566: Down the Metahole

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. A little follow-up on the Whole Foods palm scanner thing. I just went this morning to go pick up a couple of breakfast burritos before we did the show, which turned out to be a terrible idea because their bacon sucks and it was stuck in my teeth.

But I did see when I was leaving the store, I would have completely missed this, except there was a very short Asian man with a very tall poodle standing, staring at the wall. And I'm like, what the fuck is that guy doing? And I look over and he's staring at the Amazon One palm scanner.

So they have scanners in the stores now where you can actually scan your hand for the, you know, the touchless checkout, which I did when I bought my breakfast burritos and waved my card at the machine and it said, go now. That's what I did.

I didn't have to stand and scan my palm. I just took the piece of plastic out that Amazon gave me and I waved it at them and they said, go with God or Bezos. Again, a solution in search of a problem. Exactly. And I did see one theory that they're really just working on it so they can sell the technology to their corporate clients, you know, for exit and entry for, you know, locations and things like that.

But all in all, it still seems silly. What's the other thing that we always say on the show? We're all beta testers now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So that was, I just think, I thought it was interesting that it's there. The Amazon Fresh store up the road does have the palm checkout.

There's a lot of things that I will do for the show. I will even have sex with a robot for the show. I will not scan my palm for Amazon for the show. I'm just telling you I'm not going to do that. I draw the line here. Yeah. I will put my penis in random mechanical things that people send us from the internet, but I will not scan my palm print for Amazon.

What does that say? Well, that would be a whole other podcast we could do. I was going to say, forget the part where you try and break me down psychologically because that is a very long series. Yeah. But nobody's got time for that.

Ain't nobody got time for that. No. So this week I also did something that I think a lot more people should do. I supported an artist that I really, really like by buying their artwork. No NFTs were exchanged in this transaction.

I gave him money and he is going to create custom bespoke artwork for me. Okay. I know it's a crazy concept, Brian. I know it's hard to wrap your head around. I can't even understand that now because I thought all artwork needed to be generated algorithmically, sold digitally, and then you are a proud owner of Link.

No, no, no. You can. There is another way, Brian. There is another way. I gave this man money and he is going to sit at his table and he is going to create art. For me on paper that has to be shipped to me. He has to send the bits like physically to me.

What will they think of next? I don't know. I don't know. So the guy's name is Shannon Stamey. He's a professional, traditional illustrator, lover of French fries and human mixtape. And also a damn good looking dude. It's annoying how good looking he is.

I'm like, you're an artist who sits at home and draws and you should not look this good. It's disconcerting. Did you ask him to paint himself for you? No, I did not. Just gaze upon his visage? No? Okay. I did not. No, no, no. So what he's doing for me, he's actually doing two sets of pieces for me. The first one is he created this baby doll zombie artwork not too long ago.

And I watched him create it. He posted his progress on Twitter. That's how I found him on Twitter during the COVID times. And what he did with these is he puts them in a little nice frame. And so I got a baby doll death portrait from Sandman.

I'm like, that sounds really cool. I want one of those. And then me being me, I'm like, well, would you do maybe all of the endless in individual portraits for me? He's like, fuck yeah. Give me the money. So I paid him.

I'm not going to get him for a couple of months because he is literally doing all seven of the endless or yeah, I mean, eight pieces total. I'm getting the baby doll death, which is going to go here in the studio. And I'm getting a gallery of endless portraits for my home. And I am, I cannot tell you how excited I am because I love this guy's art.

I just love his style and I'm getting all of the endless in my house and I can't wait. Excellent. Supporting artists. No NFTs involved. Excellent. Good work. Thank you. I, I, another thing about good looking men this week, I was, I had a meeting with one of the most just ethereally good looking dudes in the world and he's a gay guy, but he was just like my biggest demographic is women like 26 and above who just love me.

And he's like, he's getting like requests on cameo all the time to have his baby. And I'm like, well, dude, you know what? We need to start Brian. We need to start is fuck cameo. We're going to start spermio. So all of these, all of these top level celebs can just, you know, spooge into tube.

We send it off to the fans and what happens? What happens? What do you think? Okay. I think this is it. You get on that. I'm just saying, look, what we're going to talk about people getting funded for in a minute. This is nothing compared to that. So I'm just saying I'm putting it out to the universe.

10 years. This will be a thing. Somebody will do it. What do you think? Be a lot of cross promotional opportunities with Grindr. Yes, Grindr, Tinder, Slammer. I got a Bumble story for later. Yeah, all of this stuff. Spermio. Just I'm just saying. I forgot. I wanted to mention that something, something unusual happened to me this week as well.

Something that doesn't happen very well. I went kind of viral online for something I said I did. There was that meme going around a couple of days ago. I'm sure you saw it, the two kids at the festival and the girl is obviously explaining something to the guy and people did all kinds of captions for it.

I did one as well related to Oingo Boingo and Spin Magazine screenshot it and added it to all their stories. Did they ask you for permission? They did not. Fuckers. Motherfuckers. Of course they didn't, which is exactly the first thing I thought when I said it.

It wasn't like pleased that somebody thought that I had made a good funny. It was, do they have the right to do that? Yeah, they do. I think. I know they do because it's Twitter, right? It's Twitter. You can't copyright a tweet. Yeah. Yeah. They can still, you know, there you go.

So I guess I'm pleased and chuffed that they liked it. I have not gotten any new followers or anything from it. Right. So, you know, it's all worth nothing. Not that I want followers or I don't care. I just, you know, Oingo Boingo joke. It was a good one. It was a good joke. I chuckled. I did not lull, but I chuckled.

And the funny thing is we're talking about copyright, but you obviously posted that tweet, that humorous tweet with an image that you had no rights to post either. So, you know, I guess turnabout is fair play. That's the internet now. The thing that I really learned from all of this is Spin Magazine is still around.

I didn't know until you said that. Who knew? Obviously nobody, which is why you have no new followers. Yes. I also have no new followers. And I think we lost a couple followers on the show, unfortunately, because last week I made a, I don't know.

Brian, would you say what I said was insensitive about fat people, about just lose the weight? You could have just stopped at insensitive. You would have been fine because it doesn't really matter what the topic is. That's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, look, if they must have been a first time listener to the show.

Everybody knows how you enforce your opinions. That's, you know, not that you're not delicate. It's not delicate. And so Jody Johnson wrote me. She wrote me a very long email and I wrote her back. But in the first email, she says, hi, Jason.

I normally agree with most of what you guys talk about. But you and Bill Maher are 1000% wrong about fat shaming. There are actual genetic reasons for more people being fat. Losing weight is not as simple as, and I bolded this because I want you to listen to what I'm about to say. Straight size people and the media want you to believe.

What the fuck is a straight size person? You're making shit up now. Straight size person. I didn't know the Main Street media was in on this conspiracy as well. Who knew? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're fucking not, which is why we talked about it. You know, they're on the other side.

They're saying that being your authentic fat self is okay. And it's not. And I would, I did, but straight size people. What the fuck is a straight size person? I've been fat my entire fucking life. I just got skinny. It's funny. You were just talking about how one of the most beautiful men that you've met recently is gay.

I would say straight size people generally means fat because us straight people tend to get kind of fat. That's true. That's true. This guy was 6'2 and 155 pounds. Okay. I aspire to both of those. I do too. One of which, actually, let's be honest, neither of which I will ever achieve.

Yeah. So, but, so I got, I got lots of emails. What did, oh my God, what did, it's a good drop that we had from Dave. Let me just stop you here for a quick aside because I know we'll get letters. Yeah, we, we got letters.

So I wrote a very heartfelt reply and where I just explained that, no, my anger with the, the, you know, the normalization of obesity on TV and in the media is wrong because it's making people sick and people have really bad problems.

And look, I got fat and I thought it was okay because I'm like, oh, look, everybody else is doing it and they say it's okay. I'm just, I've got a dad bod now. Well, I've got two dad bods and I, I got three men and a baby bods all stuck in a one and it damn near killed me. Actually, you're pretty spelt these days, Jason.

