550: We Don’t Build Anything

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. Call me old, I guess, because I am. But it's not just that. This weekend in lovely Los Angeles, it's probably empty. Of Instagrammers and influencers because they were all out of Coachella last weekend and they're all going out to Coachella again next weekend.

It's the first Coachella in, what, three years? Because the pandemic canceled two of them and now it's back. And boy, I used to go to Coachella, Jason. I went for the first 10 odd years of Coachella. And I'm not sure what it is anymore. Nobody seems to really know. There's been a lot of reviews about it.

Apparently it's just an influencer jerk fest. That's all it is now. It's not about the music anymore. There's lots of articles coming out about it, how music is completely secondary. But again, call me old fashioned. But when I used to go to a music festival, it was about the music, Jason.

Yeah, well, you know, times change. Times change. And I'm out. I'm out. That's all I'm saying. Whatever culture has emerged from this pandemic, I'm done with it. I'm out. It just sounds like Coachella has turned into Burning Man. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. It's closer. Probably easier to get tickets to.

Yeah. You can shower. And there's port-a-potties. Yeah. Yeah. You can go back to your Airbnb. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the Revolve Festival, though? It's the festival within the festival, apparently. That's what I've heard from the news that has come out, calling it the Fyre Fest 2. I'd never heard of it, because I'm apparently not an influencer of stature.

Yeah. So, it doesn't sound like it was that bad, honestly. Calling this Fyre Festival 2 might be a little hyperbolic, I would say. Yes. Yes. It was a very comfortable Fyre Fest, from all accounts. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Some people had to wait outside, and it was hot, and they ran out of water.

Because it's in the desert. Okay. Well, Fyre Festival went to an island. Yeah. Like, you know, you didn't have to take a plane. I guess some people, you know, but local Los Angelinos. It wasn't like they were on an island. Let's just put it that way. These other people were on an island. These people could leave.

Yes. They could leave. They could go to a restaurant. They weren't fighting for food. Yeah. Yeah. There were no—I didn't see anybody Instagramming any cheese sandwiches for this one. They were okay. I'm sorry that influencers had a few moments of hardship in the desert heat.

Yeah, but you know what that is, Brian? You know what we call that? We call that a grammable moment. Right. That's exactly what that is. That's content, Brian. That is content. It was funny because one of the most hilarious things that I saw was like a shot of the polo grounds at Coachella, and it was, you know, the sun was setting, so it was the, you know, the beautiful light.

And absolutely, it was just a sea of people posing with their cameras, taking selfies in the, you know, the beautiful magic hour light. And it was like, oh my God, when I was going to Coachella at that point, I was like stumbling towards a beer tent.

What's wrong with you people? They have better drugs. That's why. That's true. They just skip the beer. They just skip the beer. It's not good for their Instagrammable bodies. That's for sure. I have to say that I have been a little stunned this week.

I did the Twitter customer support thing. I bitched about something, basically. I bitched about a product. So I've had a couple of eight sleep beds we've joked about that my bed has a EULA on it. Well, the second one, the first one, the top popped and they wouldn't replace it.

They're like, yeah, suck it up. You're done. It was free and it's out of warranty. So I'm like, okay, whatever. And then I still had a spare. So I've been using the spare and then the spare popped. So I had to moat about it. And I'm like, oh man, my smart bed is dead. You know, long live the moist memory foam slab that it left in its wake.

Because there's nothing worse than one of these smart beds popping. Because they usually pop underneath and then just the water soaks into your memory foam. And it's just like, oh, game over, game over. So I tweeted these guys, right? One guy from Eight Sleep wrote me back.

He's like, hey, send me your email address or drop me an email. Here's my email address. I'm like, yeah, sure. New guy. What's he going to know? Drop him an email. He CCs me and asks like, you know, how I got to bed. Because I said it was a gift from Eight Sleep. And I told him. And then he brought on the head of customer service for Eight Sleep.

He's like, we got you. What's your address? I'm like, no way. It works. This influencer podcasting thing still gets me some free stuff. Okay. Not an invite to Revolve Festival. But, you know, you take the good with the bad. At least you got a bed. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I thought of you when I was writing that tweet. I want you to know that. That's why I'm bringing this up. I was thinking of you when I wrote this tweet. I'm like, motherfucker's right. This is the only way to get anything done. It is. You can call numbers on websites. You can send blind emails to support at whatevercompany.com.

And nothing will happen. But you tweet someone. You tweet a company. That is the only remaining customer service there is. It's amazing. I will tell you, though, that there is one company that is 100% impervious to your tweets. And that, of course, is AT&T.

No, well, Twitter, too. Yeah, forget that. Actually, most companies nowadays. But anybody that you want to get a hold of. But AT&T, forget it. I got to. I am now, Brian, I'm a gagillionaire. Are you? I know you've heard those god-awful commercials.

I got fiber yesterday to my lovely garage, since this is where the magic happens. And I needed some speed that 200 down, 20 up was not cutting it anymore. So now I clocked it in yesterday. 700 up, 700 down. Now, hang on a second.

I'm a little confused here, Jason. Cast back our mind to just even last episode, when you started paying good money for an actual office not in your home. Correct. I have both. There's a reason for this. The office, I can't record in. I can basically do no recordings in that office.

That office is for business and meetings and editing and going heads down. That is my home away from home. It's my CGP gray fortress of solitude, as it were. But I can't record there because there's a million people. It's an office building.

I have a glass wall. So I record at home. So I've been reworking my home studio after the realization that I could not record it at the office. So in apps and doodads, you'll hear about a bevy of new gear that I got to facilitate the change.

So that's why, honestly, the AT&T thing, that was just a happenstance. My roommate went to the AT&T store and they conned her into buying AT&T internet, which I was okay with because it's faster and it's the same exact price. But here's the problem.

The install guy got here, put it in, took him two hours. He was about an hour late. And when he was done, there was nothing he could do to activate the account. He's like, bro. He literally said to me, bro. Bro, I'm sorry. You're going to have to get on the phone. And I'm like, no. He's like, yeah, man.

He's like, yeah, man. You're going to have to get on the phone. I'm really, really sorry. He knew what was going to happen. And he was just apologizing. I'm like, so you come here on a fresh install, put in the internet, and I have to call customer support because you can't make it work. I'm like, this is the start of a great relationship.

He just lost it. He started busting up. So I'm sure he gets it all day long. Yep. So I get on the phone to the AT&T customer support. They send me to India, of course. And, you know, Brian, I have gotten to the point now where I can surf the waves of Indian customer support like a master.

It starts out with a half an hour before you call, you find that bottle of feels, and you slam a huge amount of CBD because you know you're going to get angry. You know you're going to get angry. Yes. When you were speaking to Christopher in India.

No, I was speaking to Natalie. Oh, Natalie. Yes. She told me at one point to find the three buttons in my browser to click on that so I can delete my cookies. Or, um, kill my cookies and delete my, uh, was it, uh, cachet.

I have to delete my cachet. Yes. I have to kill my, yeah, delete my cookies and kill my cachet. I would love to be there at the beginning of the day when they hand out your white person name for the day. I know. I know. And she forgot she had to be new because she was just going from the script and I'm like, okay, you're going to stop there.

I'm not going to do the next four things you asked me to do. Tell me the last thing on that list before the next action item. And she, she got, she got in the groove and she started skipping the little things I told her. I'm like, my browser doesn't have three dots on it. So I don't know what you're talking about.

So let's skip that whole thing. And I just, it was very nice about it, but very firm. I'm like, I am not going to do that. We're going to move on. And she took it like most of them are like, sir, please management makes me do this. But she went along with it, took a half an hour longer when they finally got a manager on that just click the button that said activate account instead of me going back and forth for another two hours.

I'm like, you know, the install guy that was here, he could have done that too. And just said, would you just click the fucking button, man? I got to go somewhere. But yeah, I'm now a good billionaire with a smart bed with a EULA. Congratulations. Live in the high life.

In the pandemic's over news, Uber and Lyft have dropped any mask requirements for U.S. drivers and passengers, airlines as well. Basically, all public transit is basically now that a federal judge, of course, in Florida, overturned a federal mandate for masks aboard public transportation.

