lost money believes that he's not dead and he absconded with the funds and, uh, that is this story.

So it is basically a bunch of pissed off nerds who are trying to play, you know, uh, true crime detective on the internet. Yeah. Uh, so half an hour into it, wall street. Yeah. So, and there's, there's this one guy in there who basically has a paper craft Fox helmet on, which is kind of silly.

Um, but I guess it's better than blur. It's cheaper than blurring them out. You know, I guess that's probably why they did it. Uh, cause the filmmaking isn't all that great. Uh, so we, a half an hour in, we looked at each other and we're like, he's, they don't know shit, right? We're like, right.

So let's just skip watching it because they don't know shit. All right. We got the fact he died. Gaming wall street is a bit better cause they actually have people who do know shit in there as well. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they, they, they, they zoomed the, uh, the corpse of the, uh, the, uh, wife's sister in this one to get her in there because the, the wife, the wife is so traumatized with PTSD and death threats now that she has basically left the public stage.

Right. Uh, which of course the crypto, the crypto, the, uh, uh, conspiracy theory guys are like, see, we told you. Right. Now she's going to go live with him on the Island that they bought with 165 million in crypto, which I still believe is in the wallet unless somebody has looked elsewhere.

But, uh, yeah, no, it was, uh, I, this one is skippable in my book. If you don't know the story, if you don't know the story, watch the first 25 minutes, it will get you up to speed on the story. Then turn it off. Go watch gaming wall street after that. Cool. But do not for any fucking reason on the planet, watch star Trek discovery because Brian, you were so wrong.

You got to the wrongy McRongenstein. Did you get to the end? I watched the whole damn thing. The whole damn thing. I thought they stuck the landing. I, I, I, I figured you stuck the landing cause this was an epic troll to get me to watch this steaming pile of garbage.

All right. We'll agree and disagree. Jesus Christ. Maybe it's the COVID. Stick the landing. The last episode is six minutes of action and 34 minutes of them doing therapy on each other. That's all it is. Look, okay. You know, Braveheart made an impact on everybody because Mel Gibson had one massive great speech.

You can't have five Bravehearts in every episode of Star Trek discovery for the entire fucking season and not be tired of them by the last episode. Everybody still whispers, but they do it assertively. Everybody has fucking feelings and they need to be addressed.

Everybody needs work-life balance too. Don't forget the work-life balance and everybody must work as a team. I feel like you're getting a little winded here, Jason. Take a breath. Jesus. I'm gonna have another fucking stroke. Okay. You didn't like it. I'm with you. Even the orange, uh, sent in a, uh, a question here. He's like, wondering if you guys can help. I posted this about Star Trek discovery to a Reddit forum and they all went nuts and disabled the thread.

Is it just me or are they right? So here, here was his, his question, adventure or therapy? I'm still trying to work out if I've been tricked into some sort of therapy session instead of watching an adventure sci-fi with an actual plot and challenging scenarios. Can I just check?

No one has staged an intervention and I'm currently in a therapy chair while they play Star Trek discovery. The therapy and constant emotional affirmation continues. Help me out. Okay. I'm with you, the orange. I understand the orange here. I do, but I do have two points here.

Um, how are we supposed to help? And, and two, why would you do this? You, you went in and trolled them and then you're surprised that they got pissed off. This is a forum about people who really like Star Trek and you went in there and shat on their parade.

Are you shocked at the response? He's asking a question. He is asking a question. He wants to know he's gone crazy. Joe Rogan just asks questions. That's all I'm saying. I'm just asking is, is a phrase that really you need to think about a couple of times before you actually post.

We need to, is this an, I'm just asking a question post filter? Well, but is it adventure or therapy? Is it? I think it's, I think it's therapy. I think, I think the, uh, the writing room over at Star Trek is, I don't know what they're doing over there, but they need to stop.

Here's the real problem with this show. Instead of, uh, instead of focusing on the micro of just this season, let's focus on the macro. This has been like 19 different shows already. They have no fucking clue what they're doing over there. No, they don't. They've changed show runners more times than I change underwear in a week, which, which is seven, by the way.

Just saying. Sometimes eight, if there's a little bit of a, I am 50. That's true. Oh my God. I'd never trust a fart and never trust Star Trek Picard either, because you know, as much as I'm, as much as I'm railing on Star Trek discovery, uh, I think Star Trek Picard is actually a much more egregious.

It's more painful because the expectations were so much higher and they knew better. They knew better. This is, this has been written already. No, they don't. We're in a sad state of affairs where lower decks is the best Star Trek that's out there right now. I didn't even think about that, but you are absolutely right.

A hundred percent. It is the best Star Trek that's out there right now. I, we will see what comes with the new one that's coming out. Uh, but right now, lower decks is your best bet. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, my hopes for Captain Pike are high. I gotta say. Which means they will be dashed. They will be dashed.

They will dashed, be dashed against the rocks with the green ladies on them. Um, I did watch, uh, Halo. The first episode of that dropped on Paramount+. I give it a solid B. Okay. I give it a solid B. It's a video game show. And I saw the, I saw the reviews like it will, it won't be, it'll make nobody happy.

It won't make the video game fans happy. It won't make the other people happy. Well, I'm a video gamer who never liked Halo very much. I was a Quake 3 guy or a StarCraft guy. And I wish this was a StarCraft series instead of a Halo series, but you take what you can get. Uh, but I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed it.