You're pretty spelt. Now I am, but then I was not. So I'm just saying that my, my complaining about, look, I could do it because I had the motivation. People just don't have the motivation. So it all came from a place of wanting to help. Stop, stop, stop.

Stop talking, Jason. Why? I'll go ahead and finish this one up. Thank you. You just relax because you'll just get us more letters. Okay, so she came back with, there's no actual evidence that being obese can cause diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes. To associate obesity to these diseases is an oversimplification.

My argument would be it's an oversimplification to not associate them. Now, correlation does not always equal causation, but the correlation level between being obese, we're not talking a couple of extra love pounds here. We're talking obese and diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes.

They are highly correlated. Yes, they are. You will, you will, in the same way that Trump can find a doctor to prove anything, I'm sure you can find doctors and say that these things are not connected. But 98.99% of doctors will say you should lose some weight, Chubbs, because you're at risk, high risk for high blood pressure and diabetes if you keep the weight on.

End of story. Done. That's what I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. It's just like, you know, I'm sorry, Jody. You're probably not even listening to this because I am, you know, a straight sized person who has an opinion. I would like you to look inside and figure out what you are, what you're fighting me on here.

Why are you fighting me? Is it just because you enjoy being big? Because you can be. Fuck it. I don't care. I'm just saying that most people should just lose the weight. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, moving on, Brian. You got some Winamp news, I see. I do. I do. We talked the other week about Winamp's big return and how excited we were, but yet we wouldn't download it and install it ever or even look at it.

But, hey, it's a fun news story and it makes us feel a slight glow of nostalgia. Yeah, we got the feelings. But they're trying to be relevant. They're trying to. They're opening up invitations to a creator service that will give musicians tools to distribute, promote, and, of course, profit from their work. While most details won't emerge in earnest until features begin unlocking in September, this is slated to include fan subscription support debuting in November.

So, basically, a Patreon-style platform for music that is tied to your desktop and you will never use. I have something to say about that, Brian. Here's the kicker, though, Jason. Oh, you got something else. Okay. Oh, there's more. Invitations are limited to 2,500 people.

They'll receive, or 25,000 people. They'll receive a year of free access to tools as well as a creator pass that promises exclusive perks. And here it comes, Jason. Oh, no. Including digital tokens of Winamp's Llama. Fuck you. You know what? I'm going to leave this to Dave. Yeah, fuck you guys.

Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you. Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you both. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. That's the sentiment I have for Winamp. Dave drops this week, huh? Well, now that I'm in my, I've finally got my studio set up.

I've finally got my stream deck set up with all of the drops that I had done when I was back in the house. So, I just, I had to. I had to. Okay. Seriously, again, with this. See?

I'm going to combine my Llama coins and my Bat coins and buy an NFT of something. Something. Someday. I'm never going to do any of this. Does Spin Magazine have a token yet? Oh, I hope so. In the news.

I went out to dinner this week with my friend here who works for Apple here in Toronto. And I asked him about this new story. They say Apple now has a solid start date for its hybrid work environment. According to Bloomberg and The Verge, they will start requiring employees who work in its Santa Clara offices to report three times a week, starting in the week of September 5th.

They're expected to come in Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the third day to be set by individual teams. So, this will facilitate the irreplaceable benefits of in-person collaboration. Now, they've tried several times. We've talked about them all in the show and got pushback.

And I suspect they'll get pushback again. But as my friend who works in the Toronto office here says, they've been doing that for a long time now here. It's just the one holdout. He's like, all the Californians are the bitches. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow.

Okay. So, it's only California that's had a lot of problems. They've been doing it almost everywhere else at Apple that they're at. Are you saying there's a lot of self-entitled bitchy people here in California? I would say that. Okay. I was one of them. I would concur. Yes.

I still am one. I'm just an expatriate, self-entitled bitchy person. That's my gig now. All right. So, if you're a California Apple employee and you don't want to go back to the office and you're thinking about quitting your job, you may not want to because you might not get it back. And we found most people that have quit their jobs have wanted them back.

We've seen the studies saying that the Great Resignation, like a lot of people, wish they wouldn't have quit their jobs. They don't like their new positions. They wish they would have gone, never would have quit in the first place, and they can't get back. And you may not be able to get back at Apple either. They have been reluctant to cut jobs in the face of the economic downturn like Microsoft, Tesla, and other major tech companies have.

But they are slowing down recruiting. They've laid off roughly 100 contract recruiters to reflect changes in the company's current business needs. So, keep your job. You may not get it back. Just saying. Economy 2.0! Oh, I forgot about that one.

Also. You sure are correct. So, there's also a new report out that Apple wants to triple its revenue from ads. Yeah. Isn't this purely because, who was it? It was TikTok that said they wanted to double their revenue from ads, right? Yeah. Actually, no.

So, Apple went double that, triple. TikTok actually did want to go. I think they wanted to 12x or something, their revenue. Oh, 12x. No, it was like some ridiculous number. And they're just like, oh, slow your roll. Slow your roll. But this is bad news that Apple is trying to double down on ad revenue because we all know where it goes.

I'm not happy about this news that they're even thinking about that. I know that they moved to services and they're making a lot of money on services now. Services are great. Advertising is not. Advertising means tracking. Exactly. Yes. On the plus side, they're basically talking about the Maps app and nobody uses that.

So. Actually, it's really good now. Surprisingly. Has it gotten better? Yeah. It's so good. I eschewed Google Maps for Apple Maps in my car when I go for a jaunt now. I'll have to retry it. Dude, give it a shot. It's surprisingly good.

And there's some really cool features in there, too. I am a fan of Apple Maps now. Once they got past their growing pains and they just basically rebuilt the thing from scratch. Once they actually had Maps? Yeah. Once they actually had their own Maps, it didn't outsource them.

I mean, come on. They've got a few bucks laying around. They can buy a couple of cars and some dudes to drive around, you know. It's not like they're cash strapped. But, yeah, I'm telling you, Apple Maps is fucking phenomenal now. So give it a shot. All right. I will. What's not phenomenal is the fact that Adam Neumann is back in the news.

Adam, Adam, Adam. Adam has a new company called Flow, and he basically just wants to become a slumlord like he was before. But he wants to do it right this time. What happened to his blockchain-enabled carbon credit selling with Bitcoin scheme?

You know, nobody's mentioning that one that was in the news last week. Interesting. What's in the news this week is Adam is back. Apparently his, you know, persona non grata status has been lifted. Andresen Horowitz, who are basically the scummiest fucking VC company on the planet at this point.

Mark Andresen, who, you know, always had a special place in my heart, at least for a long time, because he wrote the first browser. You know, he wrote the first web browser back at Shambana, down in Champaign-Urbana. And then he turned into a fucking supervillain.

He really did. Just look at him. He looks like, what's his name from Daredevil? What's the main guy? Kingpin. He looks like Kingpin. And he's acting like Kingpin now because he just gave $350 million to Adam Neumann to start a new company where he just rents apartments.

Let me just go off on a quick tangent here. You know what Kingpin's doctor told him? He's actually at high risk for high blood pressure and diabetes. You sure are correct. All right. So first off, well, I mean, I know why Adam Neumann has more money than God and he can burn his own money if he wanted to.

But rule number one of being a venture capitalist or doing a startup is never spend your own money. So smart. I just, for the life of me, what are they thinking? Like, here's what they see. They see that all of that money that he got from WeWork, he still owns like 3,000 apartments.

So he's taking the stuff that he got ill-gottenly from WeWork and flipping it and just trying to redo it. I just, I mean, the reason I say Andreessen Horowitz is like the worst VC company on the planet right now is because they have billions of dollars into Web3 and crypto. These are the guys behind everything that bad, everything bad that's happening with crypto.

These are the guys under the scenes, like holding it up with, along with what the Winklevite twins or whatever. These are the other guys who are saying that Web3 is going to democratize the internet. You know, everybody's going to get paid. No, no, not everybody's going to get paid. These guys are going to get paid. That's why when you listen to Web3 shit, think about these guys.

