548: N(ot) F(or) T(rek)

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. What up there, my favorite COVID Canuck? Not much. Here. All better? Everybody survived COVID, sent the kid back to school, and he immediately came home with a stomach flu. Okay. So that's good times.

Great. It's been a long week, but back in school now. Yeah, by all accounts, it's not going well up here. They're doing the wastewater testing and all that, and we're going through a sixth wave, and COVID cases are rising again.

Yeah, who knows? I don't know what's going on. I know my kids' class is normally 26, and there have been 12 to 13 kids. In class. Oh, wow. So all kinds of things are going on. Just normal illnesses because decreased mask wearing and increased COVID and whatever.

We'll see. Okay. Things are going down here. I don't know what you guys are doing wrong. Yeah, I don't know. We're rocking it. I think maybe we've been hit by the latest new variant first. So we'll see what happens. Okay. Well, all of this COVID talk got me to a point, which was I was tired of being home through this whole thing.

And I talked on the previous episode. I'm like, I'm going to get a warehouse, and we're going to start a company and all this stuff. Remember that? Yeah. Then I thought you were crazy. Yep. Everybody did. It was a dumb idea. So I ended up getting a WeWork-style co-working office. Please tell me you did not go with WeWork.

Oh, hell no. I didn't go with WeWork. What do you think I am? No. No. I went with Spaces. Okay. You know, another generic name. But I've been moving in all week, and we're starting to record a little late this morning because I kept taking everything over. And what I did take was my home interface.

Right. So I'm setting up this morning. I'm just like, oh, aww, really? So I had to go get that, set it up. Now, I have no keyboard. Everything is jury-rigged as much as one jury can rig something at this point just to get the show going.

But I got to say, it's interesting being back in an office post-COVID and post-working from home for a very long time. It's nice to know that fluorescent lights still suck. Yeah, they're horrible. I mean, you sent me pictures. It looks beautiful. I would argue, well, I mean, yes, technically you are in an office in that you have some, I guess, shared space where you would go get water or something to that nature.

But really, you're in a big room locked in by yourself adjacent to other people. Right, which is perfect. Yes. That's exactly what we're looking for here. I am not recording from there because the walls turned out to be paper thin, and I can hear everybody, which is fine. They can hear all my shows being edited.

That's fine, too. But I met some of the people. We do have, you know, we keep the doors open when we don't need them closed. And everybody seems to be pretty nice. Some people keep to themselves, usually like me. But other people are very gregarious. It is in Calabasas. So you're sharing a space with Kanye?

His office is less than a mile away. I shit you not. I am in the belly of the beast. I have moved to Kardashian land. So no celebrity sightings yet. But I'm sure when I go down to the commons for lunch today, there will probably be some walking around.

Right. It's just the way it is. You pay for placement, I guess. I suppose. Yeah. So moving in has been just a bear. It's really not fun. I do. I going to places where, you know, people have been going for a long time.

People assume that everybody knows how everything works. So I get there and I'm trying to figure things out. The Wi-Fi was undecipherable. I cannot figure out the light switch. The light switch is going to turn into a comedy bit, a la the fax machine or the printer from Office Space, because I cannot get this damn thing to work.

I am sitting there pushing. It's Austin Powers and the guy in the golf cart at this point. It is that bad. I'm just like. Look, I work. I work for a company with 20 some odd people in it. Right. And I've been going into that office for over six months now on and off.

And some days when I show up, the coffee machine is the power is not. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the power on the coffee machine on. I've looked. I've fiddled. I've flipped switches. It just doesn't go on. There's an app for that. Well, I just go sit down and put my head down and do some work.

And eventually somebody else will come in and I'll hear there's somebody making coffee. And I'm like, oh, OK. Somebody's turned it on again. And the same thing with the Wi-Fi. I had no idea what the Wi-Fi password was. It wasn't in any kind of manual. I didn't, you know, whatever. Intake has gone downhill much the same way that most other things have in the world.

Yeah. It's like I have an Internet of Coffee machine at my office, too. And I still I can't figure out for the life of me how that works, too, because I pay for it for unlimited coffee and tea. But I can't figure out how to do that yet. So I got to go find somebody on somebody down because the Wi-Fi is crazy.

Everything is like automated now. It is the way getting an office should be. I went in. I met with one person. I got the tour. Then everything else was electronic. There's an app, which is one of the most horribly designed apps, which is why I couldn't get on the Wi-Fi for half an hour. We're talking about UX design flaws.

Oh, my God. But I figured it out. It works. Got on the Wi-Fi. All of my contracts are through the website. I can upgrade or downgrade or cancel all on the website. It's great. I love it. Yeah. Until you need to talk to someone. But then they're right down the hall. I just walk over and there's three people on staff at all times.

And I'm like, what do these people do all day? Now I know. Answer stupid questions from stupid people like me. They get you your coffee. But it's interesting. I got to say that. It is definitely interesting. And kudos to everybody like you and even my roommate who started an office in the middle of COVID.

I would have had a panic attack every time I stepped in the door. I'm trying not to now. Right. You know, just being around people again. It's weird. It's weird. Yeah. When I first started, it was strange. I'm pretty used to it now. So. Yeah. I'm hoping. I mean, it's been less than a week.

So. Yeah. It's actually been a week today. So we'll see how it goes. Cool. I don't know. I worked for five hours yesterday and I got more done than I have in the past month. So I'm guessing it's probably at least for output. It is going to be a game changer. But. Well, there's something. There's something to be said for not being at your home.

You don't have the distractions. They're just not there. And if you start to think about those distractions and you start to think about the personal things that you've got to get done in your own life and you're in your office and you can't do those things, you will burn through the work so you can go ahead and go ahead, get home and take care of the other things you need to take care of.

I know. Work-life separation. I don't understand so many people's anger about having to go back into an office. I really don't. I mean, yes, I do to a certain extent. Obviously, gas prices are through the roof. Commuting sucks. Commuting sucks.