So, uh, it's worth, it's worth checking out. Um, Moon Knight, on the other hand, did you get a chance to check this one out? No, I think this might be pushing any interest in the MCU I have even for their shows too far for me. Yeah. Yeah. Skip this one. Um, it's, if you've seen Venom, it's basically trying to be Venom.

I know this comes from Canon. There, there is a Moon Knight comic. So they're coming from that, but it just, it played to me like a, like Venom. It really did. Like guys got two personalities stuck in his head, doesn't know which one's which going crazy. Nerdy guy, not nerdy guy. It's, it's, it, it's annoying.

Okay. But what I found was very funny was it stars Oscar Isaac. Now Oscar Isaac played Duke Leto Atreides in the new remake of Dune, which was very good. Uh, but this episode of Moon Knight was directed by somebody called Mohamed Deeb. And I'm like, huh, that's an interesting name.

I bet his buddies call him Mo, Moadeeb could be his name. And I'm like, so are you saying that this episode of Moon Knight was, was actually directed by his son, Paul, Paul Atreides? I will.

Is that where this came from? I will say I'm impressed that you went to such lengths for a Dune joke. I tried. I tried. I'm, I'm amazed that I got it. I was like, Mohamed Deeb directed this. What? My long, my long game is paying off here. It really is.

You got me to watch that shitty Star Trek Discovery and now I'm making Dune jokes. What the hell? Uh, it's all coming together. Yeah. Yeah. Shit. Soon I'm going to have a kid. Fuck. Um, uh, I, we tried to watch, we crashed. That's the new Apple plus one with Jared Leto and Hathaway, right?

Yes, it is. Two and a half, three and a half episodes in, we kinda, we kinda pulled the ripcord on that one too. Okay. The story got to be more about the wife than anything. And we're like, who gives a shit about her? No one. I mean, she is a failed Paltrow.

That's all. That's her only claim to fame at this point. Um, well, that's good to know. Cause I don't have Apple plus right now and I was considering like re-upping for one month just to watch this, but no. Okay. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, uh, you haven't bought anything Apple in a year?

What the hell? I got stupid gaming, not Apple plus TV. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. It's useless for me. I don't play games. Oh man. I just bought two Apple TVs. I wish I could gift you one of my 17 years of Apple TV plus that they gave me, especially since I pay for one already.

Right. Oh, well, uh, yeah, definitely do not, do not do that. Like I said, the story gets really weird. The acting is okay. Uh, it's funny. The guy that plays dollar bill on billions plays Scott Galloway in we crashed and he does a pretty good job.

I got to give him that. I saw a few clips of that. It was pretty funny. It was pretty good. He did pretty good. I didn't haven't, I, like I said, we pulled the ripcord before the second Scott Galloway scene, which is later in the show. So I haven't seen that one yet, but, um, yeah, but speaking of Scott Galloway, CNN plus has launched, you know what they had Jason, the highest rate of subscription ever, the best downloads day in the history of CNN plus it was record breaking.

It was mind bending. It was ground smashing. It was all of that. Um, and out of the gate, if I love this, they are so desperate for people. You can get a lifetime discount of half off the normal subscription price. If you act today and we don't know how long the lifetime is, if it's for your lifetime or the lifetime of CNN plus, which who knows how long that's going to be.

Right. Um, I did gamble. I like the gamble. I like the idea of let's see if we can actually make a subscription service that funds itself to pay for news and politics. It's interesting to me. I don't know if it's, if I, I don't know if I would watch it.

It comes down to the programming. And from what I've seen, not that interested. You know, if they still, if Bourdain were still around and they moved, like they gave him a couple of shows on this. Maybe. Well, they're rerunning all of his shows a lot on CNN plus. That's where you get them. Yeah. Yeah.

I've seen them all too. And they, they turned them all into podcasts as well now. So now you can listen to Anthony Bourdain, which kind of defeats the purpose of that show in my humble opinion. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I get Galloway 7,000 other places and it's not like he's bringing anything new to the table.

It's going to be his same thoughts and the same opinions that he's putting out in 17,000 other venues. I'm not paying three bucks. I'm not even paying 30 cents for more Wolf Blitzer. So I don't really know what is I, to be honest though, I haven't really looked into it. So maybe I will take a look at the programming before I crap all over it.

Yeah. The parenting show with Anderson Cooper is definitely not up my alley. I'm good with Bam Bam right now. And honestly, Scott Galloway on video is an anti-sell for me. I hate to be, I hate to sound so callow and vapid and vain. He's a good looking man. No, he's not. He creeps me the fuck out. He really creeps me out.

I don't know what it is about him. He just reminds me of a walking skeleton. It just, he creeps me out. I pay for Jack Skellington. Ups and doodads. So I have a question for our listeners. I use the RSS Reader, Reader, R-E-E-D-E-R for the Mac and iOS devices.

On iOS, there is a fantastic feature that basically lets you put anything that you have to the Reader's built-in read later service. It just comes up on a share sheet. On the Mac, you're screwed. I cannot find a browser plugin to do the same thing, which then bifurcates my read later list, which is a very big issue for me.