And the fact that they are giving money to Adam Neumann also just tells you that this is bullshit too. They just expect to make a ton of money off of it. So just, just, you know, caveat emptor. I agree. No arguments here. I have some news about Airbnb. They're starting to test anti-party tech in the U.S. and Canada.

What? I'm not sure what anti-party technology is, but here we go. Let's, let's talk about it. So they've introduced that permanent ban on all parties and events that host properties worldwide back in June. They brought the rules in on a temporary basis after the COVID-19 pandemic hit to abide by social distancing restrictions.

And then all of a sudden they realized, oh, well, neighbors didn't like that. Cities didn't like that. Nobody wants a house next to them that you rent just to throw a big fuck off party. And then the place gets destroyed and kids can't get to sleep and the dog gets poisoned. So let's stop doing that in general. Let's make it back to what it was supposed to be in the first place.

Vacation homes for families and things of that nature. So they're trying to figure out how do we do this? How, how do we implement an AI? I was going to say, where's the AI? Yes. So they're, they're basically scouring the listing. So they will look at how long the prospective guest has had an Airbnb account.

Fair enough. Not too different from like Uber ratings and things of that nature. How far away the listing is from where they're based and the history of positive reviews. They will also bear in mind the length of the trip. Like, did you just rent it for one night? And whether someone is trying to make a booking during the week or over the weekend.

It may, for instance, flag a planned stay of one or two nights over a weekend in the same city where the guest lives. Airbnb says the users who are precluded from staying at an entire home because of those measures can still book a hotel room or a private room. The host is more likely to be at the property in the latter case. Who the fuck is renting Airbnbs where the host, you're just renting a room out in somebody's house?

I've done that for, I know, but here's the thing though, that, that doesn't jive with me because I have rented rooms for my friends who are coming into town that I don't want to stay in my house. You know, because. So you put them in somebody else's house. Well, yeah. Their house doesn't have, I have dogs that will eat people, you know, that will kill somebody.

So I put them in a house up the road. That's, that's a normal thing, honestly, I think. But I get, I get where they're, they're looking for signals that, you know, indicate a party. Yep. The system builds on tools that had a narrow focus on guests aged under 25, particularly those who wanted to stay nearby and didn't have positive reviews.

The Beastie Boys will never be able to rent an Airbnb. It's basically what we're coming down to. They note that they can't entirely prevent parties from taking places at listings, but it has a tip line for neighbors to contact staff if they believe a party is taking place or have other concerns. I hope it's 1-800-FUCK-FUN.

I have zero issues with any of this. I think it makes perfect sense. So. I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of false positives and a lot of false negatives, but. Just taking the fun out of the world. Come on. Damn it. Oh, look at this has always existed. Hotels wouldn't let you, you know, we had to find, we had to search far and wide to find hotel rooms that we could rent when we were like 18 or 19.

So we could throw parties in the hotel rooms. It was, you know, this stuff. Nobody wants you when you're under 25. No, that's true. That's true. They do want you for some. They want you for some things. Usually it's to leave after. Yes. Yeah.

Something else people don't want. This week has just been full of Mark Zuckerberg and his, his new meta selfie. It's 2022, Brian. It is 2022. It looks like it was done in Microsoft paint. It does. This is Zuckerberg in front of the Eiffel Tower.

And I don't know what the other one, something. I think it's Spain or something. The memes that came out about this one were way better than even the meme that you got famous for with Spin Magazine. I'm sorry. I, in 19, what was it? Or maybe it was 2000.

In 2000, I was a competitive Quake gamer. You know, I was like semi-pro. That was 22 years ago. The graphics in that game were pretty goddamn realistic. What is happening?

Nobody wants this. No one. What I don't understand about tech right now is we're having things shoved down our throat that nobody wants. Nobody wants NFTs. Nobody wants the metaverse. Nobody wants cryptocurrency.

No one wants this stuff. Well, some people want it so they can take your money. That's the only reason. Well, that's it. That's it. It's scams and it's grift and it's bad people doing bad things. I mean, I am going to say that I have played some cool games on my Oculus headset.

But the whole metaverse side of shit, it has no meaning for me whatsoever. Yes, I'm an old. I don't care. But if you're going to drag me into the metaverse, drag me into the fucking metaverse. I want to be in the middle of Ready Player One. I want to be in Snow Crash.

I want to be in Neuromancer. I do not want to be stuck in a fucking Wii that's 20 years old playing golf or tennis. It does look kind of weak. Yeah. That's what the comments is. It looks like a 2002 Nintendo GameCube release called World Baby.

That's one of them. It's like, yeah. The only thing I'll say is that the metaverse avatar of Mark Zuckerberg actually looks more human than a photo of Mark Zuckerberg. Isn't that true, isn't that true? Isn't that true, though? Isn't that true? I like this one. Second Life 2007 versus metaverse 2022.

And at least in Second Life in 2007, I don't know. People have pants and legs and dogs. Still no legs. Geez, man. Where's all that money going? Where's it going? It's obviously not going to...

I don't... Look, I know Mark wants to be the Ready Player One guy. He wants to be that old dead guy from the movie. You know, that's his intent. Mark, you're doing it wrong. That's all I'm... He can't say anything else. All that money going down the meta hole.

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Media Candy. Okay, Brian, this week I finished The Sandman on Netflix because I had to. Because it dawned on me. I'm like, oh, I'm doing that same thing I did with the comics and I didn't finish them for 30 years. No, finish the damn show and watch it again. Fucking amazing.

Absolutely amazing. But this morning, a hat tip on this one goes to Gabriel Pagan on our Discord channel because he is the first person out of 10,000 people to tell me that a new episode of The Sandman dropped today. They actually released another episode.

That is cool. So this is... I'm assuming this is not the full story. This is like season one and there's more. Well, see, the thing about the comic books is there's the main storyline, but every now and again, they would have a one-off episode or one-off issue that had a completely side topic that was really cool.

And this is the Cats one. This is about... If you've read the comic, you know about the Cats episode with the King of Cats and all that, or the King of Dreams and Cats. And it's fucking great. It's so awesome. So I can't wait to see it. It's all animated, too. It's not an actual live action one from what I've heard.

But I'm hoping that what they did was they're taking these one-off issues of the comic that aren't part of the main story arc and all these side stories and running them like in between seasons because that would be so perfect. And then while they're filming the next season, they keep releasing along the way because that would make sense.

Okay. So there's more to the main comic. This run that they've dropped right now is just the beginning of the comic story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This goes up to like, I think, issue 12. I've never read any of this, remember? I know. Okay, okay. I don't know anything. But I want to tell you this, and this will please you. I watched the first episode, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fuck yeah! All right. That's what I want to hear. You know, I'm not like caught by the bug or anything. I'm not itching right now to get down to my basement TV and throw on episode two, but I did enjoy it. It was well done.

Awesome. Keep watching. I think episode one was a hard one because there's a lot of story. That first episode. And they had to change stuff from the comic to make it work for TV, and they nailed it, I think, personally. And the fact that you liked it says it.

They fucking nailed it. So, yeah, keep going. Keep going. Wait till you get to the sound of her wings. That's the best one, in my opinion. But I did find Endless, a Sandman podcast that is unbelievably good. Watch the show before you listen to the podcast. They break down the episodes.

But these are comic editors and authors, and they're two women, Lainey Diane Rich and Elisa Quitney. Good names. Okay. Easy to read. But they are fucking phenomenal.

They are great. So, give that a shout, or give that a shot if you are into it. It was a great podcast. I couldn't believe it was that good when I started to listen to it. But I'm happy. I'm just, I'm stuttering right now because I can't believe you fucking watched it, for starters. And second, that you liked it.

You have no idea how happy that makes me. I didn't want to put it in the show notes because I wanted to flabbergast. Yes, I am. I am 100% flabbergasted. Are you a Better Call Saul fan? I'm a huge fan. We have not watched any of the last season yet.

We're kind of waiting to be able to have the time to sit down and watch it together because that's a show that my wife and I both enjoy. So, I'm looking forward to it. I know the ending because internet, and you can't get away from it. You can't get away from it. I didn't even try to find it, but I know how it ends. But it's a show that is not about the destination.