But if you take out those variables, maybe you don't live that far from your office and commuting isn't that bad of a thing. Work-life separation, man. I didn't have it for 20 some odd years. It's nice. Yeah, I'm starting to see that now.

I am definitely starting to see that now. But yeah, it's definitely just a mindfuck to go back after, you know, being locked in for so many years. It's not just the two years of COVID. That was, I mean, for me, that was fun.

I was just like, oh, everybody, join the party. Everybody's living like me. Let's get back to some actual news here. We've got a lot this week. Facebook, I want to just, I want to get this into follow-up before we get into the bigger Facebook news. A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months.

Now, of course, the title, let's talk about that. There's a little misinformation in this title because Facebook has led to increased views of harmful content since their inception. Let's just call a spade a spade. Now, did you get a chance to dig into this article? I did. What's galling about this is this is after they said that they were going to put in all these controls.

They were under fire for the misinformation and for, you know, all over the world, not just the insurrection in the U.S. and not just COVID and, I mean, all kinds of bad, horrible things. Everybody knew bad actors were using Facebook, were gaming Facebook and doing horrible things and they were under constant scrutiny and fire for it.

And they came up with this big plan and we're going to do this and we're going to do that and leave us alone and let our stock price go back up because we're going to take care of this problem. And we found out they did fuck all. They actually did the opposite. They made it worse. Yeah.

They made it materially worse. And it was worse for months and they knew it. This is the really messed up part is they knew it and they shrugged and go, I don't know. What are we going to do about it? We flip the switch. It goes into the box marked algorithm, goes in clean, comes out MAGA.

That's what happens. We don't know why, we don't know how, and they just let it go. And then one day it was fixed. They don't describe why or how it was fixed, but I don't know. It's just, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, you want to be self-regulated.

Well, self-regulate. Let's go. Do it. Yeah. Come on. Pretty simple. Do it. And this is why government has to step in. It just is because they will not do it by themselves. They will say they will do it. They will make big noises and they will roll out programs and they'll tell you exactly what they're going to do.

And then we're going to put this black box in here. And then when things go through, it's going to come out clean. And then it doesn't for months and months and months until somebody goes, hang on a second. And then they're like, oh, nevermind that. Here we go. Fixed. Fixed now. Yeah. Tighten the screw. And I love this. The engineers first noticed the issue last October when a sudden surge of misinformation began flowing through the news feed.

Okay. Well, misinformation, quote unquote, has been going through the news feed. Obviously, since the beginning, I am sick of this fucking word of misinformation. Can we just go back to saying bullshit? Lies. Bullshit. The sudden surge of bullshit began following through the news or flowing through the news feed.

That is truth. Misinformation is just wimpy, wishy-washy buzzwords. That doesn't mean anything. It's like fake news. Misinformation, fake news, whatever. It's bullshit. Call it by what it is. Because Facebook is just up to their eyeballs in bullshit on every side.

Every single side. In the news. Well, and holy shit, I can't believe that just happened news. Amazon finally has their first union. Can you believe it?

That's huge. That's great. Yep. The Staten Island warehouse, JFK8, has voted. And it was still fairly close, 2654 to 2131. So that is actually pretty close. But yeah, Chris Smalls, the guy that got canned for, you know, banging the drum.

He's got a little vindication coming his way since it actually worked. And holy shit, I can't believe this is happening news from Amazon's end. They have countered. Yes. Like, we better not let this keep happening. So they have planned to roll out a worker chat app.

This is, you know, supposed to just be, you know, a good thing for the employees. You know, it'll boost happiness and all that sort of thing. However, they're planning to include a massive blacklist of words that you're not allowed to use on their chat app. Such as union.

Or compensation. Or pay raise. Or ethics. Or robots. What about I gotta pee? Yes. This is an app that's supposed to encourage shout outs and offer digital rewards for providing value to the company. Thus, gamifying work, of course.

And, of course, making sure that let's not discuss this pesky union thing that's starting to happen. Awesome. I would love to be like someone who studied language and society right now just to get the logs of this chat app to see how people use language to, you know, come up with code words and things like that to get around the blacklist.

Because that's all they're going to do is they're going to come up with fake words to, you know, go around it. Like, you know, dicks or eggplants with emojis, peaches or butts, or whatever else you want to stick a eggplant in. I mean, you know, there's going to be something like that. What if I wanted to discuss that seminal Duran Duran album, Union of the Snake? You beat me to it, you motherfucker.

I'm like, the union emoji is going to be a snake. That's what they need. Fuck. I think we should form a Duran Duran, don't you guys? Man, I really got to take a Simon Le Bon. Good stuff. Well, Amazon's getting chat with a blacklist.

The rest of us who downloaded Truth Social are getting fuck all. And two of the execs have left. Now, are these fake names because they sound like it? Josh Adams and Billy Boozer. Billy Boozer sounds like a guy I'd like to have a beer with. Yeah, Billy Boozer is like, I could hang with that guy.

And I wonder if it's, you know, because he says Josh Adams, but, you know, I was thinking John Adams because you could have a John Adams with Billy Boozer. It's hard to tell if this is fake or real. I don't know. And I wasn't about to go do the due diligence to really try that hard because this is somebody who did start Truth Social.

Well, you know, the funny thing, though, the funny thing about this is, you know, Donald Trump's big shtick has always been, you know, I'm not a politician. I'm going to run I'm going to run the company or I'm going to run the country like a company, like all my successful companies. Never mind my steaks, never mind my vodka, never mind my schools, never mind my everything, because all my stuff fails.

But I'm going to run it like a company. And what you find out is now he starts a company, Truth Social. And instead of running it like a company, they're running it like politicians because Josh Adams and Billy Boozer apparently got booted out because Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman who came over to become the chief executive of Truth Social or Trump Media and Technology Group, TMTG, is basically doesn't want them around and wants to replace them with his own people.