It's a conundrum. It's a problem. I forget that I have 20 articles in Pinboard. So later on in the day, I'm texting Brian going, shit, I forgot this one. Shit, I forgot this one. Yeah, that is annoying. Somebody solved this problem. Exactly. So that's why I'm telling you so you can get people on my side too, Brian.

I need some kind of browser extension or bookmarklet or something for this. I wrote to their support and they didn't write me back, the bastards. So help a brother out. That's all I'm saying. I posted a tweet yesterday or the day before yesterday that I saw on Instagram.

It was an ad on Instagram for an app called Headway. And it is the Real Men Self-Development Plan. Did you see this tweet, Brian? And I see red flags. Okay. I see lots of red flags. Okay. Would you like to tell me some of your red flags?

Well, anytime I see the word Real Men Self-Development Plan, I think that can't be good. No, it can't be good, especially when you marry it with the photograph of the gentleman that they have in the advertisement. It's really hard.

It's kind of like Neil Stevenson cosplaying a Victorian pimp, sort of. What was that show that you love, that Western show, Deadwood? Like it's Neil Stevenson is doing a guest appearance on Deadwood?

Yeah, it's very much Neil Stevenson on Deadwood. So I gave myself a plan here. I'm like, okay, I know that Headway is going to have a trial period, right? Everybody's got to have a trial period. So I go check it out. Class is brought to you by Jordan Peterson. Oh, you are fucking good, man.

So it's a seven-day plan. I'm like, I want to know how many of these I can get through because this list has 25 days of books that you can listen to quickly that will turn you into a real man, right? Smack your bitch up. Yeah, and this is one of those fadware apps because it's a fad right now for everybody to have these short snippets.

This has to be some kind of copyright loophole that somebody found that lets these companies make these short CliffsNotes versions of these books and then sell them. So Headway does the same thing. They are poorly done. There's no intro, outro. You don't know when they stop or start.

It's really weird. But I got the seven-day trial and I'm like, dude, I'm going to power through these. So 1.5x. I made it all the way to the Jordan Peterson book and I said, I can't listen to this shit anymore. There is one. Of course there is. Of course there is. Boom.

Look, I even made it through the god-awful Grant fucking Cardone book and it didn't make me as mad as the Jordan Peterson book. And I'm like, fuck this noise. I'm done. All right. So the biggest, the number one biggest red flag I see here and they put it right. It's one of their taglines.

And anytime you see this phrase, I'm telling you right now, fucking run. Don't spend the money. Crush your goals. Fuck that shit. That's right. You see that phrase. This is a load of shit. Yep. You know that they subscribe to the Gary Vaynerchuk school of bullshittery.

So get the fuck out. Crush equals run. Crush equals run. Damn right. So I'm sad that I couldn't get through the, get through the challenge. But also the thing about it is it's like with the stroke recovery, I only have so many, I have a very small bucket of attention all day.

And listening to audio books at one five X that you hate just drained me so bad. I had to take like a two hour nap after. I got to tell you, I, I, you know, intellectually I've understood when you've been saying that because I get it. Like I, I totally understand what you're going through.

I viscerally felt it with COVID. The two days I was out, I was like, Jesus Christ, this is what Jason feels like all the time now. Every day. Every day. Yeah. So, and it's, it's been past three months now and it's still every day. And it's the, the, the annoying thing is like I get physically drained from mental exertion.

So like, like I, like in Canto, I can't watch it because it's too frenetic. Right. Like my mind can't keep up and I can, I can watch it for five minutes and then I literally have to close my eyes and take a nap. That's what it's like. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Moving on.

Sherman sent this one in. Hey geeks, I doubt you're surprised by this, but just wanted to send it your way as proof that we're getting even closer to a world where no one owns a God damn thing. And this is Apple will reportedly sell the iPhone as a subscription service. Here comes the Rundle. Yeah.

My black mirror Spidey sense man is tingling so bad. What if you don't own anything? What if you missed your Apple payment for the week? You're going to have your phone down, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And we live on our phones. Even homeless people have phones nowadays.

It's like, it's like that show upload, you know, where you get knocked down to the two gig plan and you get, uh, this puts you down to the 24 or 28, eight plan. If you, uh, if you don't pay your bill, you can only work at modem speeds. Look, I actually think this is, um, I mean, obviously it's going to be a very good move for Apple.

I also think it's going to be a very good move for most of Apple's consumers. I think it makes sense. I, I, I, we've talked about this a bit and so have other people. We're, we're splitting into a world between, you know, your, your Apple or your Android. Apple, yep.

Premium high end beer paying for privacy. You're praying, you're paying for, for the look of the device. You're paying for the, the prestige of having the device. Android cheap. You get that one for free, your asses to the wind. So be it. It is what it is. Uh, and the pricing of phones have gotten so ridiculously high.

Anyways, I actually see this as almost a win-win. You'll get a new phone every year. You'll probably pay about the same amount that you were going to pay. If you were just going to buy the phone up front anyway, since the, since, you know, Verizon and, and all those sort of people don't subsidize the price anymore. This makes a hundred percent sense for Apple.

And I see a lot of people being super into this idea, but. Uh, maybe it's for rich people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm into it. It's like, okay, count me in. It's a hundred percent for rich people. And, and I think it would be a mistake if they went, you know, if that were the only option, as long as Apple offers two tiers, they offer this option or you can still buy your phone.

