565: Jason Blart: Mall Cop

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. From the lovely land of Canada. We've had some issues this morning that have been kind of funny. It's been loud here. There's a lot going on. Summer. Summer in Canada apparently involves barbecue cleaning with gigantic, incredibly loud machines.

You know, it kind of sounded like Rammstein was cleaning the grill. That would actually be a good branded service here. Yeah. Or remember that group Babyland? I love Babyland. Oh, Babyland was awesome. We saw them by accident one time in the middle of Hollywood just walked into a show and they're like, you know, they're running around with the 55-gallon drums and the sanders and the sparks and everything.

Yeah. That was so much fun. Oh, I'm just peeking out my window and he's taken off his beekeeper outfit and his thing, so he might be done sanding. I think we're okay now. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll give it a shot. We're using Riverside's noise reduction technology today, maybe. So we'll see if this actually works.

Because it is summer, I had basically 48 hours with no air conditioning in Woodland Hills, California. That sucked. Yeah, it was 103 here yesterday, no air conditioner. Yeah, it was a trying time.

It was a trying time. And here's the thing that really pisses me off. This all comes down to incompetence because we had our electrician come out and just check things right when the AC first died. He's like, oh, no, the AC's dead. It's nothing. He's like, I checked the breakers. Everything's fine. And then we had an AC guy come out and he's like, there's no power to this thing.

No wonder it doesn't work. And he's like, yeah, your breaker's fucked. We're like, what? Our guy came out yesterday. He's like, no, breaker's fucked. And so our electrician came back out yesterday and said, oh, yeah, my bad. The breaker's fucked.

I'm like, you had one job. You had one job to look at a breaker and tell me if it was fucked. And you said it wasn't. Well, I have a tale of incompetence from this morning as well. Pre-recording our podcast, I need to renew my American passport.

It's that time. So I ran over to Ye Olde Staples, which does passport photos, and they proudly advertise that they do Canadian passport photos as well as U.S. passport photos. Because they're different, because, of course, they are. Yeah, of course. So, yeah, I ran over there. I mentioned four times I need a U.S.A. passport photo.

No problem. No problem. No problem. Take the pictures. Print them out. They're upside down. I can't see them, but they've got the official stamp on it from Staples. And the woman's like, you should really, like, don't touch them for, like, 10 minutes. Just make sure they set and dry. So I'm like, okay, fine. Whatever. Thank you very much. I pay. I leave.

I come home. I flip the photos over, and they've cut off half my fucking head. You had one job. One job. A passport photo. You cut off my fucking head. You know, I used to work at Kinko's, and we would take probably 15 to 20 passport photos a week.

And, you know, when you look through the camera of a passport photo camera, there is an oval that you have to line up with the head to make it the exact right size, and then you press the button. I saw them doing it.

And then, like, I saw it brought over to the computer to print, and I saw the oval, and I saw my face in the head. What could have possibly gone wrong? This is why I didn't feel the need to flip it over and check it before leaving. You do this every day. You offer this as a service. Why is my head cut off?

Oh, my God. We need AI. We need AI for passport photos. You could have just gone to Dali and said Brian Schulmeister passport photo. Pretty much, yeah. Incompetence. I'm with you, Jason. It would have come back better. It would have come back closer than the Staples experience. Probably.

Probably. My melted face, because that's how I'm starting to feel anyways. Anyways. Oh, my God. Yes. Incompetence. Isn't it great? It is great. It is great. But let's talk about competence for a second. Mike Devine from Wheaton, Illinois. My man. He heard the magnets on a stick episode and said, hey, we make those.

Would you like some? I'm like, well, hell yeah, Mike. I would like some. I would like some magnets on a stick, please. So he sent me some magnets on a stick. They're very useful, Jason. They are so useful that yesterday, as I am, I am working on the studio and I'm like, I'm under my desk.

Actually, the table that you and I recorded the show at, that big black table, I'm underneath it, putting in some supports because the microphones are really heavy and they're kind of bending the wood on the table. So I'm screwing in some supports with some wood screws, right? Well, since you've been here, I have installed a two inch black shag rug with silver speckles in it, nonetheless.

So it sparkles. It is a really cool looking rug. And the problem is, if you drop a quarter inch wood screw into that shag carpet, it is gone. It is gone, man. Gone, daddy, gone. The love is gone.

You cannot find it again. So I'm like, here we go, Mike. Let's see if this, let's see if the magnet on a stick is going to be my salvation. Sure as shit. With like half a second, click, found it. It was great. And then I dropped, of course, five more screws. So Mike, back to the rescue.

So Mike, some GOG goodies are on the way to you. But I do have a question since you are from Wheaton, Illinois. Does the heaven room still exist? The heaven room is, it's this room at one of the religious colleges out there, Brian, that you go in and it is probably like 30 foot ceilings with like blue sky and clouds.

So you're supposed to feel like you're in heaven. And of course, there's like scripture and things and you walk through it. It is the strangest place you've ever been. I'll dig up some photos of me and some friends there so you can just get an idea of how silly the heaven room is. But Mike, does it still exist?

I am dying to know. Yeah. Okay. We'll find out. We will find out. Yeah. If you were here, I've got an extra magnet on a stick for you, Brian. So when you come back, I can hook you up. All right. Fantastic. I can add to my magnet on a stick collection. And we got some tennis elbow and fitness follow up here.

Turns out that we have a very old and broken fan base here because we've asked questions on this show several times before and never have we gotten so many emails from the audience from this simple request. It seems like everybody that listens to this show at some point or another has had tennis elbow.

I would like to do some thank yous here to Jocelyn, Carla Worrell, David Teeter, Gabriel Pagan, Adrian Chrome, Dag, Jake, Giuseppe Forgione, Daniel Rossiter. And if I forgot you, I'm sorry, I'm still going through them, but everybody has sent me their version of the fixes for the tennis elbow.

Some have aligned, some have not. So I am looking at the ones that have aligned and I will let you know how it goes. But I also figured out that getting in and out of my Jeep every day and using the oh shit handle was probably the worst thing that I could be doing. So now I have figured out a way to gracefully get into my 17 foot tall Jeep without pulling my elbow out every day.

So we'll see how it goes. But we have some follow up for you too, Brian. What do we got? Indeed. A lot of people wrote in about fitness and bikes. Craig wrote in about getting a bike that he didn't want any monthly subscription screens, Wi-Fi, etc. So as long as you're self-motivated, you'll be fine. The Sol SB 900.

Unfortunately, I already have a bike, so I'm not shopping for a new bike. I'm shopping for some new fitness apps to use with the bike. So, but it does look like a very nice bike. Alex wrote in and recommended a site called Fitness Blender. He says, I've been using this for workouts for years. In fact, I was doing a yoga routine while listening to this week's episode.

Here's what I like about it. All you need is adjustable dumbbells and a yoga mat. Check and check. I've got both of those. Many different routines. Strength fit. Yoga Pilates. Body weight only. Expensive. You can buy the routines outright or join their plus membership. $80 a year, which includes all their programs.

Ironically, the pandemic finally got me to start exercising regularly. Now, even while on vacation, I took time out to do a body weight only routine. I took a look at it. I think I will be trying this out. My Beachbody expires in three more days.

So, I will give one of their programs a go as a tester. And if I like it, I will do the $80 per year, which is worth it to me. Yeah, that's actually reasonable. $80 a year. Yeah, it's totally reasonable. Yeah. So, I will check that out. And Jason wrote in and said, hi, guys.