It's about the journey. Absolutely. So, I'm very much looking forward to it. Yeah, I would just say that they stuck the landing. I mean, it was perfect. Good. It was absolutely good. That show, well, A, 10 times better than Breaking Bad ever was. And the other thing, I was talking to our friend Brian about this yesterday.

Better Call Saul is so nuanced and layered. You could probably watch that entire series 10 times and still not get all of the cross-references that they made with Breaking Bad unless you are the guy that made them. There's so much stuff going on in that show. And I finally, I just gave up.

I'm like, you know what? I'm going to enjoy it for what it is. Yeah. Just watch it and enjoy it. Don't become a professor of Better Call Saul. Exactly. There's no reason. It's like, that's not going to enhance my life in any way, shape, or form. I will say that my favorite character in the final season is definitely Carol Burnett.

You know, when Carol Burnett shows up, it's like, wait a minute, that's Carol fucking Burnett. It's like, how cool is that? And she's awesome in it. So, yeah, cool. Let's talk about Westworld because I know you saw this finale because I saw your comment in the Discord. Let's talk about a show that didn't stick the landing.

What the fuck did they do? They ruined it, in my opinion. They had already basically done a reset, and now they reset the reset to season one, right? It's so stupid. It was horrible. Again, talking to our friend Brian about this one yesterday, too.

He had a theory that, he may have found this one on the internet. It was basically around Ed Harris and having to pay him to come back for another season. Like, they kind of wrapped him. So, I don't know. I still think that the penultimate episode was the best episode.

They should have left it with that. And look, we do not know if the show is getting renewed or not. I fucking hope not. That is up in the air. So, I hope not, and I think I am willing to bet, I will bet the farm that the writers are begging for it not to get renewed because what are they going to do?

So, it can just be its own, you know? What are they going to do? Fine. Like, do that. Please don't renew us. I know! Except there's no humans left. It's, so, anyways, whatever.

Sorry, spoiler alert, post, post-spoiler. But, yeah, I don't, the worst thing is, of course, if they do do another season, I will watch the first episode because I need to see, but I, yeah, they ruined it.

They ruined it. They totally fucking ruined it. I, I just, I, there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. But what did you say one time? There's nowhere, no place to go but fuck up? Yep. That's it. Oh, yeah. It was, it was such a bummer.

After such a fucking phenomenal season, they just had to drop trow and crap in the Cheerios. It sucked. Um, I did watch The Most Hated Man on the Internet. Uh, this is a Netflix series, uh, three-parter. It's Ronald D. Moore, right? Oh. Well, this series goes really, really far in making you feel absolutely no empathy for the victims whatsoever.

It's really, really, they do a really good job of people, making people from my neighborhood here in Woodland Hills look like total fucking assholes and douchebags. Now, to give them credit, most of the people in my neighborhood where I live are assholes and douchebags. But there are some cool people here, some very fucking cool people here, and you know who you are if you're listening to this show.

But, my God, did these people just come off looking like shitty fucking humans. Um, the problem is, I'm going to give, I'm going to spoil this one here for a second. Uh, so, fast forward if you care anything about this. Most people, when they say, we got hacked, weren't.

The way that this story plays out is, oh, shit, these people actually were. And the guy that was running the, the Revengeborn site actually had hired a hacker to steal people's photos and break into their email accounts. Right. So, that is the, that's, sorry to spoil that part for you, but it's in the fucking news.

It's not news. It's a 10-year-old story. Okay. So, um, but, yeah, the guy's a douchebag. Hunter, the guy, he's a fucking douchebag. The people who got hacked, some of them were just horrible people. His girlfriend got, I think, his ex-girlfriend got the most gruff from everybody on the internet because there is something fucking wrong with this chick.

Like, when you, if you watch it, there is really, my, my, my roommate and we're watching it together and she's like, how fucking stone can one person be? And I'm like, I don't know if she's stoned or just stupid, but it's bad. But I enjoyed the show. That's the, there, there's the, the other kicker.

I think it's a great mini series. It's three episodes. It's worth watching. Cool. I watched something else that might surprise you, Jason. I watched the first episode of She-Hulk Attorney at Law over on Disney+. How did that go? I thoroughly enjoyed it. Shocker.

It was funny. It was clever. It was quirky. And it was weird. It was all the things that Marvel movies usually aren't. So, uh, my whole thing with, with the, the, with the whole universe now is I, I think I'm never going to watch another one of the movies because don't care.

Yep. And, and I'm going to stick to these quirky little shows. Like I really enjoyed Loki and I really enjoyed Hawkeye and I've re I really enjoyed the first episode of She-Hulk. It was great and, uh, Jameel's in it. I know Jameel and Jameel's in it. And somebody actually sent me a text this morning. There's a, there's a story out there.

I will just read you the headline because I was just like shock ed. The headline is Jameel and Jameel injured her asshole while filming She-Hulk. Like, um, okay. Not, not, not just the ass. Yeah.

Very specific. And I was just wondering, like, is that just like maybe her best friend that she brought to the set who got injured or are we talking specifics here? Oh yeah. Maybe Megan Thee Stallion. Um, and I, I've, I've long been a proponent that one of the best things on Disney plus and it's worth the subscription price alone is the documentaries like the, the, the new ones and the historical ones about Disneyland and Walt Disney and all that sort of stuff.

And since they now own so many properties, they are rolling out new documentaries about everything, including Lucasfilm and, uh, industrial light and magic. And there's a new, I think, six part, uh, documentary about light called light and magic. And it is phenomenal. I've gotten good two episodes so far.

It's amazing. So, yeah. So one of my friends, uh, was asking about that on Twitter, uh, saying if it was any good. So there's your answer. I will, I will post a segment to them and say it's good. There we go. And I watched one other thing that I was just, uh, looking around on Amazon prime video because I hardly ever think to look there.

And occasionally there are things, uh, there was a not new documentary. I think it's about two or three years old now about the band, the slits called here to be heard the story of the slits and, uh, thoroughly enjoyed it. Slits is one of those bands like the sex pistols that is, uh, you know, there wouldn't be a million other bands if they didn't exist.

Uh, but that doesn't mean a lot of people actually listen to them or want to listen to them or need to listen to them. Or like me, have ever heard of them? Oh, well, yeah. Then you should watch this. It's really interesting. It's, it's pretty good story. So very cool. I'll check it out. Yeah. I've never heard of the slits. They are same time as the sex pistols, all girl band.

There would be no girl bands without the slits. Got it. They did. You know what? And, and to be, to be honest, I probably have heard of them. I've probably listened to all their records, but I don't remember much anymore. Just happens. Cops and doodads. All right.

We got a note here from Brett. He says, hi, chaps. You keep on about PIA for VPN. I'm happy to swap. If you can tell me how good it is compared to Nord VPN. I've used Nord for a number of years now without complaints. So far, my renewal is coming up. And if you think PIA is better than I'll switch using your link. Thanks.

Well, Brett, it's better for two reasons. One, we get paid. That's the big one. GOG.show slash VPN. Yes. And number two is PIA is the only tested through the court system, no log VPN that we are aware of. I do not believe that Nord makes that claim.

I'm sure that they log things. I know they log things because I've actually used Nord in the past. PIA does not log. End of story. Yep. I've got both. I still use PIA the most. So I just, I have them for multiple reasons just to test out other things. Nord is fine, but PIA is better.

All right, this next one is from my friend, Mike Murphy, who I grew up with and went to high school with. And it was really cool to get a note from him. He says, Jason, love the podcast. You guys actually talked about something I have a little knowledge about. I recently bought a new mountain bike and have been researching these due to what I had spent on the damn thing.

And they get stolen all the time. There is a company named Muck Off that I've been using their products for the last few years. They make what are called tubeless valve systems, cleaning products, et cetera. The tubeless valve stuff is pretty cool. I actually looked at the website on this. It's pretty, pretty neat. Not going to explain all of that, but they have incorporated a mount for an air tag that is sealed inside the wheel.