That's fine. I'm sure you'll still be able to buy your phone. But a hundred percent, this is going to, this is going to turn a billion, the billion dollar company into a trillion dollar company, thousand percent. I thought they already were a trillion dollar company. A quadrillion dollar company. Or however many billion, it's going to add another billion dollar value at least, or a trillion or whatever the fuck they're at now.

Yeah. It's fine with me. It's the only stock I own. So please keep going up. Please keep going up. And I wouldn't say, I mean, it's, it's not for rich people. It's for, you know, well, well-off people that they can, they can pay for their phone. You know, it's like, cause I'm, I am in by no means fucking rich.

That is damn sure. That is damn sure. But you know, the phone is, it's our lifeline to the world. We have to have it. And so you can get an SE or you can get a pro. That'll be the, that'll be the, the splits. Which is fine. Which is fine. I'd rather do that for my dad, you know, instead of waiting seven years to try and upgrade his iPhone six.

It's like, oh God, you can't even update the iOS to be up enough to, you know, so they, they merge with the new phones. It's, uh, I'm down with this. I am down with this. I'm also down with something that Apple is doing, which you'd think that they would be doing already. Apple will no longer repair iPhones reported as lost or stolen.

Okay. Um, so before they would, they would, you know, if you brought in a hot phone, uh, you know, people would try and fix it and get it replaced with a cheaper replacement. But if you had reported it lost or stolen using find my phone, they wouldn't do it.

They'd be like, okay, we'll prove that this is yours. Yeah. Um, but there's a much bigger registry out there called the GSMA device registry, which lets, you know, basically anybody, you know, the carriers can put in a lost report, things like that. It just doesn't have to be one person with, you know, their personal responsibility to be the one that does the technology.

This is good. This is a good thing. This should hopefully cut down on some of the, you know, the luster of stealing an iPhone. Will it? It's a good thing. Probably not, but we'll see. Yeah. This, uh, this, uh, this next story, uh, hat tip first to DJ on our discord about this one.

Uh, you know, I'm a big fan of Dyson. I have quite a lot of their products. I think, you know, again, much like Apple, you're paying for a prestige and a design and a fact that things just work, which is nice. And in the case of Dyson, you're paying for something that sucks a lot or blows, a lot of fans.

Oh, that's right. You got fans. I don't have got fans too. My Dyson suck and blow. I'm just saying. And this product does both. Uh, Dyson launches the zone air purifying Bluetooth headphones with visor. I have yet to see a more dystopian, dystopian, dystopia than this fricking product.

It's the, their first wearable product that builds the firm's air purification expertise into a set of Bluetooth noise canceling headphones aimed at city dwellers wanting to avoid polluted air. So the headphones at this point, yeah, the headphones are basically there to drown out everybody laughing as you walk by.

Pretty much. There's a plastic mask type contraption that connects from ear to ear across the wearer's mouth and looks like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. It delivers purified air to the mouth and purified sound to the ears. It's millennial Bane. This is insane.

I mean, no, I'm not ready to live in a world where people, where this product even exists, much less people buy it. If I still lived in Chicago, I would rock one of these. Absolutely. Or San Francisco, any big city.

I would totally, I would totally wear one of these. There's, they, you know what? It's just a fuck you to everybody. You stink. It really is. It is. I am going to, I am going to strut down the street with my Dyson, my Darth Dyson mask with my iPhone subscription on and, you know, saying, I smell no man poo.

Out of my way, peon. That's what I'm going to do. Okay. We've talked a lot in the past about different apps for listening to podcasts. You eventually got me over to using Overcast instead of the Apple podcast app, which is horrific and they keep pushing out attempts to make it better and it doesn't work.

And unfortunately for me, Marco Armand's Overcast has basically tried to do a redesign to get people who use Apple podcasts involved and took some pages from Apple podcast playlist in their new design, which I, you know.

Alright, so they say the newly released and still free Overcast 2022.2 for iOS centers around a major interface rework that better reflects how you listen to podcast episodes. Unless, of course, how you've been listening to podcast episodes has been via the existing Overcast interface.

So now it's a total clusterfuck and I hate it, but like anything else in two weeks, I'll be used to having to click around a lot more than I used to and I'll get over it. Yeah, that's how it works. You get used to it. So, yeah, the page that Marco took out of Apple's playbook is let's make our app shittier to use. Yes, exactly.

It's horrible. That's it. They made the app worse. They totally made the app worse. But the thing is, the nice thing about it is it's cross, you know, device support. So I've got it on my Mac now because the M1 Macs, he built a version of Overcast so it works on the Macs, works on my iPads and it works on my phones.

They all sync and here's the other thing is that the speed, the smart speed thing that they have, it has now saved me 958 hours over moving everything to 1.5. That's how many podcasts I listen to.

And now you will waste more of that time trying to find the podcast because now, even though the app works on everywhere, it works shittier than it used to. Yeah. Here's the trick, though, with Overcast, create a smart playlist and just order by unplayed and it works great. That's all I do.

But that's more effort. It did that out of the box before. I didn't have to do anything. It just worked. Oh, I had to do that before. So, nah, it didn't work for me before. I had to make a custom playlist and it worked. Anyway, you'll get used to it. Deal with it. I'll just be mad forever. At the library.