In your last podcast, you were asking about stationary bikes and options. If you already have a real bicycle, you could hook it up to something called a Bluetooth bike trainer. Then you have a world of apps to choose from. I use Zwift, which is more like a video game where you bike with others and not a spinning class. I think it's like $15 a month, though. Yeah, I looked into that.

It's pretty pricey and doesn't really work for me. And the whole idea of bringing in a stationary bike and setting it up in one of those little trainer things is kind of cool. Except there's no way in hell my wife is going to let me bring in my disgusting, dirty, outside road bike, walk it through the house, down the stairs, into the basement, set it up, and that's not going to happen.

So, yeah, I have a full-time bike. This would have been great back when I was single and I had my big-ass studio place, though. Remember that one with the concrete walls? A friend of the show, Vinicor, is a big biker, and he uses Zwift to do his routines with his regular bike.

And it's pretty cool. He sends me all his rides, you know, because he's doing like 60-mile rides, which is insane. I know. I've been watching that. That's crazy. So good for him, though. Yeah. Well, I tell you what, though. What he said was when he had the heart attack, the fact that he rode the bike so much is what saved his life because he had a Widowmaker heart attack, and he got through it with almost no damage just because he was so insane about riding a bike.

And I'm like, maybe I should get on a bike. I need a stationary bike, though, because I'll fall over. In all my electric bikes, yeah, they kind of defeat the purpose. But he's definitely a plus one on Zwift. It sounds really cool. I've tried it out.

It's just, it's pretty pricey. I got to see if I really get into it. I'll sign up with another email address for one of their trials again and give it a go. Anyways, moving on, Barrett wrote in with something that I thought was really funny, realizing that Bitcoin is just the camel dollars from the 90s.

Camel dollars. I would actually argue camel dollars were worth more because you could actually get things like a kayak. True. True that. Now you can just get debt. And I like this one. The rain in Spain falls in your glass and it's okay to drink.

That would have been the title for the article that I never wrote. But I got a call from Dr. David Teeter, our friend, who is a legit published water scientist. And he said that everything about the, what is it, PCF bees or whatever that's in the rain that make it unsafe for everybody to drink.

He's like, that shit is in you in such high doses already that it makes no difference that it's in the rain. That actually doesn't comfort me at all. Yeah, well, it's there. I mean, it's, it's, you know, this is like, I mentioned this to him when we were talking. I'm like, this is that moment on The Walking Dead when they realize that everybody's already infected.

And as soon as you die, you just turn into a zombie. So it's not so much that the rain is okay to drink. It's just that we're already fucked. Exactly. Exactly. Because it's apparently, it was, it's part of nonstick coatings for different like food items. Like popcorn, like the inside of popcorn bags and hot pockets, you know, like how the things slide.

That really slippery surface on the inside of the little wrappers. That stuff is filled with that shit. And we've been eating it and consuming it for decades. So here's the deal. You're all going to die anyway. So fuck it. Have some rain. That's all I'm saying. Drink some rain water. Drink some rain. And I was picked to be in the 40 over 40 in podcasting for 2020 from Podcast Magazine.

Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. I don't know who recommended me, but it's pretty funny. So what they did was basically took an old bio that was completely out of date, made up a whole thing. Didn't ask me for anything but a photo. And of course it was wrong. Completely out of date.

They highlighted my newsletter, which I haven't done since before the stroke because I can't write. And so I got back to them and bunches of back and forth. And what I figured out was this whole thing is to get 40 people to buy like three copies of their magazine. That's like the who's who thing that we used to always get letters for.

Remember that? You've made the who's who book of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah, yeah. You can order it now for $60. Yep. Which is exactly what I paid for three copies of my magazine for my 40 over 40. It worked. And that's why these things continue. Nope.

It totally worked. But the interesting thing was I got my order back from them and I was only order number 99. I think this is through the history of podcast magazine, which is not a good sign because I know that I ordered a couple of magazines already from the last time they put me in. You're the only person that is buying this magazine.

I know. I know. I'm hoping that that number has rolled over from, like, say, a million and now we're back to 99. But I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't. But thanks anyway. I mean, I like podcast magazine. I like Steve. I like the team over there. They're trying.

They're trying. I mean, it's a magazine. So you have to buy print on demand. Because they're at least smart enough to know that print is dead. And it's about podcasting. Who the fuck wants to buy print? Well, turns out I do because I'm a, you know, I'm a narcissist. Yeah. I was going to ask you what exactly you got for being in the 40 for 40 in podcasting.

And what I've discovered is what you got is the ability to spend 60 bucks. That's it. It's actually going to come. That's just the start, though, because, of course, I'm going to have to spend probably $150 on the frame to put them into the lobby for the podcast studio. So they should go in the frame business, too.

All right. Well, the CHIPS Act has been signed. The entire week that was in my head. And now it will be again.

So awesome. What's so funny is when I was editing that last episode where I popped in the CHIPS theme, I had our friend Brian here. He was watching me edit. And we both thought you were wrong with the theme. But you nailed it. I got it wrong. I had the A-team in my head, but you totally nailed the CHIPS theme.

That's why I put it in, just to prove you were right. And the most hilarious thing is I don't think I've watched more than two episodes of CHIPS even as a kid. Like, it wasn't a show I was ever into. But I know the theme song so well. That is so funny. I've seen every episode of CHIPS and multiple times.

And I could not. Well, A, I can't remember a single one except for the one where the guy, like, lost his brakes going down the hill. That's the only one I remember. And you nailed it. I can't believe it. That's great. Okay. Well, honestly, I was talking about the show's way more interesting than the story. They just passed it.

So an awful lot of money is going to go to Intel. And it's going to take forever because they have to break ground on construction. And it's going to be, like, five to ten years before any of this really matters. But thank God. Couldn't they have just bought that Foxconn place that's basically abandoned up in Wisconsin and just used that one? You'd think.

I don't know. Okay. Okay. Anyways, we're going to start developing CHIPS in our own country. Yay. Yay. Yay. Mark Cuban is in the news, along with the Mavericks, because they are being sued in a class action lawsuit over a Voyager, quote, unquote, Ponzi scheme.

Voyager Digital. I don't remember them. Out of all the crypto scams that have been going around for the past couple of years, like, they all kind of run together. But this one's interesting. Voyager Digital basically just, you know, shit the bed when crypto died a couple weeks ago.

They lost $5 billion of, you know, the people's money. You know, just a few bucks here or there, you know. Splash in the rainwater bucket. Yeah, yeah. So, basically, all the people that got suckered in by Mark Cuban and the Mavericks have basically decided to sue them, saying, hey, you guys basically were part of a Ponzi scheme, which they technically were, I guess.

You know, they got they got made off and we'll see how this one goes. But, yeah, I think the, you know, shit's coming home to roost, as it were, for all of these people who were out there pimping crypto, Cuban especially, because he's, you know, he's still a billionaire for now.

And he's doing some good stuff with drugs and affordable drugs and things like that. So, I don't really want him to be totally taken down. Like, just, look. No, he's not evil. Yeah. There was a period of time where, like, absolutely everybody wanted to get into crypto. And I'm sure you were approached by people and I was approached by people.

And I was just like, don't do it. Just stay away. This is, don't touch this stuff. And guess what? We were right again. Yeah, no, I've warned many people about it over and over again. Even, what's it, Tanner Campbell, the podcast guru guy.

I like him because he's an asshole. So, you know, he tugs at my heartstrings. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very kindred spirit, yes. Takes one to know one. We can smell our own, all of that. And he was getting into NFTs for his people. I'm like, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't fucking do it.