Very neat. There's also another company that makes a mount under the seat. It's a lot like one that mounts to the water bottle cage, but attaches to the two posts under the seat. The newest deal out there is one that mounts in the steering tube. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. At the top. That would be, oh, that's cool. At the crown of the fork, there's an opening.

It's about the same size as an air tag. I totally know what you're talking about there. Haven't really looked into that one yet. I'm pretty loyal to muck off. Have a great weekend and always look forward to the new episodes, Mike. So we got links to all of those in the show notes. Thanks. Yeah. Some good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good stuff. Thanks for writing in, Mike.

Yeah. It's been a long time. I met Mike when I was a sophomore in high school. Tells you how long I've known that guy. SimpliSafe. They do not sponsor this show. They've sponsored every podcast in the history of the world. Except us. Except us. The link in the show notes is actually a link to my friend Jordan Harbinger's SimpliSafe promotion because that's how I found it.

I found it because I read a million SimpliSafe ads when I was working on his show. And when I opened the studio, they're like, you need a security system. And they're like, just go get SimpliSafe. It's easy. It will give you the discount. It's all good. So I got it. I've set it up. It's here in the studio.

This weekend, Sunday, I'm sitting at home. It's like eight in the morning. I'm just having my matcha, just chilling, browsing through TikTok. And I get a notice that somebody is in my studio. And I'm like, what? Freaking the hell out.

And as with most video surveillance packages, you don't get the actual video once it recognizes a person for a minute or two because it has to take the video, process it, and all that stuff. And it still might be recording. But so I log in, and all I see is my front door is wide open, and there's no people to be seen.

I fly to my Jeep, tear ass, break about as many rules as there are in between my house and here to get here in 30 seconds. And scare the shit out of my cleaning crew. It was vacuuming the studio. It didn't tell me that they worked on Sundays.

So here's the deal. It works really well. And it's actually fairly cheap. I got the whole system, I think, for under 300 bucks with motion sensors, cameras, panic buttons, all sorts of stuff. It's actually a really good system.

I was supremely surprised. It's cheap and it's good. I've known a couple people that have had it. I would have it myself, except it is not accepted by Canada. What do you mean, not accepted? Like, Canada as a country all got together and said, we don't want SimpliSafe here, because Well, it's not for sale here.

You can still get it here, but it does not apply for your mortgages or anything like that. It's not one of the government-approved programs that you can set up. So I was unable to use it. I have to use basically SimpliSafe, rebranded and more expensive. That's too bad. Yeah, well, when you move back to this country, which inevitably you will, when you realize how awesome we are, and we'll see how those elections go.

Yeah, when you get back here, we'll hook you up with a SimpliSafe. I saw this next article and I just had to chuckle. It says, survey, nearly half of Android users consider switching to iPhone over security and privacy concerns. When you actually look at the numbers, this is just such a stupid article.

It's so stupid. It's a nothing article. No, because almost the exact same amount of people don't trust iPhones either that have them. So if you run across this article, I am just going to say, do your due diligence and read it and just don't take it at face value because for some reason, I think this is what, 9to5Mac?

Yeah, 9to5Mac posted this one, who I usually really trust and adore. They really shit the bed on this one because, yeah, there's literally no story here. Everybody does not trust their phone as it turns out. Yeah, just don't read it. It's not, save yourself the five minutes.

Yeah, saved you a click. I got a little bit of follow up on the fitness app thing that I had asked about a couple of weeks ago and a bunch of people had sent us stuff. I can't remember who recommended Fitness Blender to us, but somebody did and I gave it a go. I just signed up for the free account, so I don't know if the paid versions of videos are better.

They're good in terms of the what you're actually the content, but the production values are low to the point where like sometimes I can like I was trying to do a yoga program and she was doing the yoga and they don't mic her up very well. So you can't I was like, what the fuck did she say?

And I'm in an inverted pose. So I can't look at her to say clearly what I'm supposed to do next because I can't fucking look up and see what she's doing. So there's little niggles like that. It's just not the production quality is not there. I'll still I'm going to buy one of the packages and see if the pay versions are better.

The free ones are a bit lacking, which is a bit of a bummer. I do have some interesting news coming out of that world, though, that might be a game changer. Peloton may soon allow users the competing fitness equipment to stream its workouts to their bikes and treadmills. Oh, they're desperate. One thing I know about Peloton.

Yes. Well, they're getting desperate for money. I was going to get to that in a second. The one thing I do know about Peloton is that their programs are supposed to be extremely good. The production quality is extremely high and they have everything. They've got yoga. They've got the bikes. They've got the weightlifting and all that. So if this does open up and I could start using Peloton biking programs on my Echelon bike, I will probably be a Peloton customer in terms of their their subscription, which is not too bad.

13 bucks a month. They're expensive. But if it's all in one, right, like it would be all I used. Right. So not so bad. So we'll see. But yes, they are doing this. They are rethinking their digital strategy because they are desperate for money. Yeah, they're fucked. They can't they can't sell any more of these things.

They're outsourcing it. So they're making even less money now. Anyways, they're not profitable. A seven hundred and fifty seven million dollar net loss in the first three months of 2022. So if they can almost crypto money there. Yeah, almost crypto money. So they never would have done this before, but now they need it.

And look, you got it. You got a paying customer right here right now. If you can get this to work with my bike. That's so funny. Um, I might the gym I go to. I go to an Equinox and what they've done is genius, too, because they have just as much content probably as Peloton does as far as time shifted on demand like training.

And they've got like amazing guest trainers and things like that. So what they've done is basically negated the fact that I ever have to sign up for any of these things because it just comes with my gym membership. It is awesome. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's really good.

And I took a cursory look at the Apple fitness thing and then I read some reviews and it just sounds like it's too basic. It's not very good. It sounds like it's. Yeah, it's not. You've never worked out before. We want to get you working out. Here's how you do it. But I've been working out for 20 years.

Like, I need something a bit more hardcore. Security. Welcome back to Security 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 the new Control Loop podcast, where they discuss ICS and OT. Welcome, Dave. Hello, hello. Good to be back. Yes. I'm sad that we just had like 10 minutes off the air that we didn't record about a shady company that we should have talked about.

But the people will have to tune in for the after hours. You know what, though? There's no lack of shady companies. So. No. It's just yet another one. Yeah. Yep. I'm actually going to talk about one right now. I signed up for Bumble. Okay.

Last week. Because. Many of my single female friends swear by it, except they're still single. So maybe not. Yeah. So Bumble, just so fill me in here. Bumble is a one of the many popular dating apps now, right? Yeah. Their thing was that the women had to reach out to start a conversation rather than.

Yes. Oh, okay. So that was very popular with women. So this way, the women don't get like bombed by just. Yeah. Dozens and dozens of men just saying, please. Okay. Got it. Got it. All right. That's interesting twist. Sure. So I still, I still get to look, I still get to browse and shop, but I make my preferences known.

So then it knows what I'm shopping. I'm shopping. Yes. Yes. I can't imagine why you're still single. Go on. Exactly. Jason's opening salvo is how much are you? Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, my, my, my original bio was, you're not going to pick me.

So don't worry. Just, just manage expectations there. So yeah, I, I, I haven't gotten picked by anybody yet, of course. Um, so that's, that, that is not what's not normal. I did finally have a conversation last night with a, uh, I was going to say a young woman, but she was on, on the app.

She's 51, which is age appropriate for me because I'm also 51. Um, and I talked to this woman for half an hour until I figured out that it was a bot. Wow. Oh my. Okay. Took me half an hour.

Took me through this. Talk us through this. What happened? Slowly. In a deep voice. Very basic conversation. Yes. Let me get my ASMR on. Yes. So why are you here? Who's the CNN anchor that got busted for whacking off on a Zoom call?

Yeah. Yeah. Can't remember his name, but yeah. Tubin. Tubin. Talk about nominative determinism there. Um, so I, I, I'm chatting with this, this bot, you know, and then the, the way I figured it out was food.

Food was the one thing that the bot could not really kind of figure out. Like, I'm like, what, what kind of food do you like? And what restaurants do you shop at? And the restaurants thing was kind of a, kind of a throw out to see like, how long would it be before they answered?