Look, this is going to turn into exactly I think it already has turned into exactly what I said it this was going to be. This is going to be a money making fundraising scam sham of a fucking company that basically is just going to fill the coffers of these dumb fucks. That's it. Yep. We call them rug pulls nowadays.

That's what's going to happen. Everybody's going to get their money and then just ski-daddle off. Yep. Yep. Let's cast our minds back really quickly, Jason. Do you remember how Facebook kind of got started? Mark Zuckerberg raiding women's faces in his normal world?

Yeah, he scraped a bunch of content from university servers, right? And that's how he kind of built up his content to start his app. Mm-hmm. Yeah, TikTok, the darling social media company that never mind the fact that they might run through Chinese servers and all that sort of stuff. But let's not talk about that. Hmm.

Yeah, they're great, aren't they? They're everything that Facebook isn't. Except how did they get started? How did they get started, Brian? Well, they scrape profiles, videos, usernames, and other content from Instagram and other social media platforms in a process that they like to call a growth hack.

All right. You know, I robbed a liquor store the other day. It wasn't larceny. It was a growth hack. I like to rob banks to growth hack my personal finances. Exactly. Now, as this article points out, this is not illegal in and of itself.

It's not illegal to scrape publicly available data. Many social platforms find creative ways to boost their audience in their early days, such as harvesting external content, creating fake profiles, or mass emailing potential users without them ever signing up for that mailing list. But there tend to be terms and conditions, which, of course, Instagram and Snapchat have as such, and violating such contracts can often lead to lawsuits.

So, I would expect ByteDance is going to be served up quite a few lawsuits in the near future now that this has come to light. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, this is way back for Musical.ly. So, I don't even know if they're going to... Can they even prove anything nowadays? I don't know.

I don't know if it's even worth it for them to fire up the lawyers for that. We'll see. They're too busy doing other things right now. True. I can't quite wrap my head around this one. Pinterest bans all climate change misinformation on its platform. Unfortunately, they used the Facebook algorithm.

So, now there's five times as much climate change misinformation on their platform. I know. Yeah. So, they're dropping the gauntlet on this. Pinterest believes in cultivating a space that's trusted and truthful for those using our platform. This bold move is an expansion of our broader misinformation guidelines, which we first developed in 2017 to address public health misinformation and have since updated to address new and emerging issues as they come to the forefront.

The expanded climate misinformation policy is yet another step in Pinterest's journey to combat misinformation and create a safe space online, said Sarah Brahma, Pinterest's head of policy. It's important to have a safe space online to share your copywritten content.

Yes, exactly. So, first thing is you're never allowed to call your own actions brave, period. You cannot be brave. You cannot be bold. Someone can say you are being brave or bold, but for you to say that you or yourself are doing a brave or bold action is...

Misinformation. ...arrogant. It's really lame. We'll just go with really lame. Okay. I'm with you on that. Yeah. And what would truly be brave is, yes, if they did ban all copyright infringement from their platform. I think that might actually be brave or suicide, you choose.

Well, they would no longer have a viable platform that anybody was interested in if they did that. All right. Let's get into Twitter corner here. An awful lot has happened with Twitter the last week or so. First off, Elon Musk... The last 17 minutes, come on. Elon Musk now owns 9.2% of Twitter after purchasing $2.89 billion in stock, according to the SEC in a filing spotted by CNBC.

This is, of course, after he has been complaining about their free speech policies because, you know, sometimes you can't just yell fire in a crowded theater. But he does. Well, you can't if there's fire. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go.

The pedo guy. That's right. The pedo guy now owns Twitter. He is now the platform's largest single shareholder. And Twitter shares have reportedly responded well to this, surging more than 25% in pre-market trading when this happened. And, of course, it didn't end there. As soon as that happened, Twitter had to respond somehow.

So they did so by appointing Musk to the company's board of directors. Right. He'll be of value as both a passionate believer and intense critic of the social network, according to Chief Executive Parag Agraw. You always want an intense critic on your own board. Makes sense. But here's the thing about the CEO position is now he can't actually outright buy the company.

He is locked in. He can't buy more than 14.9%. Yes. By putting him on the board, that was a good chess move on Twitter's part because it stops them from doing anything else. Yeah. He can't actually own the entire thing. Just a chunk of it. Yes. Or even if he goes up to the 14.9%, that's still, you know, not an insignificant amount of Twitter to own.

Yeah. So I like this a little bit at the end. It's too soon to say how much influence Musk will have as a director. However, he recently did put up a poll asking if users want an edit button. And lo and behold, Twitter is now confirming it's going to test an edit button. Now, they did say they've been doing this for a while, and it's not because of Elon's poll.

Bullshit. Bullshit. I'm sorry. Misinformation. Misinformation. Yes. They did say they've been working on it for a while. And I do particularly. I have to give Facebook a score. I very rarely do. I very rarely do. But here we go.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth weighed in on the idea of an edit button, claiming that Facebook had already solved issues around potential misuse. You just include an indicator that has been edited along with a changelog. If you're really worried about embeds, they can point to a specific revision in that history, but with a link to the latest edit.

Not a real issue. Fair point. Fair point. Very fair point. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of engineering for embeds to make that happen, for sure. If only these companies had a lot of engineers to call on. Yeah. I don't even know. Does Twitter really have that many engineers anymore? I don't know.

Couldn't tell you. I mean, we've seen the features come out of there. It's like, seriously, is anybody even home anymore? They did figure out how to charge. Twitter blew. That's about it. That's right. They do get my $2.99 a month. So there is that, I guess. My buddy Kevin Marks had a blog post yesterday.

I guess you call it a blog post. His site is such a mess. It's really hard to tell what's going on. He was talking about how Twitter has basically broken the social contract with tweet embeds. Because in the old days, we would always just copy and paste the content of the tweet or take a screenshot and put it in.