And he still did it. And I'm like, okay, you can apologize later to all of your fans who got suckered by it. Yeah. Anyway, we've got another, some more crypto stuff coming. But yeah, you know what, Mark, you're right. You're absolutely right. Mark is doing some good things. Although Fireside is a bad one and all of his crypto work is a bad one.

And so if he can get rid of those two, if he can divest himself of those and get back to doing things like, you know, the drug thing was a good thing. Get back to that. Yeah, I agree. Well, I figured out something that we'll be able to use all those American-made chips for. Yet another thing nobody really wants, a solution in search of a problem.

Amazon is rolling out Amazon One, which is their ability to pay with your palm. At 65 Whole Foods shops in California, starting in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and my beloved, not so much beloved anymore, and I'm nowhere near it anymore, Santa Monica location in Los Angeles.

I'm surprised they're not doing it out here because we've kind of been a pilot for this stuff. We've got an Amazon Fresh store, like, you know, a couple miles from me, and I've got a Whole Foods across the street. Well, they may be there. There's 65 Whole Foods shops. It's just listed a handful of them right there. So go check it out.

Last week they put in, or over the past, like, maybe month, they've been putting in their first self-checkout kiosk. So maybe that's part of it. I tried it the other day, and it was the worst self-checkout experience of my life. And I stopped in the middle of it and actually walked over to a human. So the palm thing wasn't there, but I'm going to go take a look and see if they're, like, putting in the plumbing for it.

But I tell you, their standard self-checkout, if that's any indication of how bad Amazon One is going to be, it's going to be a shit show. I just don't understand why. Okay, so let me read this bit. As usual, One is meant to streamline retail shopping.

So long as you link your palm and payment card to the service, you just have to hover your hand over a scanner to complete a purchase. You know what I can do with my Apple Watch? Hover my hand over a scanner and complete a purchase. You know what I can do with my cell phone? I can hover my hand holding my cell phone over a scanner to complete a purchase.

You know what I can do with my TAP credit cards? I can hover my hand with my credit card over a scanner to complete a purchase. I'm seeing a trend here, Brian. You're saving me the problem of what? Opening your wallet. Well, I don't need to. You don't even have to. With my watch. Yeah, you can do it with your watch or your phone.

Yes. So what? So, yes, and in the article itself, it says, while you still have to stop at a checkout terminal, you don't have to pull out a phone like you do with Amazon's camera-based just walkout system. Yep. Solution in search of a problem.

This is what they're spending money on. Yeah. Yeah. Pay the drivers. Pay the drivers. Get rid of the cameras in the fucking vans and do that. Let them unionize then. It's just so stupid. Who wants to pay with just their palm? Is it so difficult the way things are right now?

Have more employees around to help people. How about that? Yeah. Staff the registers. Yes. That would greatly increase my shopping experience. Mm-hmm. Yes, it would. Yes, it would. Well, I know somewhere people aren't spending any money. Facebook is still having trouble removing white supremacists, a study says.

Shocking nobody. This crackdown on white speech apparently has room for improvement. As the Washington Post explains, the nonprofit watchdog, the Tech Transparency Project, has published a study indicating that white supremacist groups still have significant presence on the social network.

Over 80 of these organizations have a presence on Facebook, some of which the company has already labeled as dangerous organizations it normally bans. It just hasn't gotten around to the banning part. Researchers found 119 pages in 20 groups, including 24 pages Facebook auto-generated while users listed white supremacist groups as employers or interests.

Auto-generated white supremacy. Okay. That would be a good show title if we didn't already have one. Searchers were also problematic. Damn. According to the watchdog, Facebook displayed ads next to searches for white supremacist groups, including those for black churches.

Way to go. So you're searching for a white supremacy group and we pop up an ad for a black church. That's going to go really well, isn't it? Well, if you're looking for something to do on a Friday, you know. Jesus. So part of their tactic is redirecting users to pro-tolerance groups, but that was only effective for 14% of 226 searches tried.

How about you stop trying to be a fucking nanny state? Stop the algorithms. Jesus. Yeah. It doesn't work. And our good friends, Pew, have put out a new report. Pew, pew. Oh, haven't heard from them in a while. Yeah, I know. It's been a while. So they published a new report that examines social media usage trends among U.S. teens.

They found that a whopping 95% of them use YouTube, while 19% are on the platform almost constantly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, two-thirds said they use TikTok, with 16% claiming they are on that app almost constantly. Third most popular social media platform among teens is Instagram, with 62% using it.

It tends to say they use it all the time, despite the app occasionally telling them to take a break. Remember then when that was all the rage that they were going to roll out these take a break notifications that nobody's, everybody's ignoring? Well, we know they're ignoring it. Yep. Previous poll conducted in 2014 to 15 found that 52% were using Instagram.

So that's kind of gone up a bit. Snapchat also was. Well, I got to, I got to, hang on, because what's something you said I kind of take umbrance with here. They're saying that 62% of teens that they, that they surveyed are on Instagram. That is not true. They're, everybody is leaving Instagram in droves.

There's not 62% of teens still there. I don't think that, I don't think that can be correct. I don't think that that would pop up in your algorithm. So maybe you're just not seeing that. No, just the teens that I've talked to, everybody is, everybody's bailed. I have a lot of teens in my life because I have, you know, friends with kids and we talked to them and they're like, nobody's using it anymore.

Everybody's moved on. So I don't know. Take your umbrage with Pew. I will. Pew, pew. Snapchat's up. Facebook is down. Twitter is down. Tumblr is down because Tumblr got rid of porn. I found that boys were more likely to use YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit.

Girls were more likely to say they use TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Black and Hispanic teens said they use TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp more than white teens. And even though half of teens, 54%, more than half, said they'd find it hard to give up social media, 36% admitted they spend too much time on the platforms.

About 55% said their usage levels were about right. Meanwhile, 97% of teens now use the internet every day, with 46% saying they're online almost all of the time. None of this is terribly surprising. No, no. Well, the only surprising bit of the entire thing was that Instagram number.

But yeah, everybody's online all the time. That's life now. We got phones. We're online every second of every day. Just that's the way it is. The interesting parts here are how men and women, or I'm sorry, boys and girls, are using different platforms and where the Venn diagrams intersect.

And it doesn't look like they do, really. So, great. Maybe, you know what, the only place that the Venn diagram intersects, I guess, would be, what's the swipe right dating one? Tinder, right? Tinder. That's it. Tinder. Never used it, so don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting stuff, but it's not surprising. Not surprising at all. What's surprising is TikTok is trying to go from $4 billion a year in advertising revenue to $12 billion a year in a year. Good luck.

Good luck with that. Yeah. That's scaling at a very high rate. Yeah. Yeah. And apparently it's just a shit show over there because they're hiring, but it's still like they just don't know what they're doing over there, which I can totally understand.

The success that they've gotten is just mind-boggling, and they've got 1,000 people working on the ad department over there, which I think is definitely a low number for the scale that they have right now.

They need to maybe 10x that, but I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I still don't see ads on TikTok when I'm on there, so I don't know where it's going. Yeah, do you see ads? Never? I'm not on TikTok. I think I installed it for a week once, and I went, oh, my God, I see why people get addicted to this.

No, thank you. Yeah, it's bad. It's really bad. If you have five minutes to spare and you go on TikTok, there goes half of your day. Yeah, so I uninstalled it immediately. Yeah, good idea. Good idea. I have not been able to, but I don't have it on my home screen.