That is that's it. Everybody's dropping it. Done. CDC is saying, you should probably still do that. But, you know, it's you. YOLO, I guess. You know, I don't I don't even I mean, for me, like now, you know, I'm vaxxed up as vaxxed as vaxxed can be until they tell us we should get our second booster.

Had covid. Oh, you can't get the second booster up there yet? No, not yet. Oh, they're they're holding it for the olds and high risk people right now. You know, oh, that's that whole public health thing. Yeah. Oh, no, I'm legally accessible to get my second booster and everybody I know down here has gotten their second booster.

That's why I didn't know that you couldn't get yours yet. No, no, I have not gotten mine yet. I will. I assume I will probably get it when I come back to the States for for the summer. I'll just go and walk in and get it somewhere or maybe they'll open it up here by then. I don't know. But it does. You know, right now, since I had covid anyways, I'm assuming I'm all anti-bodied up.

And when I'm on my plane coming back, I'll I'll look down and see. Have we entered U.S. airspace yet? And then whip off my mask. I don't know how that actually works, but we'll see. So, yeah, it's you don't have to do it anywhere now, I guess. And that's that. Yeah. I haven't seen a mask around here in a long time.

I still wear mine on public transport here. And I do wear it if I just go into a shop. I don't know why. I guess it's two years of habit at this point. I'll probably I don't know. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Nobody knows what they're doing anymore.

I know it was the peer pressure here. It's like I felt it's funny. I actually felt weird wearing a mask going in now. It's like, hmm. Yeah, you're the oddball out. OK, how the tables have turned. You're like Florida, man, walking around in your mask. Yeah, I still keep them on me, though.

So, you know, just in case I'm ready to go back because, you know, wave 17 is on its way after Coachella. It's coming. I'm just watching the numbers. Yep. I saw the numbers were definitely going up in the US again. But whatever. It is what it is. That's it. That's it.

That's why I want Fauci up there. I want Fauci in a Coachella outfit. Con YOLO, bitches. Be done with it. Something we can be done with for a little while, at least now, is this damn argument about is it legal to scrape a website if the website's public? Yep.

We've been going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And we finally have, we finally have some news in a landmark ruling by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It's okay. You're good. Yeah. You're fine. If something's public, you can scrape it.

That doesn't mean you own it. Correct. But you can scrape it. Pinterest. I'm looking at you. Pinterest. Oh, God. Yeah. This comes down to this lawsuit from LinkedIn against a company called Haikyuu Labs.

And what they did was they would take LinkedIn data and then just do permutations on it to do just kind of aggregation on who's leaving who, what average salaries are, and is this person a good buy? It's basically like the Kelly's Blue Book of Employees.

Right. So they would take the data and then do stuff and sell their data on it. And LinkedIn said, no, no, no, you can't do that. Well, the court said, screw you guys. I'm going home. Yeah. Yeah. We have some Instagram news. They have enabled product tagging for everyone in the US.

Yeah. You can now tag products in your feed. This had been limited to brands and, of course, some influencers before. But now anybody can do it, which makes, again, I'm old. I know that. But why? Why would you want to?

You don't get a cut? Sales. They may add that at some point, but right now you can just tag things and there's no affiliate stuff. There's no cut of sales. There's nothing. You can just tag to help support your favorite businesses.

Well, I'm sure if it's open to influencers, they're tagging the companies that pay them. So I'm guessing influencers probably hate it because it's something else they have to do. And it's probably another vector for tracking for brands. Oh, yeah. I'm sure this is what this is all about. Yes. So the influencers are probably going to have to be more performant on their posts, which will probably make them, I don't know, less Lambo, you know?

Yeah, I don't get it. Any in the same way that even when I was growing up, I didn't get like, why am I paying Nike to wear a shirt that says Nike? Just do it, Brian. Just do it. They say it right there. Just do it. Just do it. They got you. And there's something in the water. Apparently some unionization has gotten into the water, particularly in New York.

After we had some Amazon, one Amazon place actually unionized now, Apple Store employees are attempting to form a union at the company's flagship Grand Central Terminal location in New York City. They want the tech giant to pay workers at least 30 bucks an hour. 30 bucks an hour for retail.

That's not bad. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's pretty good. That's impressive. You know, you think Apple and you go, oh, yeah, of course, Apple employees should be getting 30 bucks an hour. But the retail employees? Really? Hmm. 30 bucks an hour. Hmm. Well, good luck with that.

That's not bad money if you can get it. No, I might pick up a side hustle here. I was going to say, the mall is not far from me, so. I do like the name of the group leading the effort, the Fruit Stand Workers United, since it's Apple.

That seems to make sense to me. For pay, we seek a minimum $30 for all workers built up on a matrix based on role, tenure and performance, the group said. For benefits, we'd like to see more robust changes like increased tuition reimbursement, faster accrued and more vacation time and better retirement options, including higher match rates for 401k and enrollment and pension plans.

I never had a 401k or a pension plan whenever I worked retail. Hell no. I made minimum wage, from what I recall. Now, I'm not saying we should. That's what people should be getting. But I mean, this seems plush for a retail position.

No shit. I'm like, guys, you might want to slow your roll a little bit there, you know? It's impressive. It's definitely impressive. It is impressive. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's a reason that Apple is, you know, the most profitable company in the world, and it's not because they're paying your ass $30 an hour, so don't hold your breath, buddy.

Yeah. Well, I'll follow that one. I'll follow that one. I'm interested. But I mean, maybe this comes from the school of Ask High, settle somewhere in the middle. Yeah. Yeah. It could be. It could be. Yeah. But, you know, they see that 30% on the App Store, so they think $30, 30%. I see the crossover.

I see the crossover. So I might go apply for one of these jobs, particularly given my losses with Netflix stock in the last day or two. Netflix is a bit of a punching bag on the stock market right now after their earnings call, where they, for the first time ever, announced that they had lost some subscribers and expect to lose quite a bit more over the next year or two.

Again, this is not surprising. Once you have everybody in the world subscribing to your service, there's nowhere else to go except down. But that's the way the stock market works. So that is what it is. So, yeah, it's taking a beating right now.

Personally, I'd buy more right now because I don't think Netflix is going to go away. They certainly have some problems with their content. It's kind of crap. It's harder to find good stuff. They've had some misses recently. They haven't had must-watch shows since Squid Games, which, again, the world moves so fast now.

Squid Games was only a few months ago, people. Hey, the first half of Ozark was in there. The first half of the last season of Ozark was in there. So that had to give them a little bit of a bump. So one of the things that they're looking into right now in order to kind of scramble and get some people to, you know, subscribe again.

Obviously, they're going to try to crack down on subscription sharing because they say that while there are 222 million households paying for Netflix, over 100 million more are sharing their accounts. So they're losing out on a lot of subscribers there. Not too surprising.

And they're also looking into basically doing a free ad-based version, a la every other media company like Spotify and things like that. So that might help bring in some money and bolster the company. We'll see what happens with that. You know, I mean, much like if you're going to take that page out of Spotify's playbook, you should also just do a family plan and help nip some.

Again, if it's easy, we don't cheat. If you make it easy for us to share our Netflix with our friends and family, we will pay you for that as opposed to just doing it illegally. Yeah, which actually I do. I actually do that because I get I get an extra seat and a friend of mine splits the cost with me on my bill and it works out.

Yeah. I mean, and again, it's because because you big media have decided to nickel and dime us with 10 million different subscription services. This is the way that we you know, that's what my family does, like with my little family unit here in Toronto.

You know, my sister-in-law pays for Netflix. I use her Netflix. I pay for Disney Plus. She uses our Disney Plus. That's otherwise I'm subscribing to how many services? It's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, I do some, you know, some horse trading here and there to do the same thing.

And I still have more services than I could, you know, ever want. That reminds me, I have to cancel Showtime. See, I have to I have to check my calendars because now the billions is over forever. Steaming pile. See, again, tip to the wise, put it in your in whatever calendar system you use, put in your subscription end dates.