So they're like, ho, ho, ho. Let us give you a mechanism that will actually fail gracefully and give you the proper tweet information as it becomes available. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So everybody used the tweet embeds. And now they're breaking tweet embeds on tweets that people have deleted.

Yes. Not giving them anything. That is basically giving them a blank box. And Kevin Marks kind of pointed this out in his post, which kind of has made it through the news cycle. And it's kind of lame on how Twitter's handling this. But they did come back and say, yeah, we're working on it.

I don't know. I mean, how do you fall on that? I think if you delete a tweet, it should disappear from the rest of the web. Well, I think what they need to do with the embeds, at least, to come back and say this tweet has been deleted. Oh, yeah, definitely. Instead of just breaking your page. I mean, that's really kind of it. Again, going back to how we would build things back in the day.

Yeah, honestly. Nobody seems to think about anymore. Yeah. I didn't even go look. It's like I should have looked to see what happened with all of the Trump tweet embeds, if those stayed or not. Because public record, his account wasn't technically deleted. Well, he was banned. But I'm guessing everything is still locked away because it is the president and, you know, record keeping and stuff like that.

One would think. One would think, but things have been a little different than one would think lately. It was interesting, though. Yeah, really. I was checking out Kevin Marks' site because I was trying to figure out what was going on because they called him an IndieWeb developer. I'm like, IndieWeb? What the fuck's that?

So I went and checked it out. And the IndieWeb is a community of individual personal websites connected by simple standards based on the principles of owning your domain, using it as your primary identity to publish your own site, optionally syndicate elsewhere, and own your data. Basically shit that we did a lot in the early 2000s and late 90s.

I mean, microformats came out of that. WordPress. So kind of, kind of, yeah, you can use WordPress, but as long as you, it's about owning your domain and your own data and all that shit. Yeah. This is like an old school thing that just doesn't fly anymore.

Just, I can't believe they're still doing it. I cannot believe they're still doing it. We used to go to microformats meetups. Now they're doing IndieWeb meetups. Go look at the pictures of the people that show up. There's like four people that show up. I'm like, come on, guys, that windmill is a little big. You're not going to, you're not going to win. But whatever.

And then my biggest jaw drop of the week. Talk about being self-aware. Far too late for it to make any difference whatsoever. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey would like you to know that he too misses the early days of the internet when protocols like IRC made the web seem like a place of boundless possibilities.

He also knows he's partly to blame for the current state of things. Yes, the days of Usenet, IRC, the web, even email with PGP were amazing, Dorsey said on Saturday in a tweet. Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I'm partially to blame and regret it.

Also, it made me stinking rich. I'm going to go feel bad while I swim in a pool of $100 bills. See you later. God, this guy could be more of a douche if he tried.

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It's a movie. It's got a big budget. It's got a big budget. It's got some big stars. Didn't know anything about it, so I was kind of hoping I'm going to go into this like I went into the Matrix. No idea what this is about whatsoever. Did not read any reviews. Did nothing about it.

Just, okay, the moon breaks up. I like that bit of the story from Seven Eves by Neil Stevenson. This seems to be, they must have read it, because this seems to be kind of it. Okay. This is the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life. Really? That good? It's friggin' horrible.

It's horrible. There's no redeeming features whatsoever. Even something like this, you would think the special effects. Okay, at least the special effects are going to be mind-blowing. Could have been watching a movie from 20 years ago. That's how good. Really? Okay. Okay. You're piquing my interest now.

It's a mishmash of every crap, stupid sci-fi trope that's been done to death a thousand times. You even end up with kind of the AI aliens that look exactly like the robots that come after you in the Matrix, in the bad ones. Are you sure you're not talking about Picard season three?

We can transition to that if you'd like. No, no, no. It just sounds exactly the same as Picard season three. Or season two. Season two. I have season three news coming up next. Okay. I don't know if you have anything else. Don't waste your time. It's horrible. It's not even bad horrible.

At one point, I was kind of going, well, if the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys showed up and started making fun of this, maybe I'd watch it. And then I went, no. No, I wouldn't. Oh, bummer. Okay. Yeah. It's absolutely horrible. Now, speaking of Star Trek Picard season three, we've gotten some news about this. The entire Asterisk, principal cast of Star Trek The Next Generation, will appear on the third and final season of Picard.

We were getting back Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brett Spiner, who have already been on there. LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, and Michael Dorn will be joining. Where's Will? Yep. No Will. Even though he's hosting all the aftershows and he's talking to everybody and he's certainly in there in Star Trek land.

No Will. That's awesome. Oh, poor guy. I actually think it's hilarious. It is funny as hell, but I feel bad. Look, I don't really care. I don't. I don't care. I don't want to see his character. No offense to him. That's true. I think he's great. I have no interest in his character coming back, wearing a sweater and being all-powerful.

Not into it. I know. Oh, that's right. That's right. He's all... I forgot about it. Remember how they got him off the show with the Traveler or whatever? Yeah. No thanks. Okay. The latest Star Trek Strange New Worlds trailer is out. And as the article says, promises a return to form.

Did you get a chance to watch this? I can't remember. This is about two minutes and it just came out a couple days ago. So you probably haven't seen it yet. You should go watch this. As they point out here, for those who have become weary of the franchise's more dark tone, I would say more emotional and woke tone, during the Alex Kurtzman era, Strange New Worlds looks like a return to the relentless optimism and romanticism put forward by creator Gene Roddenberry.

I watched this trailer, and the Star Trek original vibes are strong. It's good. Okay. A little too much making out for Spock. Okay. Well, get some, boy. He is. On fire.

He's getting a lot in this trailer. Okay. Okay. And Dan sent this in. For fuck's sake, Star Trek gets into NFTs. Yeah, Dan beat me to this. Yeah, Star Trek announced the creation of Star Trek Continuum, a part of Paramount's new NFT platform.