I only open it if somebody sends me one, but I definitely try and not do it. At all. It's bad. Mm-hmm. And we have some Starlink news. I don't know how I feel about it.

Actually, I think I'm against it. I don't like ruining our night skies and all that sort of thing. But Elon Musk will not be able to count on the government to subsidize his industry this time like he did with Tesla. The FCC has rejected the SpaceX unit's bid to receive $885.5 million in aid through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

They say that they have failed to demonstrate that they can deliver the claim service. Interesting. No free money for Elon this time. Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. He's got some extra cash lying around now after all that Tesla stock he sold, though. Yeah. Well, you know, you're not buying Twitter. Well, you might be.

You know, the fact that he's hedging his bets against the fact that he might lose is interesting. Very interesting. I think he sees the writing on the wall for that one. He's going to have to pony up. Makes me sad, though, because I was kind of happy with him not owning Twitter. Yeah.

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Media Candy. Brian, the Sandman has launched finally on Netflix after almost 30 years of waiting. My God, was it worth the wait. Everybody seems pleased with it. It's picture perfect. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.

I actually stopped. I watched the first six episodes and I stopped because I just want to go back and just relish the first six again before I move into the doll's house section of it because it hit every single note picture perfectly. Even Dream's voice is perfect.

I mean, there's literally nothing wrong with it that I can find at this point. So, for a Sandman fan of, like I said, almost 30 years, I am completely tickled pink, satisfied, and cannot wait for the rest of them. And everybody I know is in the same boat. So, I mean, it was what, like a top show on Netflix in 40 or 50 countries at the same time.

So, I assume you're not going to watch it? I just have never gotten into Sandman. You should give it a shot then. I was having this discussion with somebody and then I started going, you know what? I never got into American Gods. You know what? I never got into it.

And then I went, you know what? I don't think I like Neil Gaiman. It's totally possible. I think that's where we're at with this. So, I'm not really going to bother. I just, I have never gotten into anything that Neil Gaiman has ever done. I have not liked his books. I've not liked any of this stuff. I just don't.

It's just my thing. Okay. But, I mean, the books are different from the comics. So, you might want to try it just because it is different. American Gods is definitely not my favorite. I'm not even a big fan of it. The show is okay, but it's definitely my least favorite of all of his works. Sandman is a different beast altogether because it is a comic.

And the way that they adapted it is just beautiful. I don't know. It's cool. Okay. You do you. I mean. Look, I'm happy. Everybody's happy. Great. I know. I think you should do it as a favor to me because I suffered through The Stand. I read The Stand for 36 hours or listened to The Stand for 36 hours.

Sandman is only like 10. You know, you should give it a shot. I'm just saying. If the world was a fair place, which I know it's not. Anyway. I love that your idea of fairness is I have suffered, so you should. I suffered for over 30 hours, and I'm giving you the option of suffering for only 10 to make up for the fact that I suffered and the fact that you still owe me for saying that Discovery stuck the landing on the last season, which it totally did not.

I think it did. Difference of an opinion. Yeah. Well, the Orville New Horizons, I think, stuck their new season totally. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's a quality about that show that just, I don't know, it's there.

It is so next-gen, but next-level next-gen, but not Star Trek, but Star Trek. I don't know. It's so hard to describe because of, like, the universe creep, like we talked about. We had so many Star Trek shows and all these other shows going on at the same time. It's like you just get confused on what the fuck you're watching at any given time.

But the whole season is over now. I think, hopefully, they're getting picked up for another season. I loved it. I totally loved it. And one thing that they did with this season as compared to the other seasons is they pulled Seth MacFarlane out quite a bit compared to the first couple seasons.

And it kind of reminded me, it's like, you know, Picard wasn't always front and center in next-gen. You know, he's the captain. The captain should be saved for special occasions. And they use him for, you know, when they need a captain. And it's really good because then it becomes a very good ensemble show with very good actors.

And that's, I think, where Discovery falls apart because it's not as much as an ensemble show as, like, say, Brave New World. Right. That is an ensemble show, I believe. So I think definitely the Orville is on your should-watch list for sure. And I have a podcast to recommend called The Neuro Nerds, a brain injury recovery and pop culture show.

I found this one through StrokeCast, I believe. And it turns out this is way better than StrokeCast. This is this guy, Joe, who lives right over the street over here in Chatsworth. Hopefully going to take him to lunch soon because he is like, he's kind of like the grumpy old geeks of stroke recovery.

He just says shit that comes to mind and I love it. You'd like him to. He's right up our alley. Cool. So I highly recommend that show. If you're dealing with anybody with a brain injury, stroke, or yourself have had a stroke, it is some really good tips in there.

I highly recommend it. And that gets me to Joni Mitchell. Did you see the shit about Joni Mitchell? I did. It was amazing. It's incredible. At first, I didn't know she had an aneurysm and lost everything back in 2015 because I don't really follow Joni Mitchell news.

The fact that she was still alive and could still sing was a shocker to me. Right. But so she was back on stage at the Newport Folk Festival and actually played guitar, but she had forgotten how to play guitar and then learned how to play guitar by watching herself play guitar on YouTube, which is just fucking trippy.

And Penn Jillette put it best. And she's like, since she didn't really know what she was doing, she is technically a Joni Mitchell cover band. She's learning to play Joni Mitchell from watching Joni Mitchell, which I thought was pretty, pretty fucking good. And finally, I have like a normie show, Surface on Apple TV Plus.

It's one of those, you know, OK, she had a she had a brain injury and now it's like putting her life back together after amnesia, which is, you know, the premise of every daytime soap opera forever. I was about to say, yeah. Yeah. And the thing about this one is it's it's interesting because it's well, actually, it's not very interesting now that I think about it.

It's formulaic is what it is. It's totally formulaic. They make it so you can't trust anybody. You don't know who's what. And I'm sure at the end it's going to be somebody that we just met on episode like the penultimate episode who just comes into the picture. Who's the villain? You know, that's the way it usually works.

You like you rack your brain for seven episodes and then this new character comes in and they're the they're the villain. So the whole beginning of it was just, you know, basically mental masturbation, but fun, you know, as masturbation usually is. So I like it so far. I think it's a good representation of the genre.

And I think the acting is from the main character is decent. Some of the supporting characters are a little wooden and stale. But so far, you know, if you've got to watch something on Apple TV Plus, it's not bad. Right. Cool. Breaking news, Jason.

What? I seriously can't believe this just happened. I just looked over at my email because I got a spam email. Uh-huh. Ready for this? Yeah. I swear to God. Professional. Who's who? America's most trusted and accomplished individual since 1898. Dear Brian, this letter serves to formally identify you as a candidate for inclusion in our most lauded publication.

Oh, my God. They're listening. They're listening. I shit you not. I just got this email and we were just talking about this. They are listening. Holy shit. Wow. Please click here to complete your profile and order your copy now.

Holy shit. Oh. That is pretty awesome. That is pretty awesome. It just came in. I can't even believe it. Anyways, I'm stunned. Are you going to buy it? Fuck no. Yes, I'm going to spend $60 on it and then another $100 on a frame.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Yep. All right. Anyways, speaking of penultimate episodes, as you were just mentioning a few minutes ago, Westworld. Wow. You watched it, I assume? I did. And so that was the penultimate. It wasn't the finale. No, it was the penultimate.

I had to go online and check immediately because I was like, well, that's a hell of a way to end it. Yeah. They reset. Now we'll see if they're going to ruin it or not. Yeah. That's why I thought it was the finale because it was just like, well, that happened.