Brian, we're going to start off at the library this time with a sour grapes alert. Okay. Authors everywhere are very upset with Brandon Sanderson because he decided to have a Kickstarter campaign. Okay. Which is, it's been out for a month now. It is finally closing this evening.

We record this on the 31st. I just checked and he just, and I mean just, passed $40 million for his Kickstarter. Are they sour grapes because he did it or because they didn't think of it first? I probably both.

If it was me, it'd be a little bit of both. I am assuming this means he is no longer under any sort of contract with a literary agency or anything like that. So he is free and clear to do what he will, the Amanda Palmer type method. Uh, well, here's the deal.

He is still going to publish regular books with regular publishers. All right. Okay. The Kickstarter is early releases, special boxes of goodies, meet and greets, things like that. Plus these extra novels that he just wrote. Um, all right. In, in ebook and hardcover.

He, these are, these are, he's doing regular, but, um, in his video, he did say that he's still going to do regular publishing. So. Okay. I got no problem with this. Good for you. I got no shit, man, $40 million, do whatever the hell. I don't care if he breaks his contract. Who cares? He just won. He just won the world.

So, uh, I have no desire to give him any of my money because they're fantasy books and I don't care. Go back to the sci-fi and we'll talk. Um, I'm still, still trying to work through that one. Uh, God, I can't even remember the name of the series.

The young adult, uh, starfighter one. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to finish it for me. I, I liked that superhero series that he did and that's it. So, but, uh, you know, if people are into him and I, I, I, I hope, I dearly hope somebody counseled him about how much actual work it is to send out, uh, rewards and to do VIP meet and greets and all that sort of stuff.

I'm sure he's aware of it. He signed up for an awful lot of work, uh, for that $40 million, but he's reaping it in. He took a gamble and he's making an awful lot of money and caveat, you know, the, the, the market has spoken and people are into it. So good, fine. I have no problems with authors making money.

I think it's great. Yeah, definitely. Which one did he, was it the X hero series? I can't remember which one it is. We read like two, two, two very similar series by two different authors at the round the same time, about what, six, seven, eight years ago now. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That was the thing.

Cause there was like the X hero series and then there was another one and it was, they all kind of blur together at this point. So, uh, Steelheart, I remember that. Yeah. Uh, whatever, whatever. Uh, so good stuff. Good, good, good for him. Good for him. Uh, it's going to stop him from traveling.

So, you know what? He's going to be carbon positive. How about that? Uh, and I'm reading imaginable how to see the future coming and feel ready for anything. Even things that seem impossible today. Come on Jane by Jane McGonigal.

I love Jane McGonigal. She, she writes really good books on, uh, psychology and gaming and, uh, futurism. And this is so far, it's a fantastic book. I am going to be listening to, I'm actually probably going to get the print version. Cause there's a lot of stuff in the print version that I want to reference.

Um, but I've listened to the audio version and it's, there's some great stuff in here. Uh, highly recommended for our audience. People who like to think about the future and shit on it for me to poop on. Yeah. Well, for my reading, I've been stuck on the past.

As I mentioned, I had read the nineties by Chuck Klosterman, uh, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. I'm glad you liked it as well. And let me tell you kids marketing works because shortly after finishing the nineties by Chuck Klosterman, I got an email from Amazon saying, save $5 off on any other of these specific Chuck Klosterman books.

So I clicked on that and I thought I had read, uh, he also writes fiction. I do not like his fiction. Uh, some people do obviously, and I'm not, I don't want to discourage anybody from trying it, but I do not enjoy it. And I thought I had read all of his books of nonfiction, his essays and all that sort of thing.

And lo and behold, with my $5 off, I found out that there is one I had not read. So I purchased it, uh, X, a highly specific, defiantly incomplete history of the early 21st century, which is a collection of his essays with four newly written forwards, uh, that he's done for the various outlets that he writes for thoroughly enjoyable.

Uh, it's, you know, if you like his essays and if you like his nonfiction, you're going to like this. And I read it and enjoyed it. So great. Yay. Okay, cool. Good marketing. Uh, something that made me a little less impressed with Amazon, uh, though, uh, as you know, I've been trying to read quantum of nightmares, the laundry files book number 11 by Charlie Strauss and not into it because no Bob and I'm just not into the universe without the Bob aspect of it.

So I kind of gave up. And after I finished the, the Chuck Klosterman book, I was like, well, I need something to read now. You said that escape from Yokoi land was really good. A very, you know, very short story, but great. And Bob's in it. So I'm like, all right, let me go look that up on Amazon. I was about to click on send to my Kindle device.

And then I went, hang on a second. 10 99. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. 86 pages. 10 99 for 86 pages. Go back history. Look, I paid 13 99 for book 11, which is 361 pages.

And I will never finish reading that book. Not to mention I bought one through 10, all probably at 13 or 14 or 15 99. Why the fuck am I paying 10 99 for a short story? Now I'm sure this isn't Charlie's fault. It's not Charlie's fault, but I'm not fucking buying this.

I'm just like, I can afford it. It's not that. I like authors to get paid. It's not that either, but Jesus fucking Christ. Come on. That's ridiculous. Brian got sticker shock. I will wait until the price drops to what a short story price should be.

Five, four 99. Maybe I'd even pay up to five 99, but I'm not paying 10. I'm not paying full freight for 86 pages. I'm just not. Okay. Well, I ended up paying double for it. So I bought, I bought it on Kindle and then I bought a copy that you bought.