They state that the project is accessible to anyone, with $250 to throw around, and allows another expression of fandom by giving us their money. No thanks. And they say there will never be any more of these designs created, and the minting window will only be open for 24 hours.

Except for the fact that they're calling this Season Zero, and the platform will be used for future seasons of Star Trek NFTs. Which it won't, because the blowback has been strong on this one. Yeah. Seems like Trekkies do not like the NFTs. No. Oh, that's it.

That's what NFT stands for. Not for Trekkies. Yep. Agreed. Ooh, that's a good title. Yep. There you go. And in good news, and something that we all need, it has been announced that Somebody Feed Phil's Season 5 will be out on May 25th. Very exciting.

It's only five episodes, unfortunately, so far, I think. Hopefully it's going to be more than that, but it looks like it's just five that they've announced. It's something. It's something. Security? Ha! Joining us today is Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the CyberWire 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. Good day to you, Dave. Hello, gents. Living the dream here on the beautiful east coast of the United States.

I know what you're most excited about, Dave. What's that? The Baltimore Orioles season starts. Yes, indeed. It is opening day today. And I, you know, I do enjoy going to the ballpark.

I have not been to the ballpark in a long time. And Baltimore has a beautiful ballpark. I understand that the sports ball people have moved the left field fence back in our ballpark. And I'm... Because you were hitting way too many home runs, the Orioles.

Well, everyone seems to be saying... This is too easy for those Baltimoreans. Well, the thing I've seen from people who care about these things, and I think Ben Yellen is probably the top of my list of close friends who watch these stories. Those sorts of things closely. They seem to be indicating that they moved that left field wall back for one particular opposing player.

I don't know who that would be. But whatever it takes to get a couple more W's up on the scoreboard, right? Like, they're going to be starting putting sandlot rules in place and things like that. I will tell you I was looking at the Vegas odds for the Orioles, and thinking of you.

The lowest chance of winning the World Series or even making it to the World Series of any team in baseball. Yet, they are getting a disproportionate amount of people betting on them, which I guess is just, you know, go for the big win, I suppose. Or Strong's is in.

Yeah. We'll see. See, I grew up around here as a Baltimore Orioles fan, and my father and mother both grew up in Baltimore. My dad grew up across the street from the stadium. He used to, you know, sell newspapers in the stadium, jump the fence and go in old Baltimore Memorial Stadium.

And, you know, back then we had Cal Ripken Jr., and we had Eddie Murray, and we won World Series, and we had a good team, and there were things to be excited about. But, goodness, it's been a while. It has been. But, you know, you never know. It's a game. Yeah, hopefully I'll get out there.

I haven't been in a couple years. So, you know, maybe this is the time when we can find a COVID valley and head out to the ballpark. Yeah. I hope I'll be able to get tickets. My relation to baseball and COVID is pretty strong. The very last family trip we took before lockdown was we went out to Arizona to see a Dodger spring training game, one of the first games that Mookie Betts played with the Dodgers.

And immediately after that, you know, that whole season was either postponed and then, you know, no fans. And now that COVID is waning, as it were, I'm quite looking forward to going to a Blue Jays game here. So, yeah. Yeah, I suppose one of the nice things about going to a Baltimore Orioles game is that it's not hard to do social distancing.

You won't be near anyone. You can have your own section probably. Yeah. You can probably even have your own base if you wanted. That's true. Here's third base. We're not going to need it. Just stand at home. Nobody's ever going to get there. Right. I'll just stand next to the umpire.

No one's keeping track. Sure. So I got one little story here about Wyze. Wyze cameras. These are these cheap little $30 security cameras. How many of them did you have? Zero. All of them. This whole article is about me.

I wouldn't update them. Yeah. So, you know, it's stock hardware, some basic in-house software, and apparently these things were open to the world for like three years. They knew it, and yeah, S in IoT is security still.

And we see these things, and it just gets worse and worse as time goes on because these old devices that are cheap, you know, either the companies die or they just don't care anymore because they already sold you the cameras and they want to sell you some new ones. They just don't patch old stuff. There's no update, you know, path for anybody.

And these things are just everywhere, and I think this is going to continue. Now, with this one, did they actually have to have physical access to the device to get it or not? I can't remember. I believe this one was physical access. Okay. So, I mean, that cuts down the likelihood of it quite a bit, but still.

Not what you hoped for. It's interesting that the folks from Bitdefender held off on disclosing this, and obviously, you know, Bitdefender, they're all about responsible disclosure, a company on the up and up for sure. But, you know, a lot of times, like Joe Kerrigan always talks about, he's the person at Hopkins who's responsible for responsible disclosure.

When one of their researchers or students finds something, it's his job to go inform the parties that, hey, the clock is ticking. You've got 90 days to do something or we will disclose this. Most of the time, he hears nothing back, I believe.

So, yeah. It's interesting that they didn't do that, say, hey, we're giving you 90 days here. But, you know, the other thing that this makes me think about is that when it comes to IoT devices, but I think technology in particular, since we are in the era where everything is software rather than hardware,

that old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, just doesn't apply anymore because something could be running for five years, for 10 years, and then at some point in its life, someone discovers a new vulnerability that wasn't previously known. And so what was secure is no longer secure.

Yeah. There's no – you can't set it and forget it anymore. That doesn't exist. No. No. I think part of any – certainly any organization, any corporation's budget should include just turning these things over on some sort of regular schedule.

Your security cameras, all those sorts of things need to be updated regularly just for this very reason. I wonder how many convenience stores and gas stations across the United States have an old XP box in the back, barely patched, probably, you know, version with – like the basic version, running their entire security camera system that has been going for, you know, 20 years.

Oh, yeah. Still runs. An ultra-slo-mo SVHS deck back there that, you know, there's – Oh, yeah. There's BNC cable running and low-res – And you'd think, where does one go to get a new VHS tape? But they've got one on their shelves covered in dust so perfectly.