Really? I mean, I have really enjoyed this season. So it is put up or shut up time on the next episode. I am very eager to see what they do. Yeah, me too. I enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the whole season. I even enjoyed the last episode. Yeah. It was great.

Yeah. It's like fucking clean some house. Let's do it. Let's go. Exactly. I'm in. So what I discovered, I discovered two things this week, thanks to a co-worker. I discovered there was a new Predator movie. Three things. I discovered there was a new Predator movie. I discovered it was good.

And I discovered that technically I have Hulu because Hulu is part of Disney Plus in Canada. All right. So I watched Prey, the new Predator movie. And a lot of people have ranked this as the second best Predator movie ever after the first one.

I rank it the best Predator movie ever. Interesting. It was awesome. Okay, good. Because first I was very surprised that you put this in here, that you watched it. And then I was glad that you watched it so I could hear what you thought. So now I know it probably is my fourth favorite Predator movie.

You're going to hate it, apparently. Yes. Yes. Yes. If you love it, I hate it. Vice versa. I haven't planned to watch because I've just been hearing about it over the past two days just everywhere. And there are even memes about it. I'm like, what? Okay. We'll check it out.

It is very good. There's nothing to spoil. It's what you think it would be. It's a fucking Predator movie. Yeah. You know, it's great. And I realized I had sandbagged. Well, I didn't sandbag. I had completely forgotten to include two semi-drunk on a plane movie reviews from my flight out to L.A.

I had them in a note somewhere and stumbled across them. And I was like, oh, well, there's content. Here's things I watched. Exactly. I watched a movie. I watched a movie called Being Canadian. Calgary and Robert Cohen moved to L.A. to pursue his dreams of becoming a comedy writer.

He quickly realized that being Canadian meant his new friends and colleagues know nothing about the usual stereotypes about his beloved homeland. And after years of frustration, he decided to embark on a genuine and hilarious personal quest traveling from one end of Canada to the other to prove his country is more than just maple syrup and Mounties.

It was cute. And everybody that you could think of shows up in it. Every famous Canadian, which is all of them. So Mike Myers, I mean, everybody is in this thing. Okay. It was fun. Okay. But not something you'd run out to watch again? No.

Okay. You know, it passed an hour and a half of a flight. And I stumbled on a new cooking show from the BBC, Nadia's Asian Odyssey. Nadia Hussain makes a surprise DNA discovery, which sees her travel to far fun places, exploring the people, places, and food of Thailand, Cambodia, and Nepal.

I love this. It was great. She's really engaging. She's very funny, very pleasant. She has all kinds of, I guess, cooking shows on the BBC. So she's somebody I'm going to search out and try to find using, you know, Sweden, basically, so I can get to it. Yeah.

All right. But cool, cool cook and author and a great show that she does. You know, it's a very nice Anthony Bourdain. Okay, cool. Cool. How is Nepalese cuisine looking? It doesn't sound very good from what I've seen before on other travel shows about Nepal cuisine.

You know, Thailand and Cambodia I'd be eating at first. Yeah, I was thinking there. I'm like, why didn't you just go to Vietnam after that? Because that would have been the trifecta, you know. Anyway. Okay. Well, that's cool. You know me. I love cooking shows. And the apocalypse is upon us, Brian, because I finally agree with something Bill Maher has said recently.

Okay. His new rule about fat acceptance is basically a seven to eight minute screed about how we have made it okay to be fat. And yeah, I agree with him 110 fucking percent.

He's been screaming about that since COVID started. Oh, well, see. The correlation between death and being massively, severely, medically overweight. Yeah. So that's been one of his things for quite some time. You know, he never lets anything go. He has to bang on about it for five years.

Okay. Well, he finally, I think he finally has talked about it enough where he could have a cohesive, you know, block of time where he talked about it. Because I recommend watching the YouTube video if you haven't seen it. And if you're fat, lose some fucking weight. Just saying. Basically. I mean, he sums every, he could have, it could have been a very simple bit where he just said, have you ever seen a fat 90-year-old?

Boom. Done. Done. Caps and doodads. Fuck UPS, Brian. Fuck them in their eye holes. I sent one of those new cameras that I got that I reviewed last week. I sent one to Chris Lockhead.

And, of course, they said it was delivered. Wasn't delivered. This is the one time I threw away the receipt, didn't require a signature, and didn't get extra insurance. It was a perfect storm of stupidity on my part. But also their part because they didn't deliver the damn thing.

Right. What are you going to do? Yep. But I'll only bring this up because, speaking of Chris Lockhead, we got to talking, and he sent me some screenshots. He was banned from Twitter because the AI flagged an ironic tweet.

It was ironic or humorous or I don't know what you would call it. He was basically saying, here's the tweet. It all makes sense when you realize that Bill Gates trained Bigfoots to install C-19 misters on 5G towers to spread the hoax so he could make money on the vaccines and the secret tracking devices in them.

Obviously, we would find that funny. You know? That's funny. Yeah. Some people, unfortunately, probably say that for real. Well, that is part of the problem. Yeah. Yeah. When somebody with a brain says it, it's funny. When somebody without a brain says it, it's like, oh, Jesus, again.

So Twitter's AI flagged the tweet and, like, blocked him from his account until he deleted the tweet and let him back in. So just the AI just needs to get a fucking sense of humor is where we're at now. But how can you when something that looks to us, you know, with normal brains, we see something normal and funny, but that there are actually people out there that would say that without a single – they're serious.

I don't know. I don't know how we engineer around that. So maybe we shouldn't. Maybe Twitter should hire some fucking people. Yeah. Shocking. What a concept. I know. I know. Yeah. So I installed Plex at home this week. It was surprisingly easy.

After – what, we do this show almost 10 years and everybody's like, just set up Plex. I'm like, nah, I don't feel like it. And I finally did. It took, like, half an hour to get my, you know, couple terabyte media library synced up and streaming to all my Apple TVs with no fuss, no muss.

It is a joy. Plex is a joy. And I didn't have to pay anything. I used to use the free tier, set up an account and made sure it wasn't accessible to the world. And it runs on a Mac mini with a 14 terabyte hard drive stuck to it, shoved in a closet that all of – that everything in the house can get to.

It's awesome. Highly recommended. Which everybody recommended to me, so I'm the slow fucker here. I'm so late in getting around to it that I really, honestly, no longer have a media library to speak of. Everything I do is streaming, so it's of no use to me anymore. Okay.

I still go to Sweden quite often, so. Yeah. If I do go to Sweden, I just end up watching it on my computer or whatever, or I toss it, so it happens. But it's so infrequent. Some news for you that may help your continued HBO Max problem, particularly with John Oliver.

So, if you want to dip into the sadness porn, HBO Max's app redesign is finally out. It's available on desktop, Android, and iOS, delivering a more intuitive interface and performance boost and some arguably overdue features. Unfortunately for HBO Max, having spent all this time and money, now that they are merging with Discovery Plus, we'll probably be getting another app sometime soon.

I know. I feel bad for the app team on this one. I really do. You know, I know what that's like. I've been there. That just sucks. It's, you know. They just finished. They launched it. And basically, it was back to work. Start anew. Take it down. Break it apart.

I haven't tried. I looked at it, but I haven't played anything with it yet. It looks nicer, but. It does. Yeah. Here's the proof will be in the pudding. If it actually, I don't know, works, we'll see. When the HBO Max Discovery Plus app comes out, I'm sure that'll be a shit show at first. So, that'll be awesome.