So, you know. Yeah. You know what? Yeah. I think there's another show that we were watching that just turned out to be shit, but that's what I timed it on. And I forgot to adjust to the end time when I took that show out. Streaming. Did we not predict it?

Did we not predict it? And I saw this one. This was over at Science Alert. And it caught me. The headline caught me. An ancient Namibian stone could hold the key to unlocking quantum computers. And I'm like, oh, is this like, you know, National Treasure 3?

This sounds like a plot plot line. And I just want to say that I understood literally nothing in this article. It was the at the end. It said it has this great sentence that I just love. The sentence is, these results paved the way towards realizing strongly interacting exciton polaritons and exploring strongly correlated phases of matter using light on a chip.

I have no fucking idea what that means. I feel stupid, but I'm excited for the movie. I can't wait for the sequel. Bring it on. I can't believe you're not up to date on your Ryberg polaritons and your cuprous oxide crystals from ancient deposits. Now, it seems to me, we probably shouldn't be basing key technology on something that is admittedly incredibly rare.

I'm just saying. Well, they got to try. I mean, come on. Then, you know, hopefully they'll figure out how to make it in a lab after that. But, yeah, I don't know why romancing the Namibian stone keeps coming to mind. But romancing the stone is a good movie.

That was a great movie, and actually the theme song is fantastic, which I'm totally going to listen to as soon as we're done recording. What was the theme song? I can't remember it. Romancing the stone, man. This is back in the day when they didn't come up with fancy titles. The theme song was the name of the movie.

Now I've got to look up who it was done by, but it's actually a really great song. Eddie Grant. All right. Eddie Grant of Electric Avenue, Eddie Grant? Yes. Eddie Grant of Electric Avenue did Romancing the Stone theme song, and it is phenomenal. It's a great track.

I highly recommend you go listen to it right now.

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Media Candy. And I'm back from enjoying that fine track from Eddie Grant. Traffic on the 10s. Never leaving my poor heart alone. I can totally hear it in my head. Okay, go ahead. Okay.

So, last night I sat down and hunkered down to watch The Batman, since it is now streaming. I saw it was on our maybe shared HBO account. Yes. I almost considered watching it, too. How was it? I got 45 seconds past the credits.

Oh, boy. And I noticed that, A, it's a three-hour movie. B, it's another fucking Batman movie. I kind of know how it ends. C, I'm a 50-year-old man who's seen every iteration of Batman done to date, and I decided in that moment that I never need to see another one.

So, I reclaimed that three hours of my life. You know, the real problem is that Eddie Grant did not do the theme song called The Batman. That's right. That's right. Okay. Exhume the corpse of Eddie Grant. Yeah, I was on the fence anyways, for much the same reason as you, and even more so for me, because as anybody that's been listening to the show for a long time knows, I do not give a flying F about superhero movies in general.

So, the idea of sitting and watching yet another iteration of The Batman doing anything is not really thrilling to me. So, I think we'll have to leave this one. No reviews of The Batman. Yeah, and technically, The Batman really isn't a superhero.

He's just a douchebag billionaire with a bunch of toys, like somebody else we always talk about in the news. He is in the League of Heroes. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Well, anyway. I saw this this morning, and I scratched my head, and I'm like, oh, this is good.

Obama's to leave Spotify. Seek podcast deal elsewhere. Okay. Okay. They can't keep the Obamas at Spotify, and apparently, the Obama camp was like, yeah, they were just tough to work with. So, we're packing up our toys, and we're going someplace else.

And I'm like, what the fuck, Spotify? You can't keep Barry on staff. You can keep Rogan. And you had the balancing of Obama, and you couldn't make it work. Apparently, Spotify has drawn their line in the sand. We will take Rogan. Bye-bye, Obama. Yeah.

That's it. Well, interesting. It is interesting. And there's a lot of these deals that are falling apart. If you've noticed, there are a lot of shows that Spotify has announced that have never come to be, and the people have moved on. Or people have done, like, a year with them, and they're like, this sucks. We're out. Yep. So, I think they have a talent retention problem.

Having said all that, Spotify, by all means, throw money at us. We'll stay with you forever. And, Brian, I came across a review by our friend The Critical Drinker over on YouTube called Star Trek Picard. No more reviews. I'm out. Did you get a chance to watch this one?

I did. What did you think? It's hard to argue with any of his points. This is why I have a hard time with this guy. I really like his reviews, but then I hate how I feel afterwards. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying I'm hate-watching Picard at this point, but it's pretty damn close.

It's pretty damn close. It is pretty damn close. Hope springs eternal, but... I despised the last episode. I can see where they're going, and I don't like that either. No. You know, all I'm holding on to for my hope anymore is seeing the entire cast minus Wil Wheaton reunited next season.

That's it. Yeah. That's all I want. Yeah. Well, you're going to get it. You might want to mute it and make up the words. I don't know if we're going to get it. What my guess is because of the actual actors' real schedules in real life, I don't think we're going to see them all together at once. I think we'll see them sprinkled out throughout the season, which is even worse.

You know why? You know why? Because I think you're right. When they released that everybody's going to be in it, they didn't release a picture of everybody together. There was no cast picture of everybody, which you know if they had taken that... There would have been a shot and they would have used it. Yep. Yeah.

Or maybe they're saving it, but I doubt that. They're actually probably in the middle of photoshopping it right now. I guarantee you we're not going to see the whole cast reunited. Yeah. Too bad. Too bad. But yeah, this show is one of the great disappointments of 2020, too. It really is. The excitement and giddiness when it was first announced.

Yeah. And now the actual reality. Oh, well. So when Discovery Plus came out, you told me that the Food Network stuff, they were way behind on the seasons. And I'm like, oh, man, that sucks. And I confirmed it because I am a Discovery Plus subscriber.

Yeah. And by the way, it is the best deal of all the subscription services that we've got. We spend more time watching that than anything else. And it's the cheapest of the bunch. Yeah. Although we'll see how that's going to work out after this big merger. But they've been getting a lot better. They've actually been getting better.

And I wanted to let you know. No. They just had the Tournament of Champions 3, which is a contest show, which you don't watch. But they had another cooking show, a contest show, the Julia Child's Challenge or something like that. It was also really good. These shows, they're running them lockstep with broadcast.

Fine. In some cases, earlier, which is great. Yeah. Like Tournament of Champions was on that morning. So we would come in and we would, you know, like during the day we would watch it. And so we would know who won before it aired, which is, you know, actually went to air on the cable network.

So they're getting a lot better. Wow. I just wanted to let you know. Well, it is cheap enough for me to go ahead and subscribe for a month and see if the shows that I like are still being done in lockstep with broadcast. Because if so, then Discovery Plus has got themselves a new subscriber, even though it's not technically legally available here in Canada.

And I'll have to go through my VPN. So what? I do that for HBO, too. Webby.show slash VPN. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And speaking of something I watched through that VPN, because, again, HBO not available in Canada either. I watched the new Bill Maher special, Hashtag Adulting.

Why, you ask? Because I'm looking for punishment. I still watch Real Time with Bill Maher because, you know, the guests, basically. Not Bill Maher, because Bill Maher has been insufferable. He is one of the celebrities like Adam Carolla that as soon as the pandemic exposed their true colors and they became nutbags.

Much like 9-11 did Dennis Miller, if you're old enough to remember that. Yeah. Yeah, the pandemic has turned Bill Maher into an insufferable asshole that can't shut up about his supposed infringes on his freedom and people making fun of people wearing masks without even slightly questioning family situations or underlying conditions or anything like that.

All he does is think, you shouldn't be wearing a mask. It's over. Done. Take it off. And he basically, like, berates somebody in the audience. He went to Florida to shoot this special because Florida, and he figured nobody will be wearing a mask, and there's a couple people in his audience wearing masks, and he yells at them because he's a dick.

What a dickhead. So the one-line review of this, and I agree with this 100%, or actually it's two lines. If you watch Real Time, then this is like revisiting many of his monologues from recent years. Again, reminder that recent years, Bill Maher has been an insufferable prick. If you don't watch that, then just picture an old man yelling at a cloud.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. Don't bother. No, he's been dead to me for so, so long. I think I used to watch him, and then right when we started doing this show was when I just couldn't take him anymore. So I stuck with him for almost a decade longer than I have.