I was going to say, I bought it on Kindle. Then I bought it again on audible because you get a discount for getting it on audible. Cause I just said, my eyes have been bothering me and I wanted to finish the book. So I'm like, I'm not going to finish reading. It's not a book. 86 pages is not a book. Not going to finish the short story on my Kindle.

Cause my eyes hurt. So I got the audible version and immediately fell asleep. It is cool that it does. It can sync the audible version with where you're at in the Kindle version. That was cool. Maybe the 10 99 I'm paying is to recoup that technology, that R and D. So I haven't finished it yet, but I did pay 20 bucks for it.

I just can't do it, man. I'll let you know. I'll give you the reader's digest version when I'm done. Yeah. For what? 6 99. Yeah. You got to go get the headway, my headway version. Narrated by Jordan Peterson. Security.

Ha! Joining us today is 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. And I just whacked the mic.

Sorry about that. Welcome, Dave. Hey, Charlie. Good to be back. Whack the mic sounds like some sort of, I don't know, protest event or something. Yeah. Or euphemism. Well, there is that as well. Yes.

I got to go. I'll be back a little while, guys. I got to go whack the mic. Whack the mic. Sibilance, sibilance, sibilance, sibilance. Oh! No, no. Oh, my.

Oh, my. This is what happens when there's no Star Wars to discuss. That's right. Now I'm going to have the opening scene of American Beauty in my head. Great. It's so beautiful. All right. I guess we'll go right into the security to save us from this.

Verizon says bad actors are to blame for sketchy spoof spam texts. This was reported by The Verge. Some of the carrier's subscribers, including me, have complained in recent days of receiving text messages that offer a little gift for paying off their monthly phone bill with a link that leads to a Russian website.

So these numbers, this actually came from my, I texted myself. I got a notification that Brian Schulmeister has texted you. And I went to look at it and went, obviously, this is bullshit. Yeah. That's the weirdest part about this. You know, not very clever, but it's interesting that it doesn't happen more, I guess.

I suppose. I mean, you'd think that they would have methods in there to, you know, stop these from coming from outside sources. I do occasionally text myself. That is sometimes something I will do. I'll send a link from my phone to myself on my computer or whatever. So it's not out of the ordinary for me to have a text from myself, but usually they come from me and, you know, hopefully not blackout drunk.

I should know these things. Yeah. So, yeah. I guess it's a way to get it to the top of your list and also to make sure it'll get through because you're right. So many people do that. I do think it's funny that the link did lead to a Russian website, but Verizon says they have no evidence to suggest the texts are coming from Russia.

Say there's a little bit of, a little bit of evidence there. Yeah. Evidently, there's another one making the rounds in the UK that's all about some sort of Cadbury chocolate contest for Easter. That's quite successful right now. That's exactly. I was thinking the same thing.

Totally, totally get me. Yes. Yes. I will say that one of the closest near-death experiences I've had had to do with a Cadbury chocolate egg. Oh, boy. I may have told this story here before. No. I was just sitting in my basement.

You have not. I was sitting in my basement enjoying a Cadbury cream egg. In fact, I think it was a caramel Cadbury egg. Is that also a euphemism? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm sitting in my basement enjoying an egg. Yes, you do. And she went down the wrong pipe.

So I'm sitting there going, you know, choking. So now I'm thinking to myself, is this how it ends? Is this it? Is this? Because I can't breathe. I'm by myself. And there's a chocolate egg lodged in my throat.

So I start running through the possibilities. At least it was the caramel, the superior of the eggs. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I agree. So I'm sort of trying to think to myself, well, how long will it take for this thing to melt? And will that happen more quickly than my dying?

I figured that wasn't my best bet. So I got up and I hurled myself onto the arm of the sofa, basically Heimlich-ing myself. And out it came. And fortunately, I'm here to tell the tale. Here you are today. Yes, yes.

In fact, I think it's one of two times in my life when I really thought to myself, this might be it. The other was a trip, a whitewater rafting trip. Right, exactly. It was a whitewater rafting trip where I spent a little more time underwater than I was comfortable with.

Oh, yeah. There you go. That's another story for another day. All right. Yeah. I have a story here about actually good news. This came out just in the past couple of days. The FBI has announced that they have disrupted some business email compromised cybercrime gangs all over the world.

This is one of those big international cooperation stories. They called this Operation Eagle Sweep, which sounds very American. Sounds very fake. Yeah. And they've arrested 65 suspects in the U.S., Nigeria, South Africa, Cambodia, and Canada.

So keep looking over your shoulder there, Brian. And the folks that they rounded up, they say that they are responsible for at least $51 million in business email compromise loss.

So, yeah, they listed some of the alleged crooks here in the case. One thing I'll add to this, I was actually doing an interview yesterday with somebody who's a specialist in this kind of thing. And we were talking about business email compromise.

And he shared that, you know, the vast majority of these are not the thing where someone slips into your emails, gets access to an email account, and then uses that email account to do the things they need to do.

He said probably 90% of these are just – they use email accounts that look close enough to a legit email account that people don't look twice. So the one where they slip in your email account gets a lot more of the attention because it's a little bit sexier.

But it's a lot harder to do and a lot harder to maintain. And so those tend to be saved for really high-value targets. So I thought that was interesting. Very cool. I'm glad they caught. Yeah. Yeah. Good news. Yay, FBI. Something you don't hear every day.