There you go. They're the only place you'd go to get one anymore anyways. That's right. That's right. I still love going to CVS. They do have a bucket of dead media by their photo department that used to process film. And, you know, you can get your CD-Rs there.

You can get your – the only thing I think you can't get there is a ZipDisc, I swear. Oh, ZipDisc. I was thinking of those the other day. Yeah. All right. So, we have a new breach. Block disclosed that a security breach involving a former employee, which has now impacted 8.2 million cash app users.

In an SEC filing, they reported that an ex-employee on December 10th downloaded a number of reports with customer information, including full names, brokerage account numbers, brokerage portfolio values, brokerage portfolio holdings, and reports of stock trading activity. They're saying it did not affect any aspect of cash app except for the stock part stuff.

And this is a bit of a weird one. I just feel like they didn't do their due diligence. It's one thing if you have an active employee doing something on the inside. That's very difficult to block against. But ex-employee, did they not change passwords?

I guess not. Yeah. But you hear about this all the time where somebody leaves and either they're only partially cut off from access or just somebody forgets something or they got access to something along the way for a legitimate use, but then it was never revoked.

You know, this sort of thing has happened to me a lot in my experience, in my world, just as a developer and working with clients and things like that, where, you know, I'll be fired or I'll have quit and moved on to a different employee or a different client. And, you know, I'll have all these FTP keys and access to servers and all of them, you know, occasionally I would just, I wonder if this still works.

Should I delete this or get rid of it? And I'll like be able to log in because nobody's changed any passwords. Okay, fine. These are musicians. I don't really, but this is block. Known for their meticulous security.

There's a bit of a difference. I'm not surprised if I would still be able to get into Coldplay's FTP server, but block. Brian, you and I had a talk about this topic on the show maybe 200 episodes ago at this point. But when I leave someplace, I have them turn everything off.

I put it in writing what I have access to, and then I try and get back in. And if I can get back in, I tell them what to close. And I document the whole thing because I don't want them like a year and a half down the line to come back at me and say, oh, you know, we got hacked or something. And this person still had access, and then I get blamed for something because they were too lazy to turn off my access.

Very sensible. So I'm very proactive about making sure that I cannot get anywhere near your stuff if we part ways. Yeah. Very smart. Something I remind my wife about, she does some development work herself, you know, website stuff. And I remind her because she does the same thing.

She goes, you know, every now and then she'll say, gee, I wonder if so-and-so ever changed their password or she'll go log in. And to your point, Brian, typically it's remarkable how few have. But I remind her that technically even doing that is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

And there's a log. But if they haven't changed their passwords, I doubt they know there's a log. But there is a log. There is a log. No. And someone did come after her once. This was probably about a decade ago. Somebody, you know, she got a real nasty gram from somebody who, you know, and she wasn't out to do anything.

She was just curious and, you know, so, yeah. Yeah. Jason, I think you got the right tactic here. 100%. That's the way to go. That is definitely the way to go. And it comes from having someone come after me, too. So that's – it comes from experience. So it's best to just get it done.

Yeah. Get it done. You'll sleep better at night. Particularly if you're a developer. You don't have any keys. Fond of drinking whiskey around your computer late at night. You don't want keys. Right. This too may have happened. I was just guessing about these circumstances, Jason.

I'm just guessing. Yeah. It's the developer version of drunk texting old girlfriends. Right. Yeah. I wonder if I still have access to this band's FTP site. Yes. Yes. The artist formerly known as Telnet may have been my first client problem.

Oh, my God. So we talked about this issue before on a past security episode where hackers were going in and white-hatting people's computers and patching them for them when there was a known exploit. And now we have seen the FBI do this.

And I'm sure that you guys have talked about this this week on the Cyber Wire, Dave. I just – this was big news, right? This is – at least the FBI is kind of saying that this is the reason we have not been hit by anything so far from Russia in this little war that's going on.

Yeah. Well, and I think it might have even just been yesterday that President Biden himself was kind of crowing about this. And I think part of this follows along with our intelligence community's approach to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is we've been unusually proactive with sharing the information we have, the intelligence that we have.

And that has kept Russia a bit on their heels when it comes to a lot of this stuff because we've been saying, oh, they're going to do misinformation. And then Russia is like, damn, we can't do that misinformation. And so I think this is similar to that by saying, oh, all that malware that you all installed, yeah, guess what?

We removed it. So next. So there's also – what's the word for it? So it discourages them. You know, it gets – what's the word for it that I'm looking for when you – Deters?

Deters, no, but like puts them in a bad mood. Like – Makes them grumpy. Grumpifies. Makes them grumpy, yeah. Yeah, boy, this is a compelling podcast. Takes the wind out of their sails. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody is screaming at their iPhone right now with the word that I'm looking for.

On next week's edition of Dave Tries to Find the Right Word. Anyway. Yes. Yes. It fills them with despair that they are unable to do the things that they want to do. Whatever the Russian word for despair is, that's what they have.

Vodka. Dave is now the co-host of the Tip of Your Tongue podcast. Yes, exactly. Oh, God, it's right there. Forty-five minutes of – No, it's not – it's close. It's a feeling I had when I was a kid walking by the lake when I was 12.

How do I put that? I know there's a German word for it. Cinnamon. Think cinnamon. No, no. Yeah. Anyway. Well, that was productive. Well, but the others – so when I – like you guys probably, when I saw this story, part of me was thinking, and on what authority did the FBI do this?

Did you have a warrant for that? Like, I suppose you could say this is an issue of national security, but still, I'm not sure – I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Well, yeah.

I should ask someone at the FBI. In our first 200 to 300 episodes, I think one of Jason's favorite slogans was a slippery slope, and one does wonder, you know. Okay, so you went in and took out this particular malware, but what else would you maybe do, maybe, since you can obviously get into everything?