And if they're Googling it, you know, is this just some dude? Dude in a room doing this shit. Cause one of the, one of the things were, um, that one of my red flags was what's your sign. And to me, knowing enough about cybersecurity, as I know that they're trying to narrow you down, narrow down your date of birth and they'll eventually get to asking you what your date of birth is.

I'm like, and I don't care. They ate 571. It's everywhere. You can find me. And you know what my birthday is. You can Google it. It's out there. I can't bring that one back. You know? Yeah. My, if she asked for my social security number, it would have been a different story. But, um, but with bots, I always give a fake one and see, see if it picks up, just kind of rolled with it.

I'm like, okay, must be a, must be a person at least on the other end. I don't know if it's the person that I'm talking to, whatever. But then we got the food and the food thing started, first I'm like, what kind of food do you like? And it said like, you know, uh, Mexican, Chinese, and Russian.

And the woman had a Russian name. I'm like, oh, you like Russian food. You have a Russian name. What's, what, what's the best Russian food that you, you know, that you would recommend? And her answer was ketchup. Hmm. Oh. I'm like, oh, I broke it. I fucking broke it.

And then I just started asking random questions about ingredients. And it was just, you could tell that it was, you know, it was, I, it must be hooked up to Bing because the answers were terrible. But, you know, I, never in my life have I ever uttered the phrase, hey, let's go out for Russian food tonight.

And I'm not sure why. I've never considered that. But yeah, I guess it's just not a thing. At least not where I live. Well, borscht is pretty fucking good. I gotta say. There, there are a couple, there's a few Russian restaurants here in Toronto. I've ate at one. Is that right? It's just, yeah. But it's not, yeah, it's not like, you don't hear it like, let's go get Thai.

That's for sure. Yeah, no shit. Yeah. No, it's usually after a funeral and you want to feel better. Give me some borscht. So it was interesting. It was an interesting thing to, to experience. Right. You know, I think it's crazy that, that it actually, the bot had you for as long as it did, because you're, you're savvy about these sorts of things and you're not drinking anymore.

I may have had a gummy or two. So I was, I was maybe not totally all there. There we go. Right. So let's just say I'm not, I wasn't in my whole right mind. Yes. Yeah. Were you horny, Jason? Because that clouds everything. Well, you know, it was the first response he'd gotten.

So yeah, that's the first one. The combination of a gummy, I'm thinking. Okay. Yeah. See, what you have to understand. The mystery is cleared. Sort of. Because the reason I put this in here that we're, that all three of us are talking about it is because Dave seems to be the only one that ever actually genuinely cares about what happened to me after the stroke.

So I put it in, in here because I know Brian doesn't give a fucking fuck. So, um, so the, one of the reasons I put this in here is I'm not horny anymore. I've, I'm not at all. Half my body doesn't work literally, which.

Right. You can figure that part out. Um, so what I can, you know, I've lost all this weight. I think I look pretty fucking good, but I can't ask anybody how I look because they're going to give me friend responses. So I'm like, let's get some data, you know, let's throw it out there.

I'll take some pictures and get some data on it. And just, just, just so I know inherently like, is this working or not working? Do I look good? Cause I get weird looks all the time and I'm like, is it because my face is fucked up and I don't, you know, it doesn't work half the time, uh, whatever. So I'm just trying to get data. Everything about this stroke is a data gathering exercise and an experiment.

It's experiments in personality design because half my personality was wiped clean in the stroke. So I'm building it back up as I go and figuring out what parts I want to keep, what parts I don't want to keep. And so this was just kind of a thing. I think Brian and I have some suggestions. I know you do. I've listened to the fucking show, assholes.

I got some suggestions for you guys too. So if you want to, if you want to trade, if you want to fucking trade, we can do that. So it was, it was interesting. So I was just taking it as a thing and yeah, I was maybe a little stoned when I was doing it. So I gave her a little slack, but ketchup really kind of, you know, it's a It's a red flag as it were.

Yeah. Yes, it was. To what degree do you think that this was a hundred percent bot or a human assisted bot? Like, do you have any sense on that? I went back and I reread the chat and it was all bot. Huh? It was, the questions were really, really rudimentary because it is, you know, it's a dating site.

So you don't have to really be Stephen Hawking when you're talking to somebody because, you know, on the, the guy on the other end is probably sitting there ready to go. I was just annoyed that it was like nine o'clock at night and I'm like, I want to go to bed. Why are you fucking talking to me now? I'm just like, oh, that's what people do.

They're good on a dating site. They probably want to hook up at night. So I don't. When I hear stories like this, I ask the question in my brain that I always ask. And I know there's no real answer. It's just the internet and people. What is the end game of a bot like this?

What? Brian, how many stories have we had about this? But I know, but I always go, why? Like money. But who's stupid enough to send somebody money that they've never met? Have you not listened to our show? I know. That's, that's why I prefaced all of this.

Sweet, sweet, innocent Brian. Oh my God. Yeah. Please stand by. Your hosts are morons. Oh, Jesus. I know. I know. This is crucify me for holding out hope for humanity.

No, there is no hope. Brian, there is no hope. I would tell you right now. Can I recommend a little podcast called Hacking Humans where we cover this every freaking week? Yes. Yes. You and Joe fucking cover it hand over fist. Shout out to Joe, by the way.

I miss that guy. He was, he was a fantastic co-host when he was on. So hi, Joe. I miss you. No, it's just. Joe Kerrigan? Yeah, Joe Kerrigan. He hosted the show one time. He's still my co-host. No, he's, he was my co-host once. Oh, okay. I was going to say. When you guys weren't here, Joe and I did the show.

Yeah. Joe and I did the show together one time. Actually, actually Jason, it was a bot and you didn't hear the last 30 minutes when he just said ketchup. So. Right. That's it. That's it. Ketchup. Yeah. No, because half the time I think about the, um, uh, what's the, uh, the, the Australian comic, uh, the, I like guns one or whatever.

What the fuck's his name? Oh God. Now I can, now I'm blanking on it. Yahoo serious. No, not Yahoo serious. Jim Jeffries, Jim Jeffries, Jim Jeffries. And you know, at the end of, at the end of his gun rant, he's, he's sitting there. He's like, you know, I could just be a moron sitting in a, in a mental institution talking at the wall going, I hate guns.

I hate guns. I hate guns. I think Dave just offended all of Australia, by the way. The only, the only person he could think of was Yahoo serious. Yeah. Thanks Dave. Thanks. You didn't want listeners in Australia, did you? Let me just, uh, stop you here for a quick aside because I know we'll get letters.

So, um, that's not a knife. Oh God. Oh crikey. Okay. Let's move on to some actual. This has definitely gone upside down. Should we, should we do any security this week or do you just want to keep, keep going with the fun stuff?

You guys just want to beat on me for the next 10 minutes. That's okay. I don't care. Jesus. Okay. Moving on. Let's talk about signal. The place we were supposed to go to be completely safe for all of our messaging, except for the fact that they use third parties and that got breached and exposed 1900 phone numbers.

This is courtesy of Twilio, which is their verification partner. That verified that these numbers were exposed basically. Yeah. It's a third party hack. Not the best. Yeah. Third party hack. So, uh, obviously signal has, uh, now had some damaged brand that they'll have to fix.

And, uh, yeah, there's increasing pressure on signal to join other encrypted messaging providers and moving away from phone numbers, which can be vulnerable to SIM swaps and other digit based scams. Dave, did you find anything, uh, bigger about this or is it just kind of a, uh, yeah, shit happens.

No, I, this pretty much covers it. Uh, you know, as, as you say, third party breach and, uh, signal got caught up in it. So I, I agree. It's not a huge number, 1900 users. If you're one of them, it sucks for you. But, uh, and it seems as though, I think what they, they identified three people specifically who they know got targeted with this.

Um, so not, not a big deal, but I, I, I guess I wonder why is signal hanging on to phone numbers the way that they do? Is there some kind of liability issue there? Or if they move away from that, are they just going to get flooded with fake accounts?