Again, I still watch Real Time, but entirely based on the guests. If there's nobody of interest, I won't even watch. His monologues are horrific, and I just, bleh, bleh. Ups and doodads. I have a little follow-up on some backpack news, Brian.

I know this is exciting stuff. I talked on the show a while back about the PGY Tech One Mo Camera backpack that I got. This monster, it's a 25-liter backpack that it's, they say it's meant for drone stuff, but for my camera gear, it's perfect. Laptop bag, sexy, styly, water-resistant, the whole nine yards.

Love the thing. Problem is, it's too big when I want to go to my shiny new office, so I had to go get a smaller bag. Also, I just want to point out that in the entire history of backpacks, I don't think any backpack could ever be described as sexy. Yes, this one is. It's very sexy. Okay.

Well, considering the last backpack that I had, and it's like me going to the office with a trapper keeper at this point. It's an old Swiss backpack that I got. Oh, I still have one of those. Yep. Yeah. The thing won't die. It looks like it's brand new. But the problem is the styling is from the 90s, so it's not that great.

So I figured I would upgrade, and I got the PGY Tech One Go 18-liter camera and drone backpack for men and women. 16-inch laptop backpack for street-city urban photographer. Okay. Putting a 16-inch laptop in this backpack is going to be tough, but the 14 fits nicely.

It's a great little fold-over backpack. Can't complain about it. I really, really like it. They've got some cool tech in it to keep it cool, but what I really like is the arm straps are very stretchy, and they're very soft. They don't hurt, which is a good thing when you have that thing loaded for bear.

But I was going to say that when I bought that Swiss backpack, this is going to date it, how long it's been. I was walking down Market Street with Sean Bonner, and we were talking about Metblogs because we were still doing that. That's about when I got mine, too. That's how long ago. And it still works perfectly.

It's still my day-to-day travel bag. It's amazing. Yeah. This thing doesn't even have threadware on it. I don't know what they make them out of, but, oh, my God, it's crazy. But, yeah, this is my go bag. It's like my – it is now set up as the family go bag when it's time to go because that thing will survive an apocalypse.

I'm just going to crawl into it when the nukes start dropping. And part of the new gear for the office, I got a Universal Audio Apollo Solo. These are really high-end interfaces. Plugins are, like, top-notch, very, very expensive stuff.

I figure if I'm setting this thing up for good here in the garage, I just want to set it up to record with a nice setup. So, I got that completely underpowered. It can only run two plug-ins before it craps out. So, sending it back. Because I used to have the Duo, the Apollo Twin Duo, that has two DSPs built into the hardware, so it runs all the plug-ins locally.

The Solo, you guessed it, one DSP. Kind of sucks. So, as soon as we're done with this show, this thing is going back in the box, because I'm recording with it right now, and going back to Amazon. And next week, we'll be on the Duo with the fancy plug-ins in. So, go with that.

Another thing I got for the office, which turned out to be surprisingly a good buy, was the Fazibo L-shaped electric standing desk, 55-inch height-adjustable stand-up table sit-stand desk with splice board, comma, black frame, slash black top for $349 from Amazon with next-day delivery.

For a cheap standing desk, this thing's great. Cool. It's actually great. It's even better than my Uplift desk, because it comes with the programmable buttons without having to pay an extra $120. I like it. You know, I'm still using my IKEA one.

Insert funny name here, whatever they decided to call it. The thing's solid, and it works great. It's far from sitting. How much was that one? That was a pretty cheap one, too, right? Yeah, it was maybe $500 tops, and that's Canada pricing, too. Oh, yeah, so it was like they gave you $20 to take it off their hands.

Pretty much, yeah. Cool. Yeah, no, there's a lot of, you know, cheap options for standing desks out there, because that Uplift desk that I got, super heavy, super hard to move. It had to come on an industrial delivery truck, like UPS couldn't even carry it because it was so heavy.

And I've carried that thing around the country, and now I'm like, $350? These things are disposable now. Pretty much, yeah. Just get this thing, spend an hour, put it together. It's not as, you know, not as super duty as some of the other ones, but for just a nice standing sit-stand desk, $350 is worth it.

$350? It's really worth it. That's like, what, you make an hour working in an Apple store these days. Seriously, seriously, man. And to try something new, I got the Hemudu dual monitor articulating desk mount arm stand vertical stack screen support supports two 13 to 34-inch computer monitors with Z-clamp, $39.95.

So now I have two monitors stacked one on top of the other. Okay. I've got a 24-inch- No human would stack books that way. I know, exactly. That's right. Oh, God. Also, another theme song, name of the movie, Ghostbusters.

Yep, that is true. That is true. Was that Ray Parker Jr.? Yes, it was. Well, technically, Huey Lewis and the News, depending on the lawsuit. Huey Lewis and the News, yes, after it went to litigation. Oh, so I've got the small monitor on the bottom and the big monitor on the top.

So when I'm recording now, on the small monitor, I've got Riverside open, watching the recording happen, so I can keep an eye on that. And on the second top monitor that is very tall and above where I would normally use a monitor, that's where I've got the show notes. So I'm looking above the microphone for all of the notes in any video that I need to see or websites.

And on the bottom, I've got the actual, like, you know, the nuts and bolts of recording. It's pretty cool. I think this is turning into a pretty nice recording setup. Oh, and by the way, when you get a cheap standing desk, they come with wheels, which is awesome.

I love wheel desks. They're the best. I love wheels. I just move this thing out the way. It's perfect. Um, the one downside is the road PSA one boom arms, which are the de facto booms, which you're probably using right now. I am sucks balls for this setup.

So it also sucks balls for the large Samsung monitors that you and I both have, because this thing barely clears the top of it. Yeah, I don't need, well, mine comes in from the side and I've got it like the way it's set up is kind of, you have to do that with that Samsung. The other thing you should do with that Samsung is buy a low profile arm like I just did.

I ordered the Elgato wave mic arm LP for low profile. Um, it's a hundred bucks. Uh, my other low profile boom arm was like 300 bucks. It was an OC white, one of the really expensive ones that is so expensive and so well built that I can't get it out of my other standing desk to bring it home.

So it is forever installed in a desk. I don't need it in. So I went with a cheap option with the Elgato wave mic, which you might want to check out, like I said, because it works really well that you can put on the back and slide under most monitors. So I am podcasting. I looked at it and went, I need this and I want to order this.

Now, one thing I will say about this website, they've done beautiful photography of this low profile mic arm, but you have to scroll almost down to the bottom to actually see it full body in use. Like they've got all these closeups and I'm like, what, what am I even looking at?

This does not look like it. I have a school, school, school, school, school, school, school, school, closeups of every joint and every little cable channel and school, school, school, school, school, school. Oh, there it is on a desk. That's what it actually looks like. Uh, come on guys. Front and center. First thing I should see is the full product. Yeah.

They need to do an establishing shot first. Yes. So yeah, for, I mean, for the price, I'm willing to roll it. I'll let you know. Now, when I ordered it, they said, you know, I get next day or whatever they, next day they sent me the little things that your order is on the way. And I'm like, okay.

And you get these all the time now, you know, you order something and then your order has shipped. Then you click on the tracking and it's like the, the, uh, the sender has printed the label, but we don't have a box yet. So we're not going to do anything yet. So you got to wait. Yep.

Everywhere. I have a story about this as well. So they finally, they, it, it, finally, I checked it and it shipped and it has been bounced every day this week. It's like, oh, coming tomorrow. Nope. Coming the next day. Coming the next day. So today it should be here theoretically between one and midnight.

But who knows if it's actually going to show. So what's your story? I needed a new pair of like around the house pants. Like I've been wearing these roots sweatpants when I'm just around the house and they've been very comfortable. And I was like, I need something else. I want something a little bit more fashionable.

I saw a Facebook ad. This is, I already went down the dark path here. I saw a Facebook ad for a Japanese, uh, pants. It's a company called Kidorimen. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. I didn't just order it because who, you don't just do that.