Here's the upside. The Discovery Plus app is already a shit show. So, they've only got, they've only can go up from there. Yes. That's true. Yeah. So, I saw this article over on Engadget, what we bought, how DeWalt's 20 volt max cordless drill became my most versatile home reno tool.

And I was like, oh, well, I'm super into that sort of stuff right now. And I have one of those. So, it's nice to see confirmation bias. I actually have a bit of a step up. I have the DeWalt 20 volt max cordless drill combo kit, two tool, DCK240C2 yellow slash black drills driver slash impact combo kit.

I use this thing constantly on home improvements and repairs and things of that nature. So, highly recommend it. I also got something new for the house this week now that I have a yard and I have neighbor's trees that drop shit all over my yard. I got the Craftsman 3-in-1 corded blower vacuum mulcher.

This thing's awesome. Why did you go with corded? All right. Sorry. No, no, no. I got the cordless one, which I cannot find anywhere on the web. I only found it in Lowe's. It's not on Lowe's website. It's not on Amazon. It's not on Craftsman US or Canada website.

I cannot find the freaking thing online anywhere. I got the cordless version of this and it's awesome. Okay, yeah. I mean, it's Craftsman back when Sears was a thing. But, yeah, I mean, I would never get a corded blower anymore. No, me either. So, definitely. Like, I could not find it online.

But this thing's great. Like, if I just have some people over and I want to just kind of blow off my little deck, I just use the blower. I use the vacuum mulcher to, like, just go around and pick up leaves and debris and it just mulches it all up, which I just drop right into my greens bag, which gets picked up every other week.

It's awesome. No, a good, you know, blower mulcher is key when you have a house, especially one that has trees. It is. You just have to. Yeah, it's amazing. I got the Mitback Cocktail Smoker with Dome Lid and Wood Chips, Electric Food and Drink Portable Smoking Gun, Indoor-Outdoor Smoke Infuser Machine.

Excellent gift. It was an excellent gift. My roommate gave it to me for my birthday. And another friend of mine gave me a bottle of Woodford's for my birthday. And the two are the best marriage in cocktail history, I have to say.

Have you ever smoked a cocktail, Brian? I have. It is awesome. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I like, I shouldn't have this in my house, but I'm tempted to get it. You should get it. Honestly, you should get it. Um, I've been trying the different, uh, wood chips with the, uh, with the Woodford's and mesquite is definitely my favorite.

Um, all I do is I take, uh, I've got a, uh, continental hotel, uh, cocktail glass, you know, from the John Wick movies. I put it in the smoke, uh, close it with Saran Wrap, let it sit for two minutes, give it a couple shakes, blow it out, which is also just fun.

You know, you just feel like you're in a fucking movie with that. You're like, ah, smoke. It makes your house smell great. And it, I, it is really hard to describe, but it smooths out the, the liquor and just gives it this otherworldly taste in under two minutes. It's like, I didn't think Woodford could get any better, but I was wrong.

So it's also good with food. So you can do it with your barbecued meats and cheeses and all kinds of stuff. It's pretty cool. I might have to get one of these at some point when, you know, it's down on my priority list of things to do, but, uh, at some point. Yes. It's, you know, if somebody wants to get that for me for Christmas.

Maybe, maybe. Cause it's, it's cheap, you know, it's under a hundred bucks, uh, works great. It's basically just a little blower, you just, you know, screwing the thing through the chips. It's like, uh, the first thing, of course, my roommate said was, I wonder if you could do pot with this. Like, probably, I don't know.

I don't smoke, but give it a shot. Um, and we have done, it's, it's nice to do some cheeses under the dome while you're, while you smoke your cocktail and then you take it all off and then you can have some nice smoked cheese. Uh, we just did goat cheese yesterday with, uh, goat cheese, some, um, sun-dried tomatoes and crackers.

Oh my God. It's so good. I, I, I can't recommend this thing more, more highly. I will take some umbrage with, uh, the work done on their product description on Amazon. They, they certainly spent a lot of time getting wonderful photos of the food. And, uh, as they say, it's an excellent choice for, they spelled choice wrong and, uh, you need the apostrophe and the it's come on.

Ah, well, you know what? I don't care. They got 841 ratings. They're 4.5 out of five. I'll go with it. Okay. And it was free for me. So I even like that even more. There you go. And Barrett writes in, yeah, F that on star is completely worthless. And this is a link to a story.

GM makes $1,500 on store subscription mandatory on GMC Buick and Cadillac models. Woo. If you're going to buy a Buick, expect the, the full freight of the $1,500. Uh, some different versions, uh, don't actually get up to that.

Like, uh, the new Hummers will not have, uh, any, any boost in price, but some, some of the other pickups will and all the different ones, but it's, it's, it's different for different cars. But the fact that it's mandatory and you do have to pay for it for some of these cars is like, no, fuck that.

No. Yeah. I mean, on star is garbage anyway. So the, the automotive manufacturers are definitely like trying to figure out a way to get in on the subscription game. So, yeah. Yeah. $1,500 is a lot. Yeah. It's a lot.

Uh, but you know what? If they had a podcast, they could go over to these new people called wisdom and then they could make their money back in no time flat. Uh, we got this email yesterday. Yes, we did. And I, I, I read it and I, I was just going to throw it away and then I read something at the end, but, uh, here, here, let me just read a few choice pieces here.

Hey, won't you please claim your podcast on wisdom? I'm impressed by your pod and want your unique voice on wisdom. Well, if you did any research whatsoever, you would know that I want to punch you in the throat. Anytime you say the word pod. So that's just me.

And they say, join us. It's free and we need you. Well, if you need me, you should pay me. And then you get to the bottom. But they will, Jason. They will pay you. Yes. P.S. I mean, this is literally at the bottom. I just happened to see this, which is what made the whole thing worthwhile.

By joining wisdom as a top badge. What if I want to be a bottom badge? You never know. Don't assume. You'll also get 500 wisdom coin. Our creator currency. Just let me know and I'll send you the short sign up link. Well, the fact that we're mocking you on our show, on our pod, should let you know that no, we do not need your wisdom coin whatsoever.

There's been so many of these that have come through that I've wanted to talk about on the show. Like the one thing that really drives me crazy, and I'm just going to throw this out there for free because I know none of you are listening to the podcast. How do I know none of you are listening to the podcast that are trying to get us to sign up for your stupid podcast services?

You always say how much you are reaching out to us specifically because you really love our show, but you don't even drop in a single line ever that tells me that you have actually listened to one of our shows. None whatsoever. None. Like I would actually stop and read an email if somebody mentioned something about our show that they actually liked.

But they're all just generic emails meant to sound like they look at like they've listened to you and like your show. So fuck you and your generic bullshit. Yeah. This just comes because every podcast has an author email address in the RSS feed. And you have to have that because you have to claim your podcast on certain sites.

They're working on different mechanisms for that now so we can get rid of this stupid email, but we just get spammed all the time. And I mean, what, we get like 10 a week pitching guests to us for our show. If they had listened to the show, they would know we don't have guests, period. So there you have it.

You know, I'm with you, man. If anybody had given us any inkling that they had actually listened, I'd be like, oh, tell me more. Yes. Tell me more. Maybe we will. We will sign up with your stupid service that will do nothing. But at least you've listened to our show. And I would be normally saying, Brian, you're giving away the secret here.

But as we know, they don't listen. No one's listening.

Security? Ha! Welcome back to Security Ha! With Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan. Dave is also the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy, and also the new Control Loop podcast, where they discuss ICS and IOT.