I don't know. Unclever programmers on the signal backend who can't figure it out. I mean, there's a million different reasons. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know either, but yeah, it is what it is. I, I, it's not surprising. Um, it's, it's annoying is what it is, uh, that, that these third parties, once, once they verify somebody and they pass it along to the, you know, the, the customer, the API customer, like, so if I'm signal and I'm, I'm using Twilio for verification, right?

Yeah. They do the verification job. I want them to immediately delete any data from that transaction and just keep an, keep a record of what happened. You know, for billing, they obviously have to, they, they, most of the reasons that they keep all these records is for billing so they can make money off you. But once a successful transaction has gone through, I want them to delete the data.

I don't want them to have anything, uh, on my customers period. And that shouldn't, that, that should be a feature, not a bug. You know, that's, that's my two cents. You know, just knowing what I know after all these years, I want, I want zero data retention wherever possible. Yeah.

Yeah. Unfortunately, data has value. And so it's, it's in direct tension with that reality. Yeah. Yeah. I wish we had that 10 minutes before the show that we could tell people about because it goes right back to that same company. Uh, anyway, um, Google is, uh, they're shuttering their cloud IOT services, which I thought was, um, not very interesting and kind of boring, but we talk about IOT all the time and the

fact that Google can't monetize their IOT backend by having a quote unquote IOT product. Because once you have cloud services, you, you technically still have IOT stuff, you know, it's like you spin up a server and you do all this stuff and just your devices, you know, connect to it. This was their, their, you know, bespoke IOT service.

And it's just not even not making enough money for them. So they're going to shut it down. I don't know. I don't, I don't know about that much about these enterprise grade IOT providers. Um, is there really much that they're doing that really you can't do with just a regular cloud service?

Is there something there that I'm missing? I'm not sure either. I suspect, you know, maybe there's some kind of console that makes these, the things that you need to do to set up IOT sorts of things to make it easier and streamline it and all that kind of stuff. To me, the bigger story here or the takeaway, I suppose, is that, uh, Google is notorious for losing interest in things and shutting them down.

So if I were someone who was building my IOT core infrastructure, I don't know that I would rely on Google for anything that's going to have to be long-term because they've, I mean, how many things have they pulled the rug out? You could have stopped that with anything.

Yeah. Yeah. You could have just said, I don't know if I trust Google with anything. Well, I don't think, I don't think Gmail's going anywhere anytime soon, right? Google's not going to lose interest in Gmail. Uh, Google drive is probably. I'm just talking about enterprise services. Google drive probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but, uh, any of these side things, you never know.

Well, I mean, look at, look at Amazon, like Amazon just shut down their, their photo service. I believe that was, you know, that was the big thing they shut down for personal photos. It's like, wait, what? You know, these, these major services that people become, you know, can start to rely on. They just, they just, you know, there's a rug pull.

It's not even with crypto. Right. So it happens all the time. That's why, like when I'm doing all my backup stuff with my whole optimize for my demise strategy that we talked about, I have multiple cloud providers for everything. Everything is backed up in three separate cloud services, completely, you know, separated from each other because if one goes down or if like after I'm dead and my family's trying to figure out where things are, like the credit card expires and one of them goes away, there's at least

two more, you know, trying to figure that stuff out. Well, and you can share all those credentials with the people you meet on Bumble. Exactly. Exactly. As people do, apparently. Yes. Yeah. Borscht 2468 is my password.

If you just want to go check me out. Yeah. I just, I don't try, trust no one, trust no one. This next one though, I had to put this in here because I put this in security because of just the title of the article. My manager caught me.

Remote Worker says that they got reprimanded for using a mouse jiggler app and sparking a debate over on Reddit. Again, again, here comes, here comes, here comes my brain again, sparking debate. Now, what's there to debate?

I've read through this. I'm very excited. Hang on. I'm going to, Brian, I'm going to let you go in a second. I'm going to let you speak, Brian. But since you are a manager now, I am very uniquely excited to hear what your take on the mouse jiggler debacle is.

Please, Brian, tell us. Tell us what you think as a manager. Well, first off, this company needs new managers because if you get to the point where an employee is using a mouse jiggler just to stop their computer from going into sleep mode or something like that, and you haven't noticed that there has been no performance from your employee anyways, you're a shitty manager.

I also disagree entirely with basically monitoring people and their computers anyways, so I would never expect any of this. But here's the kicker. Apparently, the mouse jiggler was the last straw since I had been missing stand-ups and having thunderstorms and power outages, all in quotes, since I started.

This is just a shitty employee. Well, that's what I was thinking, too. That's totally what I was thinking. So what's the debate? No, no, no. Well, there's a component of this is that this is on the overemployed subreddit. Yes. And overemployed are people who have taken on multiple job, multiple remote jobs at the same time.

Right. So, and there's a lot of folks. Yeah. Right. So particularly over the pandemic, IT folks and security folks, they have, some have discovered that they can easily work more than one job and get them done and profit.

And so that's what's going on here. Welcome to my world 20 years ago. Except I'm not entirely sure these people are getting any of the jobs done. It seems to me that this is more like I'll sign up as a remote worker, suck down paychecks until they notice I'm not doing anything. And then just get fired. That is a strategy for sure.

Yes. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. I know a guy who has a small business, probably about a dozen people or so. And as the pandemic came up, he was describing how clever he thought he was with all of the monitoring software that he had, that he could watch his employees on their webcams and see what they were doing and the jiggling of their mouses and making sure that they weren't taking bathroom breaks.

And in the next sentence, he was, well, no, but in the next sentence, he was lamenting how much turnover he experiences at his company. Gee, I wonder why. Yeah, this is. I wonder why. There's no upside to, to monitoring your employees. The only monitoring you should be doing is in terms of the actual production.

What work are they getting done? What, what do they produce? I don't care if you walk away from your computer for three hours. If at the end of the day, you have delivered what you were supposed to deliver end of story. So yeah, it's shitty managers and shitty employees. That's my take. But a lot of managers believe that even with their full-time employees, they own you for those hours and that world's not the way it works.

Yeah. Well, that's why, that's why everybody fucking hates managers. You know, it's like, it's like if you, if you could do a job, you would be doing a job, but you're just managing other people. Sorry, Brian, I, present company excluded. Everybody loves me.

But everybody hates managers because managers look like they don't fucking do anything. And I know that they do because now I am a manager and I fucking hate it. I'd rather be in production, but I'm hiring people to do the shit that I love to do, which sucks. And that's why managers get so ornery and shitty over the years because they get to see all these people getting paid for doing the thing that they love to do.

Sorry, that was a little tension. Just a little. Just a little. All right. What else? OK, so I put this one in here just because we occasionally dip our toes into the prepper pool. And I just thought it was a good wrap up idea. Now, this article says what you'll need to survive the California wildfires this summer.

Something Jason has to deal with on a regular basis. But it is just kind of a good list of things you might want to consider having around just in case things go south. That's all. But I did particularly like one of the lines in the story, whether I think they were just this is great.

It's just like camping, but involuntary. Way to sell it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. That's that's that's what they're saying in Ukraine right now. Right. Just add running for your life and you've got it nailed. Yeah, pretty much.

A couple of quick things here. I just put a link in. Apple put out a couple of emergency updates over the past couple of days for both Mac OS and iOS, also iPad OS. There are a couple of zero days that came out that were being actively exploited.

So if you are a Planet Macintosh user or on an iPhone or something like that, don't dilly dally do those updates. They are important ones. Yeah, they are. Yep. Did them all yesterday. A couple of fun things I put in here just because there I saw you guys earlier in the show.

We're talking about Better Call Saul, which I enjoyed, by the way. I found the series finale, while not particularly exciting, was satisfying. That's my take on that. Dude, so satisfying. They stuck the landing.

They totally stuck the landing. Right. That's all you hope for. So the prop store is having. I am so buying this one. Oh, my God. Signed mobile phone from Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan. Oh, my God. The prop store is having an auction, a pretty big auction of all sorts of stuff from Better Call Saul.