You do not just take a Facebook ad at face value. So I Googled it legit company. Okay, cool. What these companies really need to do is tell you where their stuff is actually coming from. That would be very helpful information from now on. So I placed an order two weeks later.

I hadn't even gotten the it's shipping, which is a lie because a label hadn't even been created two weeks later. And I wrote them, their customer service, no response. I wrote their customer service a second time saying, I want to cancel my order. It's been two and a half weeks. And since you took my money, I'm not expecting you to be Amazon, but two and a half weeks, people.

At least tell me you've gotten, you're, you're doing so, are, are there pants? I don't know. Um, so when I told them I was going to cancel, they wrote back and said, we're so sorry, blah, blah, blah. You know, pandemic excuses, all that sort of thing.

Can you wait another two to three days? And we guarantee you it'll ship at that point. I'm like, fine. Uh, four days later, I got the label is created. Your order is shipped. Bullshit. And then another four days after that, now that I've got at least a tracking number and I, I can see that the, nothing's been picked up anywhere.

And so almost a month after I've ordered this thing, I finally see, okay, it's been picked up. Guess where it was picked up from? Shenzhou. Wuhan. Oh, nice. Ground zero for COVID. Nice.

I'm like, oh my God. And now it's got to get from Wuhan to Canada. So I don't know if I'm ever getting these pants. And then once they get there, they have to spend at least the next three weeks in quarantine getting washed over and over again. I guarantee you I'm going to wash them like nine times before I wear them if they ever show up.

I know you are. Just because we're stupid creatures, I know it. I would too. I'd be washing the shit out of those. I'm like, I'm not going to be Typhoid Mary 2. Unbelievable. Oh my God. I did, I did try something that I've heard on a bunch of podcasts and always thought it was bullshit, but I was desperate.

I wanted a coupon for the Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP that may or may not ever show up, along with your sweatpants. I tried Honey, that coupon code thing. I installed the Honey browser plugin once about eight years ago, and it sat there for about eight years, and I finally uninstalled it about a year ago.

Because I never used it. I tried it on my first go, and it saved me 15 bucks. Right. So, I'm cool with it. I'm going to keep it, and I'm going to keep trying it. I don't care. It worked. I saved 15 bucks. All right. So, basically, I got free shipping. There you go.

Maybe that's why I haven't. Maybe that's the honey trap. They say you got free shipping out of it, and that's why it never shipped. Finally, I saw this, and I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, because we're going to get asked about this, Brian, because we are those types of people.

Dropbox has released Dropbox Passwords, which is their attempt at a password manager. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not going to do that? Nope. Just going to tell everybody that's listening right now, nope, nope, nope. GOG.show slash 1Password, that's who we recommend.

Dropbox Passwords, here's the reason why. 1Password makes one thing. They make one password. Dropbox makes a bunch of different things, not very well. None of which work well. Exactly. None of which work well. So, just because it's an add-on, it is an afterthought for them.

It is a marketing ploy to get you to sign up to Dropbox. Yes. I am a Dropbox user. I'm a paid Dropbox user. I give them a lot of money every month to keep my files there and safe, and I still don't trust them with my passwords. That's all I'm going to tell you. There you go. Skip it. If anybody asks you about it, tell them no.

GOG.show slash 1Password. And move on from there. But do not, do not, I repeat, do not trust Dropbox Passwords. I have no proof that it sucks. I haven't tried it. I'm just going to tell you that after 30 years in this business, this is a stinker.

Right. So, I saw this news story, and I thought immediately of you, of course, Jason, because since you've had your stroke, you've been much more health conscious, and your number one health tip for losing weight is to cut your salt and sodium intake. Yes. Which does have the side effect of, you know, tending to make things more bland than you'd like them to be.

But I have a solution for you. Okay. Now, this is from the same guy who invented the lickable TV, which we did mention on the show when that made the news. And that, you know, that's up to you. If you, what you and your TV do at the depths of night.

Have a seat in your own home. Be my guest. Be my guest. But I'm interested in these as well. He has developed a set of electric chopsticks that claim they can enhance the taste of salt. So, it uses a wristband computer and electrical stimulation to transmit sodium ions from food to the eater's mouth, according to the people that are developing this.

So, it's kind of interesting. So, yeah. Researchers say that chopsticks can enhance the perceived saltiness of low-sodium foods by around 1.5 times. So, there you go. Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned this to my wife, and we barely use any salt in our cooking as well.

Like, we're very low, low-salt people. We don't add salt to things. We use less than recipes usually suggest. And then we noticed one day our son was, like, licking these french fries. We were out of the restaurant. And he was like, that tastes so good. I don't, I just want to lick the french fries.

And we were like, holy shit. No wonder Lucas never likes to eat at home. He needs salt. He wants more salt on his food. We barely put any in. So, maybe I should get these chopsticks for him, too. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, but you do know that you need salt to survive, right?

Well, we don't use no salt. But we're just kind of a low-salt people. Apparently not our son. So, I finished The Broken Room by Peter Clines.

All right. And just wanted to follow back up. I was satisfied with the ending. I thought it was a satisfactory conclusion, personally. That's all we need. Yep, that's it. That's it. I mean, it's definitely sci-fi. There's some good sci-fi bits in there. There's also action and adventure.

So, I like that, too. So, yeah. All in all, I thought it was a well-balanced book. And I give it a thumbs up. Excellent. I'm still working my way through a sci-fi book. Hopefully, I'll be done next week. But I did see this in the news. I have always been a big fan of Roland's musical instruments. I had quite a few of them myself.

I used them to make my one album. And they're putting out a big, gigantic coffee table book to celebrate their 50 years in the music industry. This looks pretty cool. It's a 400-page book that delves into tech, people, and culture behind the company. It has a bunch of artists talk about stuff, you know, total gear porn pictures of a bunch of their old synths and all that sort of stuff.

So, it looks pretty cool. But the one notable thing that came out of this is this entire company that publishes these books, and they're called Bjuks, basically came to prominence through Kickstarter. They wanted to make sure that they got the money to do these gigantic, you know, coffee table books first, and then they did and made them.

And now they're a full-on regular company. So, good for them. Oh, how very, very cool. I do have a coffee table book, too, that I got that I'm dying to get down the time to sit through. It's called Skate by Grant Brittain, or J. Grant Brittain, if you actually read it.

But it just goes by Grant Brittain. He was the photographer for skateboarding from the beginning. He used to work at Del Mar Skate Ranch and is just – he's the guy. When I was starting out in photography, I wrote him a letter and said how much I love his stuff. So, he gave me some encouragement and put my first photograph for my first roll of film ever in a trans world skateboarding.

So, go get his book if you like skateboarding photography because you'll know 99% of everything that's in here because this is all the stuff from the magazines back in the day in one convenient location. Well worth the buy. It is beautiful. Cool. I love coffee table books. We need more of them. We're on of the week.

It has been an interesting week in NFTs out there, Brian. I don't know if you've noticed. I try not to pay any attention anymore. It's hard not to. It is hard. Yes, it's everywhere. Tony Hawk launched an NFT line this week. Tim Ferriss launched his first NFT, which made me weep inside a lot.

But he's friends with Kevin Rose, who is, you know, up in the NFT world. Kevin Rose probably made another $20 million last week on NFTs, which just tears me up inside. I used to like the guy. Damn it. Anyway, Wolf of Crypto is a new article by, or in the New York Times.

It talks about Jordan Belfort. Now, if you know something is scammy, it's because Jordan Belfort is involved. And he used to hate crypto. Now he loves it because he can get people to drop a shit ton of money to come to his house since he knows everything there is to know about crypto now.

And he will teach you. Right. For a lot of money. Okay. Yay. But in that, I got to a video called, If Wolf of Wall Street Were About Crypto. Now, did you get a chance to watch this? I did not watch it. Sorry. I couldn't do it.

Oh, man. You missed out. But you've seen Wolf of Wall Street, right? Yes. Okay. It's a very good parody. But it basically just comes down to the guys yelling at each other going, we don't make anything. We don't make anything. But it's pretty good. It's well worth a, like, two-minute watch. All right.