How are you doing, Dave? I'm well. I'm well. It's been a good week, and I'm looking forward to the weekend here. We've got lovely weather here last half of this week. It was hot, and we had some thunderstorms come through that cooled things off. So it's very, it's downright San Diego-like here in Maryland today.

So I'll take it. All right. All right. Yeah. Well, I got a little follow-up with us here. Remember we talked about the pepper spray guns, the paintball guns? Yes. Did you buy one, Dave? Yes. Yes. Yes. We talked about it. I didn't know if you actually literally pulled the trigger or not.

Yes, I bought the one that you had shown us all and recommended. So I have that along with, you know, a few rounds of ammo and so on and so forth. So should the civil – what's it called?

The Stomp the Steal? Yeah. I don't want to say civil war, no, but should – Civil unrest. Should civil discourse break – civil unrest. That's what I'm looking for. Thank you. Civil unrest. Should civil unrest come to pass, I am ready with my non-lethal weapon.

Excellent. Excellent. Which probably means I'll be the first to go. Exactly. Exactly. I just – there was a news story this week here in L.A. about a woman who had someone break into their house and she ran into the other room and got her gun, came out, and was almost instantly shot in the face with her own gun by the attacker.

So that happens. Oh, wow. A lot. She survived, though. And, you know, my wife was telling me she was at an appointment with our youngest, a pediatrician appointment, just a routine checkup kind of thing. And one of the things on the checklist now, and one of the things on the checklist now that the pediatrician asks is, does the child have access to firearms in the house?

Wow. So, yeah. Right? Yep. So, I got an ad for a new company that makes these guns called Burna. And as we talked about before, the pepper spray rounds, I can't get here in California. Well, I can't have shipped to me in California.

And it's illegal for me to have them here. So it's a misdemeanor if I get caught using them. And so on this site for Burna, they sell the guns. They have figured out a way that I can actually legally purchase them and carry them in California.

And that is to become a mall cop. And to make it legal. Does it come with a free segue? I wish it did. I wish it did. My new co-host, Jason Blart. Jason Blart, mall cop.

Exactly. Exactly. So if this podcasting thing doesn't work out, I now have a fallback. I totally have a fallback. That's good. It's $50. So you pay them $50. You go through the course. And then you can actually spend more money with them to buy their products, which is genius.

I have to say it's genius. Well, I've got to say, Jason, now that you have this office space, you could probably pick up a little extra income. You should talk to the owner of the building and say that you're now authorized to patrol the building as well. So, yeah, I can put all my audio files into RX9 Advanced, let them process, and then go on my rounds and double dip.

Because, you know, it takes like half an hour. I'm just imagining being a tenant in the building where Jason is in charge of security. Well, look, you didn't even have to mention the security part. Just imagine being in a tenant with the building with Jason. I mean, I'm a fine tenant.

Yeah, I suppose they're up and downs to that. But just, you know, you're going to park there. You might want to stay inside the line, sir. Is that an In-N-Out burger and fries you're trying to bring into this place? I'm going to have to confiscate that.

I'm going to eat your trigger finger here, pal. So, I signed up. I started taking it last night. And it is actually a pretty good course. I'm actually learning shit about private security guards, which is kind of cool. So, the $50 is, I mean, at least for the five minutes that we were able to burn on the segment, it was worth it.

Personalized map of local donut shops delivered to your door. Here's your haircut mullet kit. No, that's for actual law enforcement. You learned that you are not law enforcement. Okay.

We recommend these comfy loafers. Yeah. So, also on the site, I ran across this. It wasn't the comfy loafers, but they also sell backpack inserts that are bullet-resistant for your kids.

And I was looking at this. You can get one for $127.49. It can withstand up to six hits from a .44 Magnum with velocities up to 1,464 feet per second. It is a level 3A-rated ballistic plate. Now, you thought high school sucked when we were kids.

Imagine having to – I can't even fathom. I was speaking with some of my colleagues at my new job up here in Canada, and we were talking about the weather, as one does in places that has shitty weather. And I was talking about California, and there was a lot of, why did you decide to move here?

And it's stories like this. And another story I saw this week that made me think of this is some schools are contemplating requiring children to purchase see-through clear plastic backpacks to start using at schools so you couldn't possibly hide a weapon.

It would be visible. Fucking hell, man. That's where we're at. That's where we're at as a society in the States now. Yeah. Yep. I don't even remember – when I was in high school, which was back in the 80s, I don't remember this sort of thing crossing my mind, like the notion that somebody would bring a gun to school.

It just didn't seem within the realm of possibility. I remember when I was in elementary school, kids brought in guns with their fathers for show and tell. Like rifles, hunting rifles and things like that. And that was just no big deal because, again, there was no – we hadn't crossed those boundaries yet.

I don't know how we go back. I just – the whole notion that this is normalized, that part of my shopping for my kid is body armor. It does feel very Pandora's box, doesn't it? Like now that we're here, how do we ever get back? How are we okay with this? We shouldn't be.

And yet, here we are. No. No. It makes me so angry. Yeah. Well, here's another one that made me angry. Quibble sent this in. Sad but true and right out of a boring dystopia. And this is precisely what we thought would happen when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

A Nebraska mother and teenager faced charges in a teen's abortion after police obtained their Facebook DMs. Yeah, this is a messed up story. Yeah. Well, there you go. The police got a tip claiming that this woman miscarried and secretly buried the fetus with her mother's help, the report said.

And investigators were able to obtain her medical records indicating she was 23 weeks pregnant at the time. And they went to Meta and said, we would like to see their messages. And Meta turned them over. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Facebook has been saying for a while that they were going to make their messaging end-to-end encrypted.

They've been dragging their feet on that. You know, there are people who are pushing on Facebook to, you know, what are you waiting for? This is why we need this sort of thing. I think that's, in my mind, that's treating the symptom and not the problem, of course.

But, yeah, I think you're exactly right, Brian. People said that this was going to happen. Other people said, oh, you're overstating it. You're, you know, that's breathless speculation. That's not going to happen. And here we are. Yeah. Here we are. And it didn't take very long.

No, not very long at all. It didn't take very long. A couple weeks ago, Ben Yellen and I had a conversation on the Caveat podcast about the whole notion of not being allowed to cross state lines. Like, are you kidding me?

Show me your papers. People are talking about that? Yeah. And there's, well, they're saying the same thing of surely not. This is the way we would never get there. But it's been surely not since day one. The Supreme Court justices lied about saying that they wouldn't overturn it.

They said, no, we're not going to do that. They did it. Then it was, surely they won't go get the messages. They did it. Surely they won't stop people from traveling state lines. We'll be talking about that within two months. Yep. If that. If that. Well, I guess the positive side of this, and I use that, you know, the way we do on this show, is that it seems as though there's really been an uptick in people coming out to vote.

Yes. Unexpectedly so. So we had, what was it? I can't remember. Was it Kansas or Kentucky? Kansas. Kansas. It was Kansas. Yeah. It was one of those K states where people came out way, way more than the polls had predicted them. So maybe we'll see a wave this fall.

We can hope, but we certainly can't sit on our laurels, those of us who are upset about all this. No. Yeah. It's just maddening. Yeah. It is. It's just, I still can't get in the mindset of these Nebraska cops. It's like, do you not have fucking anything better to do with your life than this?

Apparently not. Right. Right. Yeah. What are you trying to do here? What's, what's your end game? Congratulations. It's just such the, it's the hypocrisy. You've ruined someone's life. It's the hypocrisy that really kills me because these are all the same people that are, were my body, my fucking choice about vaccines and masks.