So there's a lot of good stuff in here. It doesn't seem to be very many deals. So get out your checkbook. But there's some fun stuff. You're not getting a deal on these. Yeah. No. But, okay, here's the other one. Six signed Saul Goodman business cards signed by Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, and Bob Odenkirk.

The starting bid is currently bidding at $2,500 with 28 bids in with 12 days to go. I think it says asking for $2,750, so I guess that's the reserve. Unfortunately, if anybody has listened to the beginning of this show, you will know that I no longer have any money because I paid an artist to make art for me instead of buying NFTs.

I am now regretting that decision because, God, this stuff looks cool. I just – as listeners to the show may know, my wife is a lawyer and I'm very tempted by the world's second best lawyer mug. You have to get that. You have to get that. Yeah.

I would love to get one if it had a bullet hole in it. I think that would be the – Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can add your own. Yeah. Yeah. Shifting Canada. No guns. If you're into the show, check it out. We'll have a link there in the show notes. And then last but not least – Holy – oh, wait, wait, wait.

There's one that we have to – we have to just – the audience, go out and buy this one. Better Call Saul Title Sequence Swing Machine. This is that machine that he put his legs in that was moving his legs back and forth at the beginning of the episode. That's currently only going for 500 bucks.

I think we could – we might be able to get that. Patreon.com slash GOG. Patreon.com slash GOG or GOG.show slash VPN. Come on. Go, go, go. And so finally, there is one classic video game that I turn to when I need to disconnect my brain and just let go for a little while and just have some nostalgic fun.

And that game is Galaga. I'm with you there. Oh, man. My game of choice. Yeah. It is the best of the Space Invaders genre games by far. It is a classic. It's just about perfect in every way for that particular genre.

So I've been playing it a lot. I've been getting better at it. There are lots of online emulators. You can play Galaga in your web browser. But I found this video online on YouTube by someone who is a million-point scorer on Galaga.

And it's just a really interesting, basic walkthrough of really useful tips for getting high scores in Galaga. It explains how it works, how the logic of the game works. And so if Galaga is your thing, I think by watching this video, you could improve your game quite a bit.

So I include that in there. Nice. Yeah. Galaga got all of the young Brian's quarters, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a good game. What was the other one? It wasn't Galaga. It was Galaxians before that. Before that.

But there was the one with the circular joystick. Was that Minesweeper? No. No, no, no. It was still a space-based shooter where you're shooting stuff. But basically, the joystick moved in a circle, and you kind of went around. Oh, is it the vector-based one?

No, no, no. Galaga was really awesome, and I loved it. But a friend of the show, Mike Vinagore, he had a gyrus in his basement, and we played that way more than the Galaga that he had on the other side of the basement. If you haven't played it, it's really hard to really kind of do from home because it had a circular joystick that was on a gimbal that you'd spin around type of thing.

Because all the action happened in a circle, and you could shoot from every angle. You could fly around kind of the bait ball of aliens. I'm trying it right now. Oh, look at that. Oh, yeah. Look. Oh, yeah. Huh. Yeah. Just telling you.

It's pretty good. Highly recommended. You can get MAME joysticks that do that. Okay. Yeah, I'm playing it with the arrow keys. Also, if you go ahead and play these in a browser, no need for a mouse jiggler when you're slacking off on work. That's right. That's right. Mouse jiggler, by the way, is my furry name.

Mouse jiggler. It's a good DJ name. All right, guys. Good week. Yeah. All right. Talk to you guys soon. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, nobody signed up. What the hell? People, come on. We're giving you free shit.

Sign up. Patreon.com slash GOG. Let's go. There you go. All right. Over at PayPal, we've got Natalie, Linda, Michelle, Tom, Edward, Nathaniel, Dag, Ramsey, Michelle, Andrew, and John. Thank you all so much. Thank you all very much. And over at Stripe, we've got Theodore and Sean.

So thank you very much. There's a couple more. I think we got Karen as well. Yep, we got Karen. So thanks for everybody at the tip jar and PayPal. But yeah, the Patreon, you get the shows early. If you want same price, we get the same cut. So it's no skin off our nose. But that's the only place that we can actually do the fun stuff for you.

So check that out. In reviews, we've got a five-star from Mr. Grumpy CA. So grumpy, they are inspiring me to start my own podcast. Been listening for a while. Easy to listen to. And I often agree with their views, but always interested to listen to what they have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Grumpy CA. And good luck with your new podcast. Thank you. And we also have a five-star from Matt the Mick. It's kind of more of a slap and a kiss. I look forward to Fridays now, thanks to these two grumpy fucktards. Jason is a stoned, laid-back Cali dude. I have to stop for one second.

It's called Cali sober. It's called Cali sober. This is the first and only time in the history of the universe that Jason has been called laid-back. Yep. I'm just going to say. It was quite funny with Brian the smug, Dueshi, Kanuki, Cunt, obviously the biggest twat waffle of them both.

They tell great computer stories as well as report tech news and make good references to computer history as well with each host bouncing off one another's humor and ideas all along at the same time doing it. What makes the show geeky, but in my opinion quite lame, is the sci-fi movie and show references discussed throughout the program.

However, I must add, I'm not a fan of sci-fi. If they took all the sci-fi stuff out, I'd definitely give it a raving six-star review. Although I do realize I musk, Elon, take the good with the bad. The show is very informative and I learn something new each and every week I tune in. Great show, you guys.

I think somebody had some wacky weedus before writing that review. Could be because I'm laid. Well, I think they kind of nailed it. I'm the laid-back guy now and I'm quite funny and you're the smug, douchey Kanuk. So there you go. And he called you a twat waffle. I can see why that was a slap and a...

Actually, he called us both twat waffles. I was just... Oh, we're both twat waffles? Twat waffle, yes. Just to clarify. Oh, yes, yes, yes. You are the biggest twat waffle, but we are both twat waffles. Yes, we are twat waffles. Okay. Zach wrote this one in. I've been wanting to dust off my old Kindle with some new books to read.

I've heard you both talk about the Babaverse series over the years and I remember the first few being good, but some of the newer ones not being worth it. Could you list off the books in the series you recommend reading? Many thanks from Zach. Read them all start to finish. They're all good. I don't care what anybody says. The last one was probably the weakest of all of them because...

I disagree. I thoroughly enjoyed the last one. Yeah. So... I said weakest of all of them. I didn't say it was bad. See, that's the point. Yes, they are all good. That's... Yeah. Yeah. And I think the one before it was weaker, but I'm just a twat waffle. What do I know?

I'm just a bigger twat waffle, but I know it all. Matt... Yeah. Matt from UPS wrote me about helping with my lost camera. I want to say thank you, Matt. It actually did show up. A couple days late, it was delivered to the wrong address. They were out of town and apparently somebody had opened it. But as far as I know, it was finally delivered.

And yeah, your guy just apparently has a shitty map. But I really appreciate the shout out or the reach out. And also... The reach around? The reach around. Yes. The UPS reach around. This one, this shout out goes to... A certain Star Wars character out of New Zealand for access to their greatest Plex library in history.

Brian, I'm going to tell you right now that you need to install Plex and I will tell you who to reach out to on Discord because our fan from New Zealand gave me the greatest fucking Plex library in the history of the world. It's got like 30,000 titles on it, organized by language, type.

It is a dream. It is... I just... I'm not saying the person's name because I don't want them to go to jail because this is the most illegal fucking thing I've ever seen. But we've talked about going to Sweden so often. He's just like, yeah, just give me your username.

Now we go to New Zealand. You don't have to go to Sweden anymore. I just go to New Zealand. Okay. And just a quick shout out to somebody who better not be ever listening to this. A happy sixth birthday to my kid. Birthday is actually on Monday and a big party tomorrow. I just got back from Costco where I bought 74 hot dogs and 84 hot dog buns.

Can we please dial those numbers in at some point, people? Seriously. May life continue to be Legos and hot dogs. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help keep the... To help keep us on the air and keep the lights on.

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. Just look for that share button in your player and just send it to somebody. Just please. Just tell them to download it. I don't care if they listen. Who cares? Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 566. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

You can also head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that 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 six stars. Unless we're twat waffles that week. Stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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