Well, another interesting story here. This is from the folks over at Bloomberg. And this is about Apple and Meta. And I think this began with Brian Krebs reporting about this happening with Discord where the bad guys sent fraudulent emergency law enforcement requests to these companies for customer information.

And the big tech companies provided the information that the scammers were looking for. My name is Harvey Menfranjinsson. I'm from the FCI. The who? Oh, I'm FBI. FBI. Yeah.

That's right. My boss says, don't hide it. Provide it. This is Buford T. Justice. So I think – look, as someone in this story pointed out, there's a woman named Allison Nixon who's a research officer at Unit 221B, which is a cyber firm.

She said, in every instance where these companies messed up at the core of it, there was a person trying to do the right thing. And I think that's right. Well, stop it. Hell is paved with good intentions. So there's a couple noteworthy things here. First of all, most of the time when law enforcement requests information from one of these companies, they have to have a warrant as they should.

And I think we're probably all in fairly close agreement that show me a warrant and convince a judge and then I'm OK with you turning over the information. However, in these emergency situations when law enforcement can make the case, the time is of the essence.

They do not need a warrant. And that is what these bad guys took advantage of. Now, do the big tech companies need to do a better job of verifying these? Well, I think now we could say, yes, they probably do. But it's not like they didn't have anything in place.

But, you know, these guys are good at this. The tech companies are remarkably good at not getting out information they don't want to have out. But they should be able to apply that across the board, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So I think it'll be interesting to see what fallout there is from this.

And if we even hear about any extra steps that are put into place because it's possible that they don't want them publicized because then the bad guys could take advantage of it. But it's pretty brazen on the part of the bad guys to – I mean this is sort of – in terms of law enforcement poking the bear to go so far as to imitate them to get the information that they want from these tech companies.

It's a pretty strong move. And I saw something in the news that made me a little bit sad and I thought all of us kind of would feel the same way about this. This is Russia's invasion of Ukraine has destroyed a historic computer museum, unfortunately.

Club 8-Bit, one of Ukraine's largest privately owned computer museums, was destroyed during the siege. The collection included more than 500 pieces of computer history with items dating as far back as the 1950s. Gizmodo visited the museum in 2018, describing it at the time as one of the largest and coolest collections of Soviet-era computers to be found anywhere in the world.

It's like they destroyed a Russian radio shack. Yeah. Yeah. The pictures are really cool. That's some good stuff and it's sad. It is sad. Because God knows there's not a lot of these things out there. Right.

And I think it's also really interesting to think – because I – for me personally, I did not consider that places like the Soviet Union had their own versions of all these computers that we use, that they weren't just using the same computers we would, that there were other versions of these computers around the world.

And, you know, like in the UK, they had the BBC Micro that we didn't have here. You know, they had – They had the Comrade or 64. The Comrade, yes. There was the Dragon, which was the European version of the TRS-80 color computers.

So, you know, they'd often have the same sort of guts inside but slightly rearranged, you know, compatible sometimes to get around copyright or trademarks and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, it is a shame. It's sad because there's no – there's no getting new ones to these things.

So, when the old ones are gone, that's a loss. Yeah. Sad news to end on. I do find myself sometimes browsing eBay and seeing – looking at some of these old computers, the things I had in my past. And every now and then I think, gosh, it would be nice to have one of those again.

But then I think to myself, and what would I do with that? Yeah. That's it. That's it. I can dust it off once a week. Yeah. I mean, I've even thought about maybe taking the motherboard from one and putting it in – like framing it so I could hang it on the wall as a piece of art because I was so familiar with that motherboard back in the day when I was, you know, piggybacking RAM chips and things like that.

See, that's cool. Do that. That's cool. But as someone who has moved so much and has carried so many boxes of dead tech because I just couldn't let it go. Right. It's like our conversation about cables the other week, right?

Yes, exactly. Look, I've got a solution for this that will save you money and take care of a problem that you've already got sitting around right now. You take that Raspberry Pi that you bought for your home stuff that you're never going to use, you frame that, and you tell people that that's an old piece of computer tech and nobody will ever know, and you've gotten rid of some garbage.

I just took pictures of everything and then took it and donated it because I had the first creative MP3 player, the one that looked like the Discman. Oh, I had that. Oh, yeah. I had my first sidekick in there – my second sidekick is the first one I destroyed that time. We went to the racetrack, Brian, with the Goo Goo Dolls guys for somebody's birthday.

I don't remember you destroying a phone. Oh, I got in a fight with my roommate when I got to the parking lot and I smashed it in the parking lot. I took a picture of that with my other camera phone though, so I do have – I do have proof. And I had the one piece that I still am sad that I got rid of was the AOL BlackBerry that let you use instant messenger from anywhere.

Oh, fancy. Before there was – you couldn't do it on a cell phone or – it did have a cell phone in it, but it was made by BlackBerry. It was AOL branded and it was just AIM. It was awesome. Because I was living in Chicago, but I was working in Beverly Hills, but I liked to go outside in Chicago and I didn't work all day.

So when somebody would text me or IM me that they needed something, I'd be like, just grabbing lunch. Give me like 15 minutes to get back to my computer. No matter what time of day it was, no matter where I was, I could get a cab back to my apartment in Chicago in 15 minutes.