Yep. Fuck them. Yep. Yep. Fuck them. There we go. Fuck them. I think that's, I think we can all agree on that one. Fuck them. New tagline for the show. Grumpy old geeks. Fuck them. Fuck them.

I'm sure enough people have said that about us as they unsubscribe. So yeah, right now, one of those, one of those cops, it's like, I used to like this show. Well, I'm going to send a strongly worded letter. Address that to Dave Bittner. Yeah.

Thanks. No problem. So I saw this one and it was like a, oh shit, no shit moment. It's an article in app browsers, like those in Facebook and Instagram are a big privacy risk developer shows. Well, I always assume this comes over from a nine to five Mac.

I always assumed that, wait, on iOS, they have to use a web kit and I'm like, okay, if they're using web kit, we're all good. That's what I thought. Well, turns out, yeah, not really.

Facebook and Instagram are injecting their own code when you use the in-app browser to do, to, to click on links inside the apps. And, you know, I never even thought about, I don't know how naive I was. I never even thought about that because I just thought, oh, well they have to use web kit so they can't really do anything.

Well, turns out, yeah, totally fucking wrong on that one. And they're, they're injecting their own tracking code. When you go to any website that you use inside of the in-app browser and they can do a lot more, but we at least know that they're tracking something.

This guy's figured out how, that they are sending data back and they are altering websites that you visit using their in-app browsers. So if you do click on a link inside of an in-app browser, there is a little button at the bottom that says, take me to a real browser. Use that, use that a lot.

And maybe just stop using Facebook. Just saying. Well, so here's a question because I, as you know, I'm not on Facebook anymore, so I'm not familiar with this on a day-to-day basis. Is there a way to make that the default action so that, so that it doesn't jump into Facebook's browser at all?

I don't believe so. I don't use, I haven't used a Facebook app in years. Brian, you still use it? I wouldn't expect it to. If there is one of those settings, it's buried so deep that it would probably take me 20 minutes to find it. I just don't click on links on and using when I'm using Facebook on my phone.

I just don't because I kind of, what blows my mind is the fact that this could even possibly be legal. But then I realize how far behind our legal system is with technology. And of course, you know, this is a nothing burger compared to a lot of the other things going on. But yeah, it just, again, it's, it's just another like, oh yeah, there's just evil.

And you know, what are you going to do? Right. Yeah. Right. Not use them. Yeah. We've been worn down. Yeah. Worn down. I wanted to draw attention to an active scam that I saw making the rounds in the past couple of days.

I was actually talking about this with Joe Kerrigan on Hacking Humans this morning. This was drawn to my attention from Brian J. Jones on Twitter. He is a well-known author. He's a best-selling biographer. He wrote the Jim Henson biography.

He wrote the George Lucas biography. He wrote the Dr. Seuss biography. So really, you know, well-known author, excellent writer. I've enjoyed his work tremendously. And I've had the opportunity to interact with him a few times on Twitter. And it's always been pleasant.

But he drew attention to a scam that seems to be making the rounds targeting people who have verified accounts on Twitter. And they hit him. He got a DM from another verified account, which he now believes is another account that had been hijacked.

And the account was from a New York Times employee. I think a reporter. And it appears to come from Twitter's verification support. It looks all very legit. There isn't any, you know, janky English or anything like that.

All looks good. I was about to say, well, that's how you know it's fake. There is no Twitter support. Bingo! Right, right, right. That's true. That's true. It has a tiny URL link shortener. And Brian clicked through because it looked legit.

He didn't think it was a scam. He had checked the sender. And because it had come from a verified account, he clicked through. He actually did put in his username and password. And what saved him from having his account taken was that he had multi-factor authentication enabled.

And the bad guys weren't able to make their way past that. But he's not the only one I've seen being targeted with this. I've seen several reporters, media folks, people with verified accounts who they seem to be targeting.

So heads up on that if you are someone who is verified. Not that I would know what that's like. We're all safe here. Yeah, no doubt. Right. Just, you know, be aware. This is active.

It's still making the rounds here. So be careful. All right. Will do. Will do. I don't think anybody wants my account. But. No. No. I get them on Instagram because I got a three-letter account on Instagram. Like, all day long.

You really want to change your password? No, I don't. Again. Again. But at least they have turned off. There's a way to turn off the notifications for, you know, password reset emails. It's hard to find, but it's there. But yeah, I'm used to these kind of things.

But this one was pretty well done. I think, yeah, really the tiny URL is the giveaway in that one. You know, using the link shortener. But otherwise, it looked legit. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I think Brian's point is the main kicker, though.

It's like, yeah, Twitter doesn't have support. Yeah. Twitter's verified support is reaching out. I've been writing them for 12 years and not gotten a response. It beggars belief. That's right. That's right. Yeah. All right. Well, that's what I got this week, guys.

I will talk to you guys next time. Later. Bye. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Alrick and Mark. Welcome, folks. Thank you. Over at PayPal, we've got Gerard, Ralph, Mark, Miles, and Sherry.

Thank you so much. And over at the tip jar, we've got Andrew and and Jeff. Thank you all so much for keeping the show going. And remember, when you sign up for Patreon, you get the shows as early as possible. Not saying it's earlier, but sometimes it is. And ad free and high res, too.

There you go. High res. Awesome. High res. We got some new reviews this week. Calibre 198 gave us five stars. Number one podcast, the best podcast around for a good time now. Awesome. Yes. For a good time, call us. And Jeff gives us a five stars as best tech podcast.

This is a very enjoyable podcast that keeps me informed on the latest trends in technology. I really like the cybersecurity discussions. Stay grumpy, Jeff. All right, Jeff. Thanks, Jeff. And some sad news. And I can't believe I forgot to bring this up when we had Bittner on the horn because I was hoping for a rendition of magic.

Rest in peace, Olivia Newton-John. Yeah. She finally succumbed to the breast cancer battle that she'd been fighting for quite some time. And, you know, I just feel I was never a huge fan. I have to say Magic is an awesome song. I went back and like went through the Spotify playlist of like, you know, the essential Olivia Newton-John.

Other than the Grease soundtrack and Magic, I don't really like any of her music. But my God, talk about just another brick in my childhood being ripped away, Jason. I know. It was a horrible day, but it ended up good because that was the day that Mar-a-Lago got raided by the FBI. So, you know, there are pluses.

The universe gives and the universe takes. But I got to say, we did Xanadu on our dead podcast, Does It Have Legs, that me and MXV did. And I cannot remember if we determined if it had legs or not. I do remember that we said it was enjoyable and very fun, but I don't know.

I can't remember if we said you should watch it again or just listen to the soundtrack. It's been a while. But if you've never seen Xanadu, just go watch it. It's fun. That's all I'm going to say. And sadly, Daryl Hunt of the Pogues has died at age 72. Sad day. Sad day.

I love the Pogues. I saw them live many times. Yeah. I just, you know, Shane McGowan and Keith Richards are going to outlast us all. There's no doubt about that. You just, you can't get Shane down. I don't know what it is. He's got cockroach DNA in him or something, but Keith Richards just has everybody else's DNA because he just keeps getting the blood infusions.

One of my favorite memes online right now is like, we really need to start worrying about the world that we're going to leave to Keith Richards. That's good. That's good. That's a good one. Yeah. 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 565. And there you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and discord channel.

If you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans, you can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy and drink the rainwater.

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