Yeah. So there is your slippery slope, but it's interesting, and I'm sure that people will be talking about this for quite some time because it's – I've been wondering if we've been doing this. I think I mentioned it the last time we had that discussion, and now we have confirmation, and I honestly keep it up.

It's fine by me. It's fine by me. Because I was reading an article this morning about how Microsoft is going to start using their anti-game chips from the Xbox into next generation hardware for their cybersecurity business, which is, I believe, a $15 billion cybersecurity division of Microsoft.

And every time I hear that Microsoft has a cybersecurity division that is standalone to prevent cybersecurity attacks, I get angry. I get very, very angry because they're protecting people against their own product, and they have to make an entire division to charge you separately to protect people against their own product.

And I don't know what it is about that, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I'm with you. Back when Microsoft started buying up antivirus companies, I was like, really? Yes. Now, I will admit that is my own bias of being a longtime Mac guy.

So, you know, we thought more darkly of Microsoft back in the day than we probably do today. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Yeah, they get a much bigger pass today. It's a different world. Yeah, it is. So our government's also been pretty busy in other areas this week.

The Department of Justice has basically called, they're calling it the largest cryptocurrency civil forfeiture filing in U.S. history. The Southern District of Florida successfully seized around $34 million worth of coins and tokens from a seller on the dark web.

So they found a South Florida resident who used an online alias to sell more than 100,000 illicit items across marketplaces on the dark on the dark web. The bulk of the sales is said to be hacked account info from a number of major services, including HBO, Netflix, Uber and others.

So basically, you know, Netflix and chill. That seems to be what the dark web is. I never would have guessed that in a million years that actually passwords for streaming networks is a big chunk of the dark web sales. But who are they selling to? Just people that have no friends? You know, everybody's got a friend.

Yeah, it seems like small potatoes. Yeah, I was shocked. This case, this demonstrates volume, volume, volume. You can make money doing it. But you know what you also get, though, when you when you do that, you get their home address and billing and like billing address.

So you do get a little bit more info than just, you know, still in the card number. But I mean, I guess I guess it sets up for targets for, you know, fishing, I suppose. Once you once you have that account here, here's another option. It's almost impossible to find places to test new cards.

So if you're a carter and you bought a batch of cards and you want to test if they're valid, you can use accounts like this, change the card to that. They do an initial ping on the card to make sure it's valid when you save it. Right. So it could be a way to test cards. There's a lot I think you can do with some of these accounts that are just throwaway accounts if they're cheap enough.

I'm just putting on my I'm putting on my evil Jason hat. The one that fits your head oh so perfectly. I wonder also with this, you know, the the the crypto bros, if I may use that term, they always say one of the value propositions of of their love, love for cryptocurrency is that it is out of reach of of governments.

And well, and we're seeing time and time again. That's simply not the case. I was about to say, as we've been saying on the show for about a year, that's complete bullshit. Thank you for so eloquently stating what I said in a roundabout way.

Brian, no, Brian, it is complete misinformation. It is complete misinformation. Now, remember. Exactly. And well, I mean, what's who's the genius? Oh, I'm sorry. His name is Satoshi Nakamoto, who said, OK, we want a completely anonymous currency that we track every minute instance of.

And, you know, it's like, OK, let's let's make it anonymous. But let's let everybody watch. Look, if you I understand if you jump through enough hoops and you never take anything out or put anything in, perhaps you can never be found. But at some point, if you follow that chain enough, there's an in and an out that can actually be connected to somebody in the real world.

End of story. Right. So. Well, and they don't necessarily even have to know who you are to confiscate your goods. That's true. Yeah. Just take it away. So, yeah, just gone. That's it. Yeah. And it's and it's right on there, right on there on the blockchain for everyone to see.

Gone now belongs to the FBI. Thank you very much. Well, the dark web is having a pretty bad week. It wasn't just the U.S. government that did some stuff going. The German federal police, the Bundeskriminalamt, working with U.S. law enforcement, has seized the Hydra market, which is billed as the world's largest and longest serving dark web marketplace.

Over two billion burgers sold. Reportedly accounted for about 80 percent of all dark web link cryptocurrency transactions and taken about five point two billion dollars in crypto, which is worth what now? Because it changes every five seconds since 2015 and had roughly 17 million user accounts and 19,000 sellers.

So, yeah, dark web is a dark web ain't so dark anymore. That's that's for sure. Like we see what's going on and we are going after people. Yeah. Well, and I think the irony is not lost on people that this is called the Hydra market. You know, you cut off a head, you get you grow three more.

Yeah. And so it'll be interesting to see what pops up to fill the void. And at what point do the folks who are spinning these things up decide that it's just not worth it? Yeah. Well, when the when the crypto keeps getting taken away from you, how much does it continue to be worth it?

Right. So the money that you're making, which you may never have taken out into real money, is just being taken away. Poof. It's gone. So we'll see. Yeah. I wonder what the what the market ramifications are of the FBI and the government in general, all governments in general who have seized Bitcoin.

What the market ramifications are for the government's holding, huddling these coins for. At some point, the U.S. government is going to be going to own the highest amount of Bitcoin, one would imagine at this rate. Oh, my God. That's the whole thing. And then the Winklevise will be our new president. Oh, great.

Yeah, it's interesting question. And I wonder what they do with it. Would they would they be obligated at some point to auction it off? Yes. I know that they have some of the Silk Road coin. I know we're auctioned off. I saw some of the paperwork on that. But so they do get rid of it in some cases.

So it ends up back in circulation for the most part. Theoretically. Yeah. OK. So they can go get it again later. It's basically like going to a strip club. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. I'm sorry. How is it like going to a strip club? I was about to say. You keep giving them back their own money.