And the video by the same guy was pretty good, too. And it's basically called, And If Every NFT Projects Be Like. And it kind of runs down how this stuff generally works. So, in a very funny way, though. You just got to watch it. I can't explain it. You just got to watch it.

And Elon Musk, back as moron of the week. Just not so much because of the Twitter shit. I'm sick and tired of the Twitter shit. Do whatever you want to. I don't care. It's this interview he gave at Ted. Did you watch this interview? Yeah.

The whole thing? Yeah. Not good. So, yeah, this was not a good interview. About 10 minutes in, he starts backpacing on self-driving cars and said, yeah, it's a little hard. I think what we're going to do first is we're just going to solve general AI. Yeah, that's easier.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. If I was anywhere near a wall at that point, I would have put my head through it. And he just goes on to, you know, backtrack on all of his predictions saying, yeah, yeah, it's a prediction. Sometimes they're wrong. Nobody talks about the ones I got right.

Well, the ones you got wrong are pretty big. So, you know, let's just let's kind of stick with that because you are charging people a lot of money for something that doesn't exist. Let's not bury the lead here. Fully self-driving is not free. So and it doesn't do what you said it's going to do.

So, yeah, you're back in moron of the week just because of that interview. I mean, I like his optimism for the future. We need that. He's like, everything's going to be great. We're going to have a lot of energy. It's going to be, you know, unicorns, rainbows and, you know, farting butterflies. But that's all he gets to.

It's just like, yeah, we're going to fix energy. We're going to make general purpose AI so we can drive. Yeah, that makes sense. No, it's the whole thing is just I'm like, what he has gone to he's already at Mars. He's already gone to Mars. I don't know where his head's at, but he's he's becoming unhinged rapidly, I think.

Becoming. He is unhinged. End of story. There's all look, man, if four years of Trump will tell me something, there's always another level. There's always another level. That's true. There's there's another level of self-driving unhinged to come. There is.

There is. And Binance, one of the crypto exchanges, is in the news this week again. Apparently, you can get a branded hashtag at Twitter. I didn't know. Did you know this, Brian? I did not. No. Yeah. You know why? Because we don't have a million dollars to throw around for a custom branded hashtag.

But Binance does. And their custom hashtag that they designed that went out was basically they say it resembles closely resembles a swastika. No, it's a swastika. That's it. That's it. It's swastika. You're good. There you go. And, you know, this wouldn't be a thing if they hadn't already used the Star of David on another piece of art that they did and got slammed for that one.

Yeah. I don't think we're I don't think Binance runs out of Wokistan. If you get Catch My Drift. No. Security. Security. Security. 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 this week they talked about what did you talk about this week, Dave?

Oh, golly. You put me on the spot. Let's see. On caveat. I don't listen to my own shows. Well, you know, we've talked about this before here, that how things just sort of flow through your brain. Yes, they do when you're on the show. I've already forgotten what I've asked you.

Shit. Actually, we talked about one of the stories that I see you guys are covering, which was that the what is the Ninth Circuit declared scraping legal on LinkedIn. Yep. Yep. So there's that, and there's the Ukrainian soldiers using Clearview AI to get the faces of the soldiers and then right to their mothers.

Right. Yeah. To what degree is that out of bounds? That's a tricky one. That's a very tricky one because, you know, right now, is there anything that's out of bounds for Ukraine? Because they're kind of getting, I don't know, slaughtered? Yeah. It reminds me of the stories, you know, we were told growing up here and to what degree they're true.

You know, like George Washington probably didn't actually cut down the cherry tree. But, you know, how during the Revolutionary War, how the Brits lined up in straight rows and the rebels would hide behind trees and around hills and things like that.

So I think it's a similar kind of thing for Ukraine where whatever it takes and they seem to be effective. Yeah. You use the tools you have. And what gets me, what bugged me with what Ben was kind of, the way he was treating it was that they were crossing a line is what it came across to me.

And it sounded like you kind of agreed with them. Is that true or no? Well, I guess my concern is that it's because it's psychological warfare. The mothers are civilians. So is it fair game in a wartime situation to bring noncombatants into this using psychological warfare?

That's the big picture question that I have about it. Because I look at it and I think, well, the Russians, how many civilians have they killed in the Ukraine? So they kind of, you know, any hopes of trying to not bring in civilians, they crossed that line. So it seems like the gloves are off. So the Ukrainians should have carte blanche to do whatever they want as long as the Russians have done it first.

An eye for an eye, Jason, an eye for an eye. Yes. And? Just saying. Yeah. I just, I was finding myself getting angered listening to Caveat, which I guess is a sign of a good show that you have, you know, you can spark emotion.

Ben, we have a caller. Jason's on the line. Jason, what do you have to say? First time caller. What do you have to say, Jason? First time, long time. You guys are assholes. Yeah, you guys are idiots. Look, look, look, man. You're totally wrong. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. I listen to you every day.

I grew up with you guys. You totally, like, you know, shaped me during my childhood. But fuck you guys. You're stupid. Right. Yeah. It's fair. Have you been reading our mail again, Jason? Because you've got a lot of those. Must have. Must have. Why start now? Yeah, seriously. Okay.

I just wanted to hear your side of it. I'm just, because I thought it was clever. I'm like, okay, Clearview, I don't like. But if they're there and we can't get around them and you're in a sticky situation, use them. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. I don't disagree with you that, I mean, I see the utility of it.

And I think it's effective. So on that side of things, I agree with you that if it's working and it brings an end to this war, then that's a good thing. Or it makes the war end more quickly, then that's a good thing. Puts pressure on Putin and his cronies.

But then backing off from the 50,000-foot view of what does this mean for the future of warfare, I think the big question is, is it fair to bring noncombatants into something like this so directly using psychological warfare?

And I think there's a case to be made that that should be out of bounds. But, you know, it's certainly something to argue and discuss. Yep. Yep. And here's the other side of it. I can write a screenplay for this right now. Clearview gets the faces wrong and they send the emails to the wrong mothers.

Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, I always think about that scene in Saving Private Ryan, you know, where the mother gets the guys come and visit her and, you know, just makes me weepy thinking about it. You know, same sort of thing. What if you have siblings or, dare I say, twins for your movie, you know?

Yeah. It's not perfect, but it's effective. Moving on. Barrett writes in, finally spent some time to switch to Vivaldi on my computers today. Chrome on my work Mac had so many corporate-managed plugins added that it had been way too slow lately.

Thankfully, they can't touch Vivaldi. Works perfectly. Only took a few minutes to set up. Thanks, guys. So we have a new convert to Vivaldi. I will add to this that just earlier today I was doing an interview with a CEO from a corporation and his security folks had locked down his instance of Chrome so much that he could not log in to Riverside or he could not get his microphone to access Riverside.

I've seen that, yeah. Yeah. And so – and, of course, luckily everyone else on the call could, so he knew it was him. But he's the boss, so, you know, the pressure that that puts on everybody. Yeah. So he ended up, you know, loading up a different Chromium browser that didn't have the lockdowns on it and it all worked fine.

There you go. So congratulations, Barrett. Yep. And beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Barrett must be listening to us because he actually just wrote in as you were replying to his email with a new email. Oh. This is breaking news. CNN Plus is shutting down just weeks after it launched.

Wow. Bye-bye. That was fast. I mean – That was fast. And, of course, Barrett asks, how many Scaramoochies was that? Have to do a math on that. That's good. Oh, man. They didn't want to become another Quibi.

I can't blame them. I can't blame them. I just don't know what the value proposition was in it. It left me scratching my head. Yeah, me too. You know, the pitch was news and then it was just more opinion shows and isn't that CNN? What's the plus about this? We're just going to pay for extra?

That's right. Yeah. There's no shortage of that being available for free. So, again, what was the value proposition? Why should I pay for this? Pay a bunch of shows that aren't good enough to make it to the main channel? Sure. Why not? Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if they were good enough, they'd be on CNN.

Right. All right. James from hell. Sorry. I mean, Florida writes in. Hey, Brian and Jason. So a few episodes back, Mr. Bittner raved about his Pluto pillow so positively that I had to get one to try. Well, holy fuck. It is the best goddamn pillow ever.