So if they needed something, I could just thumb it in and hop in a cab and get home. So I worked almost never when I had that thing. That was the single best piece of tech invention ever in the history of the world. I miss it to this day.

That actually makes me think about something, which is the – one of the frustrations I think all of us, the three of us probably have with the democratization of technology and the fact that technology has taken over all aspects of the world is back when it was only us that understood it.

We got away with so much shit. I know. We did. We were so good at it. It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. Just stick a post-it note to your monitor screen that said rendering and you could take as much time as you needed.

So true. Now everybody's hip to the game. It sucks. Yeah. It was great. It was great. I still have an Apple Newton. Oh, no way. Yeah. I have a Newton message pad. Yeah. It really does suck. I mean it's so bad. Every now and then I fire it up to just kind of see how bad it was.

But it's worse. It's just bad. It was way before its time and it's a lovely object. But yeah. It's too bad. Actually, what's striking about it is how little functionality it has. We're so spoiled by what we have now. Yeah. It's just awful.

It's too bad the screen size isn't the same because it would be awesome to put an iPad mini guts in it and then just have the Newton shell. That would be fun. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody made a Newton iPhone case. That would be – I bet you it's out there.

Yeah. Probably. I miss that old stuff. They're like the old PDAs. I had the Casio, the first Casio PDA, the first color Casio PDA with a cellular modem that you could plug in the back because it had that weird slot. I had the – I had the handspring visor.

Remember that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I had the handspring visor which had transparent colored plastic when everything was that because of the iMac. I remember. And it had a cartridge that plugged in the top of it that was the cellular connection and that was just – I mean to have your entire address book in your phone and have it automatically synced with your computer.

That was just magical. And here's the crazy part. I think that was the first one where I was writing what we called back in the day moblogging scripts. So I could take a picture like a – take a picture with the PD – with the camera attachment, save it to – because I think it was running – was it Windows CE back then?

But it was some – whatever operator – let me save it from that. Then I'd take that out. Then I'd plug in the cell modem, wait six minutes to connect. Then 25 minutes later, I would upload that little 640 by 480 to a Perl script that I wrote on my server that was running at my colo when we had those things.

There was no cloud. It was my e-machines, machines that were running my servers that I bought at Fry's, which doesn't exist anymore, just to upload that one thing. And then I could post it to my blog via Cronjob. And that's how we did it back in the day, kids. Fuck Instagram.

Yeah, and people were wondering, God, how does he do it so fast? Yep. No, it was great. I used that with all my clients. Like we'd set up those things and I would go out on the road and like I would have my BlackBerry and take pictures and then I would be able to send it to an email address. And a Perl script would process it and boom, it would appear on their website in almost real time.

It was great. Yep. Yeah. Back when the shit we did was magic. Right. That's another example when we had abilities that weren't available to mere mortals. Yes. So good. Good old days. Now we have NFTs. NFTs are the new magic. Yeah, it's just not as fun anymore.

Yeah, now the kids are coming up with stuff that we're like, what? Yeah, that's okay. Because now we have money. Yeah. That's nice. Of course, now they've made their fake money. That's right.

That's right. All right, guys. Well, on that, I'll talk to you next time. All right. Closing shout outs. Well, this week over at Patreon, we've got nobody.

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The fact that PayPal is not updating their technology at all. Yeah, that they have none. Speaking of PayPal, over at PayPal, Charlie, Thomas, Matt, Simon, Matthew, Judge, and Jonathan all donated. And Tim gave us a whopping $76.04. Well, thank you very much, Tim.

Over at Stripe, we've got Adam, Ashley, Anne, and John. So thank you guys as well. Thank you. And we have a new five-star rating from StephDL16. Can't get enough. I drive for a living. This is my go-to podcast. These guys are by far the funniest podcast era on the planet.

Okay. We're an era now. We're an era. An epoch. The take on the news is how the real news should actually be reported. Keep on keeping on, guys. Thank you, StephDL16. Much appreciated. And sad news that I saw last night as I was going to bed.

Brill Willis. Bruce. Unfortunately, it doesn't have what I... Bruce Willis has aphasia and is stepping away from his career. This is sad news. Aphasia is something that really messes with your speech. I dodged it.

And reading. Yeah. Comprehensive of all. I dodged it with the stroke. It is something that I amazingly did not come away with, like most stroke victims do. I got diplopia, which means I went blind, but I could still speak and understand reading.

So... Yeah. Sad news. I know how... This has to be fucking terrible for him. Just terrible. Very sad news. And I don't want to advance any conspiracy theories here, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyways, because why not? Fuck off. It's just what we do. This is super sad news. And, you know, they're stating that this is a brand new diagnosis.

You know, this kind of came out of nowhere and all that sort of stuff. However, this is the second time I've seen Bruce Willis in the news recently, like within the last couple of weeks, because there's been an article going around recently about Bruce Willis and how he starred in like nine straight to video.

Well, not straight to video. I don't even know what you call it anymore. Straight to like lower bottom level streaming video movies in the last year. And everybody's like, does he have problems with the tax man or something like that? Why is he doing all this stuff that like they're horrible movies and it's just a money grab?

I think he might have known this was coming. He was just getting what he can. I think it was padding the coffers because he knows it's done. That's too bad. Too bad. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmester. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

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