You just keep giving them back their own money. When did the stripper give you money? Go to the ATM. You get some money. I'm curious about that part of the transaction. Yeah. What are you talking about? Wait, what? When did the stripper give you the money back? Where's the part where you get? Right.

Oh, when you go to the ATM to get more from them that they just filled up with the money you just gave them. Oh, so you're saying the ATM on location at the strip club? Yes. Because you can watch them hand the money to the people and take the money and put it back in the ATM and then you get the money back out of the ATM. Then the money gives back to the girls and the girls go back to the ATM where you put your card in, get the money back and give it back to the girls.

That's the... Or so you've heard. Yeah. So I've heard. Okay. Very good. Well, my last story for us this week, this comes from the Wall Street Journal. And at first blush, it appears to be a simple story about Google taking down a bunch of apps from the Google Play Store, a bunch of Android apps.

A typical story that these apps are harvesting data beyond what you think they would do. But there's more to this. It turns out that these apps had been paid by a company called Measurement Systems who paid the app developers to put some code in their apps that tracks various bits of information.

And it turns out that if you connect the dots, this Measurement Systems company is connected to a defense contractor that does cyber intelligence, network defense, and intelligence intercept work for U.S. national security agencies.

Uh-huh. Hmm. Yes. Yes. And they do appear to be targeting some specific groups. Yeah. Muslim prayer apps. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. So there's that. They seem to be particularly interested in apps that were popular in the Middle East.

Yeah. Other interesting thing in this story that caught my eye, one of the companies was called Vostrom Holdings. And at the moment when these reporters or these researchers started to dig in and started asking questions to Vostrom Holdings, the company was dissolved.

That was fascinating. In the very same week. Yeah. Interesting. That's one way to avoid lawsuits. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, look, on the one hand, not surprising that U.S. intelligence agencies do this sort of thing.

I think it's interesting that one of the things these researchers did was report their findings to the Federal Trade Commission. I don't know what they're going to be able to do against the intelligence community, but perhaps – and since, you know, the U.S. doesn't have a federal version of GDPR to protect us from these sorts of things, I suspect anyone who downloaded these apps clicked on the EULA

and said, sure, whatever, take it all, and that was that. Thanks, we will. But they will and they did. Currently, these apps are being translated into Russian. Yeah. I don't know what – I don't know what to do about this.

I suppose stay away from these apps. Well, that is a good – that's a good point. I mean, this was Android only, but it's not to say that it's not on. I'm sure these are all over iOS too. Yeah. Yeah. I would think so.

And if you actually go and look at the research, the developers here did a lot of work to obfuscate the code and try to, you know, prevent people from knowing what they were doing, where it was going, who it was being sent to. And these researchers did a great job of reversing it and figuring it all out.

Yeah. I don't know. You know, that's – as long as this is within bounds of you click the EULA, we can do whatever we want, and you have third parties paying app developers to put this code in their apps to gather whatever they want.

I mean, these apps were reaching out to your local home network to find out – to pull all the devices on your local home network to see, oh, what else is around here? I see you're an Android user. What else do you have on your home network? Oh, isn't that interesting? What's your IP address? All that kind of stuff.

I see you have a wise camera. Yeah. Well, another point that the research makes is that because it was going through your phone, your phone is basically inside the firewall, right? It's inside the moat of your home where you're trying to keep things out of your home network where your phone is a trusted device within your home network.

So when your phone reaches out to the other devices in your home network, they say, oh, okay, you're inside the moat. No problem. Here's who I am. Here's what I am. And Bob's your uncle. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the whole contractor thing that really rankles.

I mean, I understand why the government would go through a defense contractor instead of doing it themselves. But it's just – it doesn't feel good, right? Like, I don't know what to do about it, but I know it doesn't feel good. Yeah. Now, here's the thing. Oh, go ahead.

Sorry. Well, what really bugs me is when you have clear cases, and I'm not saying this is one of them, but there have been clear cases where they go through third parties so as to not have to get a warrant. Yeah. Yeah. To me, that should be out of bounds. Yeah. You know, as angry as this stuff kind of makes me, I am just as angry at myself because I feel the hypocrisy in me saying,

why am I actually more angry at the government for using the system to protect us than I am for Facebook for doing it to sell me shoes? You know, because Facebook does exactly the same thing. All of these – all of the data brokers do exactly the same thing.

Government's just buying it, using it theoretically to protect us and our national interests. Why does that make me mad when they're, you know, at the root, you want to assume that they're doing a good thing for us as citizens? Yeah. And then I look at companies that do it, and I pay them money most of the time for the gadgets that let them take the exact information that the government's doing, and I don't get – well, I give them money too.

Well, I'm much more angry at Facebook. I just feel uneasy about this, the way the government is approaching this. But I don't know if I – I don't have a solution. I don't have a way that I think would be okay. But I'm not angry at the government like I am at Facebook, just to be clear.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, there's obviously the Fourth Amendment issues here of – well, you know, in the virtual world, welcoming the government in your house to have a look around. You know, we are protected against that, and this is kind of a workaround.

And so until we have some sort of federal protection or we get more of these cases – more of these cases make their way to the Supreme Court, so they get settled, so we have some clarity here. This is the world we're going to be in for a while. Yeah. Yay.

And on that happy note. Go Orioles. Chat with you gents next time. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Ryan and Derek. Welcome to the club.

Thank you. And PayPal, we've got Nikolai, Thomas, Nikola, Melissa, Shaleen, David, Breed, and Mark, who gave us 50 bucks and said, love the show. Thank you for both being awesome and grumpy. Well, thank you all, and especially Mark. Over at Stripe, we've got Mario, Matthew, Linda with a Y, and Lee.

Thank you. Thank you. And we have a new five-star rating from Philip Wilkinson. Minimal fluff and filler. I finally found a show that shares the same views and opinions, taking on the internet news with real candor and snarkiness. Brilliant. Minimal fluff and filler. Perfect. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Philip Wilkinson.

Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 548.

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