Dave needs to drop the cybersecurity podcast bullshit and hitch his wagon to podcasts about pillows because the man is an expert. There you go. I'm like the princess of the pea and the pea when it comes to quality pillows. You had me at princess, Dave. Did I lose you at pea?

Different kind of show, guys. Different kind of show. Right. I have to say that in full disclosure, after we had our segment here about Pluto pillows, I think it was because you, Jason, tagged them in your social media promoting the show.

That'd be Brian. A few days later, I got a gift basket at my house from Pluto pillows. Hang on. I did the work there. I didn't know where you lived, but since you ordered, I guess. Yeah. Well, that was it. Right. I guess they cross-referenced it with the pillow that I ordered and they sent me a basket and they said, thank you for your kind words on the podcast.

We appreciate it. We're happy you're – so I just want to – again, I have nothing to do with Pluto pillow. I have no deal with them. I'm just a satisfied customer, but that didn't keep them from sending me stuff to keep promoting them. So here we are.

It does feel a bit like a GDPR violation was going on there. I don't know. Brian, Big Pillow has the ways. Well, that's why I'm disclosing it. That's why I'm disclosing it. Yeah, you have to watch out for Big Pillow. That's right. Yeah, Big Pillow. They're lulling me to sleep and making me do their bidding by providing me with a good night's sleep.

But I agree. I would like to point out to Pluto pillows that Dave is a guest on the show. Yeah, the main people here do not have Pluto pillows. I'm just saying. We could maybe try them out. More than happy to. All right. Right.

So see how quickly we turn here. You give me shit for getting a gift basket, and then the ask comes, please send us your hundred dollar pillows. It was jealousy that we got nothing. Yeah. We provide the platform, and we get bupkis. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah. That's true. That's true. Well, let me say, Pluto makes a fine pillow. Okay. Okay. That's GOG.com slash Pluto pillow. There's nothing there. Okay. I got to say that the shit Dave bought section of the show has gotten more traction than anything we've done in a long time.

So, Dave, go buy some more stuff. This is actually gold. All right. All right. Well, let's cast back our minds to maybe a month, probably two months ago now that we talked about Dave and I expressed our frustrations with our smart home setups and trying to get everything going and the multi-million dollar solutions people were offering us and customer service travails.

And I have an update. As I left off, it was my Roomba, my soundbar, and one of my two TVs that would not connect the Roomba, basically the customer service came down to, you need to take this thing completely apart, rebuild it, go down to Radio Shack, get some parts, blah, blah, blah.

And I just said, that one, that one I'm going to let go of because the Roomba is old anyways. At some point I'll get a new one and that will connect. And it still gnaws at me late at night. I think this is not connected and it bothers me, but I'm letting that one go.

The soundbar was left with, your soundbar is too old, even though it's only four years old and you're shit out of luck there. The TV was confusing because they kept telling me that I had an American account and Canadian TVs and they wouldn't connect. Yet one of the TVs connected just fine and the other TV won't connect and they're the exact same model.

And I got frustrated and these emails just kind of sat in my inbox for the last two months and I just tried not to think about it. And the other night, randomly, after maybe a bottle, liberal bottle of wine, I just accidentally, I wasn't even trying to launch the Samsung SmartThings app, but I launched it.

And lo and behold, all of the stuff just appeared. It was able to be found and connected. No changes were ever made to anything. I didn't follow any of the insane customer service last ditch efforts that they sent me that didn't make any sense.

Everything is just connected now. Because you turned off the app and turned it back on. Because I let the app sit there for a month and a half, I guess. I don't know. It makes no sense at all. But I will not say anything bad about it because right now everything is connected.

And you know what? I've not tried to do anything with it once, but it is connected. That's interesting. You know, I have noticed in the, with my devices at home, I used to have to, very often it would take more than one try to get lights to respond to a command on my phone.

And I've noticed in the past couple of weeks that it's much more reliable. Like, it just works now. Like, one thing, you know, I hit the button and the lights change rather than having to hit the button, wait for it to come back and say, well, that didn't work, and then hit the button again and have it work.

Right. So, something's, maybe something is going on behind the scenes there with an app update or something. But now I'm going to have to go check my things and see if they're just showing up or not. That's very interesting. Yeah, it was, it was just, I just walked upstairs and my wife looked at me and said, what's wrong?

And I'm like, nothing's wrong, but things are right. And there's no reason for it. And it makes no sense. That's just wrong. I don't know how to deal with this. Right. Yes. So, I can't say, yay, Samsung, because no, but yay? Okay.

That's where I'm at. Yeah. Well, don't, don't jinx it. You shouldn't have even told us about it. You should have kept it to yourself. A hundred percent is not going to work tonight. I know. Right. Dave, we had hot cable talk a couple episodes ago. Yeah. I went out and I'm so frustrated with these boxes of cables that I have now because I'm doing the purge that we talked about.

I'm going through the process and I'm finding that I have a lot of USB-C cables that are crap. And this is a question for you and Brian and the listening audience. Are there any utilities out there that we can get for the Mac to test what an actual cable is?

So, if I plug in a USB-C cable that I can tell if it is just data or whatever or like, you know, what level of USB-C is it? Is it actually a Thunderbolt cable and the thing ran off? I don't know. It drives me crazy and I can't find a way to figure that out. So, have you guys ever played with that or tried to figure it out?

No, I haven't. And I think mainly because I'm still running a really old laptop. I have an M1 Mac mini here in the studio, which is what I'm using to connect with you all here today, but my other computer.

That still has ports. Yeah. Yeah. And my other computer is like a 2015 MacBook Pro, which will be replaced sometime this year. But so that doesn't have USB-C. So, I'm not really deep into that world yet. Do the cables not have any sort of marking on them by the plug?

I thought that was supposed to be a thing. I guess. I guess. Yeah, I know. No, no, no. Once I had to make the jump to USB-C land, it really happens when you get a laptop. That's when you just need them. Right. Because I'm actually in this new home setup that I'm putting together.

I'm using the last Intel Mac mini that I had with all the ports on it, which is great. Loaded with 64 gig of RAM and all nice. But yeah, I've got all these cables because I'm redoing everything.

And it's just like, I don't know what works and what doesn't because there's nothing more frustrating than trying to fit you. Like you bring one cable to the office, plug in your hard drive, and you realize you got a bum cable. It's like, oh, man, really? Yeah. Just trying to figure out the work. And back in the day, I remember having cable testers. You remember those?

Yeah. Like just for all... But cables were a lot simpler back then. Right. And you didn't have half a dozen different versions of a cable that all had the same connection on them. And that is a good question. And all have microchips and shit in them.

You know, it's like, how can I tell which ones have my Trojan horses in them and which ones have my key loggers in them? I can't... You can't tell anymore. They all look the same. I feel as though it's one of those things kind of like the promise of online advertising that it was supposed to be, you know, well, you'll only see ads that are focused for you and that'll make everything better.

And at first blush, that sounds like a great idea. And then, of course, we realized over time the hellscape that it became. Oh, real quick, before you go any further, yesterday, after I was testing my AT&T internet on speedtest.net, there were six ads that were completely around the actual main thing.

All of them were for AT&T Fiber, which I was testing that I just bought. Right, right. Exactly. Right. Here's the... Yeah. All the ads you get for a new car right after you've purchased a new car. That makes a lot of sense. And it says, right as I connect, you are connecting from AT&T Fiber, Los Angeles.

Have some AT&T Fiber ads. Thanks, guys. Yep. So you were saying about the hellscape of advertising. No, but I think it's similar with USB-C, where at first blush, it sounded like this is a great idea, one connector to rule them all, and they'll all just work, and you'll be able to plug anything into anything.

But now, who knows what that cable does or does not do or what it's capable of. Yep. There was that whole thing a couple weeks ago about the, I guess, Apple has a, what is it, a two-meter-long Thunderbolt 4 cable that's $120? Yep.

And people were saying, this is crazy. Oh, there's a good old Apple again with a $120 cable. But then other people were chiming in and saying, no, you don't understand. For a cable that's doing everything this cable's doing at the length that this cable is, it's worth what they're asking.

There's a lot going on in this cable. Yeah. Yeah. To be able to carry those signals at that speed, at that distance. This isn't just a cable. There's guts in there. Right. I don't know. If it can go that fast without any bits falling off, then it's worth the money. Right. Bursting into flames or melting down on your desk.

Which you have seen. Amazon USB-C. Amazon Basics USB-C cables do tend to do. Yeah. I've seen cables throw some sparks for sure. Yep. Yep. So I just bought a bunch of Anker Thunderbolt cables to test those out. So now I'm in. Because I don't want to spend the Apple money if I can afford it.

Yeah. Right. But, you know, some things like this new, you know, I'm putting a $2,000 interface into a computer. It's like, why would I put a $5 cable in between, you know? Right. So I guess we'll go to the Apple route. But yeah, if anybody has any kind of like utility or something or any hardware that we can plug things into, it's just worth it to save the time to figure this out.

So before I throw them all away, I'd like to throw away the bad ones this time, if possible. I actually just got rid of my entire box when I moved. And thus far, of course, you know, now tonight I'm going to need something. But so far, so good. Hasn't been a problem. Yeah. So you could consider just chucking them.

No. You know how much money I can invest in this cable box. What is it? Is it the sunk cost fallacy that we're talking about? Yes, exactly. Yes, it's the sunk cost fallacy. But also, I don't want to throw away a $70 Thunderbolt cable on accident.

Because, you know, in the old days, it's like, I'll throw them away and just buy new. No, you don't do that anymore. They're so expensive now, yeah. Yeah. You just can't do that. True. That's the thing. True. Yep. Very true. So I use Cloudflare a lot at my new job. A lot of stuff is run through there.

And I was going through some of the documentation to kind of figure out how to do a couple of things. Just not that it's my job to do them, but just to know how to do them. So if need be, if other people were out, I could take care of things. And I stumbled across their DNS service, 1.1.1.1.1.

Catchy name there. I know we've talked about it before. I think we talked about it when they first launched it. And it was always kind of in the back of my mind. Oh, I should really look at doing something with my DNS instead of using the, you know, bog standard ones that our ISPs provide. And I wanted to ask you guys if you use anything and what you do use.

And is this something I should be using? Am I being an idiot, just not bothering to change my DNS? What's going on here? Well, I think, first of all, there are several services out there. Google has one. I think Google's is 8.8.8.8, I believe.

Yeah, primary is 8.8.8.8. And then the secondary is 8.8.4.4. Okay. So Cloudflare's is excellent. As they say, theirs is very fast. So if shaving a few milliseconds off of your search times is something that matters to you, then Cloudflare, I think, is generally regarded as being the fastest one out there.

I don't know how much that makes a difference in a normal user's everyday life, but it adds up, I suppose. I use one called Quad9, which is, wait for it, 9.9.9.9. Catchy names, these guys. Yep.

Yeah, and what Quad9 does is they basically have their own filtering list of trying to keep you out of trouble when it comes to wandering into the bad neighborhoods of the internet, keeping you away from them and, you know, shady advertisers and so on and so forth, of just intercepting those DNS requests so you don't even see them.

You know, that could be problematic because you're adding a layer of filtering if you want to see something. But – so that's the one I use. It's free. I haven't noticed any speed issues or anything like that. There are plenty of them around there.

There are services that do this that you can pay for, basically a version for like parental monitoring, that sort of thing. And you can dial in the degree to which you want to block things at the DNS level. Right. Yeah.

For the most part, I've been – I switched over to Google a while back, but I did have some issues with them. I use OpenDNS because those guys were – when they first started, we were next to each other in the incubator. So I knew those guys when they were starting and they're really cool.

So I like to keep them going. But then they got bought by Cisco, so they cashed out. And I'm like, okay. But the service still works fantastic. Yeah. I haven't had any problems with OpenDNS at all. I'm curious about Quad9 though. How do they stay in business if they have – is that just the parental stuff is what they really kind of bring in?

That's a good question. I don't remember. I've been using them so long that I know when I originally looked into them, I looked into how are they making money because I didn't want to be the product, of course. Right. But I don't remember off the top of my head.

Oh, they are a nonprofit. Yes, they have. So they rely on grants and partnerships. Yeah. So there you go. Just found that. IBM, Packet Clearinghouse, Global Cyber Alliance, Switch, Global Secure Layer, and i3d.net. Our big people who fund them.

So, okay. They've got corporate funding. So that's fine. I just didn't want this to be another grassroots thing. I was like, oh, God. Or even worse, a honeypot. Well, yes, exactly. Right. It's free, but it's provided by China. Right. Cool.

All right. Well, thanks for the info. That means I will give one of these a go. Yep. Yep. Story that I wanted to share this week. We had an interesting announcement from The Five Eyes, which is what? The U.S., New Zealand, Canada, the U.K., and Australia.

Got it in one. And it was a joint – yeah, thank you very much. I usually – I don't know. I guess I usually forget New Zealand. Yeah, they're easy to forget. I'm just kidding, guys. I'm kidding, guys. Here come the emails. Please don't write in. Please don't write in. We love your country, and it was gorgeous in The Lord of the Rings, and we hope to all visit someday when you allow strangers back in your beautiful, wonderful nation.

Please make it soon. We would like to get out. That's right. So this announcement comes as a joint announcement from them being led on the U.S. by CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI, and the NSA, basically saying, hey, critical infrastructure folks, we have credible evidence and intelligence that the Russians could be coming

after your stuff, so really, we're not kidding when we say shields up, take this seriously, do the things you need to do, and batten down the hatches. Really, what's noteworthy about this is that it came from the five eyes.

That doesn't happen very often, to have them all announce something together as a group and say, we're taking this seriously. And also, the fact that they have said that it's not just, oh, you should do this because it's a good idea, and perhaps something could happen with Russia because of what's going on with Russia and Ukraine.

No, they're saying, we actually have intel that's saying, seriously, do your stuff. Be careful, because it's a dangerous world out there. So, noteworthy for that. Well, with that bombshell of an announcement, we lost Brian.

He just couldn't take it. Yeah, he's battening down the hatches. He's like, oh, I got to go. Right, he's patching his TV and sound bar, just in case. He's trying to catch the Roomba so he can catch it. Right. He's chasing the Roomba around the house.

Right, right. All right. Well, thanks for stopping by, Dave. And go buy some new stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm going to build a pillow fort out of Pluto pillows. Closing shout outs.

Hey, it was a good week. Over at Patreon, Steve and Nolan, Luke, Davey, or Davi, and Lisa, Lisa Lou. Thanks with the names. They've all signed up on Patreon, and you can too. But thanks, everybody, for joining us. And just a reminder, if you do sign up for Patreon, you do get the shows as soon as they're done, which could be a couple hours early or at the same time, depending on the week.

But they also are ad-free and in high res. So just saying. Sign on. It was nice to see a tick up on Patreon. So thank you all so much. Over at PayPal, we had Dag, Nathaniel, John, Andre, Tom, Michelle, another Tom, John, Ramsey, Joseph, Andrew, and Jason with a big old $50 PayPal payment.

Thank you. Thank you, Jason. And over at Stripe, we've got Sean, David, Ross, and Karen. See, not all Karens are bad. Right. Just most of them. Only the ones at Red Lobster. And I got a big shout out to my friend, Calby Monday. He has opened his ceramic store at Mundy Ceramics.

He launched this little Kewpie doll collection that's pretty cool. He does all of the ceramics by hand. Calby has always... I met him when we were like 14. I've been friends with him my whole life. And he was a photographer, a very good music photographer back in the day. But now he does all random hobbies.

And this is his latest hobby. And he's actually pretty good at it. So go check it out and pick up a Kewpie. They're kind of like NFTs if NFTs were real and collectible. Physical. Check them out. They are physical. Yes. And belated happy birthday to our man, Dr. David Teeter.

I meant to put this in last week, but I missed it. So happy belated birthday, my man. Miss you. Love you. Happy birthday. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever.

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