572: I Like It, Except When It Sucks

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I was reading this Time Magazine article called Elon Musk is Convinced He's the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him. Now, the interesting reason that this is a thing is because this is on time.com.

Am I losing my shit that he was person of the year in 2021 and now they're throwing him under the bus? Well, you know, people's opinions evolve and change, Jason. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I guess they did have Hitler as person of the year. So maybe...

Time has not been kind to that decision. No, it is not. And they stand by it and saying the person of the year is the person that impacted the world the most that year. Yeah. So we had Elon last year. I guess Putin's going to be this year? Well, you know, by that logic, Trump should have definitely been person of the year.

But that goes back to is he really a person or a Cheeto? No, he's a fucking Cheeto. Let's move on. I just thought it was funny. I mean, it is. Like, you know, people just don't know what to do about Elon. They just, what do we do with a problem like Elon?

We don't talk about Elon. We try not to. We definitely don't talk about Kanye. Well, the UK is warning TikTok that we might be finding them.

Oh. One would argue that you should just, I don't know, fine them. Yeah. Rather than warn them that we might fine you. Hmm. Yeah. So they're not just in trouble here in the US over claimed child privacy breaches. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office, or the ICO, has warned TikTok that it might face a 27 million pound fine after the watchdog determined the social network may have broken data protection laws by failing to protect kids' privacy between May 2018 and July 2020.

There's a lot of mites and maize in here. Well, you know, it's this new king, new prime minister. They don't want to come out of the gate too strong, I guess. Okay. I don't know what's going on over there. Come on, Charlie. Come on, Charlie. By all accounts, it's a total dumpster fire, so who the hell knows.

But they're saying that the company may have handled the data of children under 13. Well, first off, yes, they are handling the data of children under 13 without parental consent. They may have processed special category data, such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, or health, without a legal foundation and didn't offer some necessary information to users in a concise, transparent, and easily understood fashion.

Oh, there's another one that you left out that this article didn't cover that I saw in another article. What's that? Political affiliation was one of the things that is a special category. If you're under 13, do you really have? Yes, my child, my six-year-old has a political affiliation.

It is the ice cream party. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I like ice cream butts and farts. That is what I like. Well, guess what? He's going to have that his whole life, so he's done. That's it. Particularly if he's lactose intolerant, then they all go hand in hand.

Oh, gosh. He's got a 360 deal. Well, you know, his mom is a music lawyer, so she's well-breached in creating those. Yeah, definitely. TikTok is also in the news because, yes, they may have to pay a 28 million pound fine.

Oh, by the way, or 27 million pound fine. I think they're using the word may because as the pound drops, they may have to up that fine a little bit to actually make it worthwhile. It's worth about – it's about five U.S. dollars at the moment. Never has there been a better time to go to London, and I cannot get on a plane and go to London.

It's very infuriating. Oh, I know. What's his name? Scott Galloway. Totally lucked out. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so TikTok has broken records as the top-grossing app in Q3, which is interesting because app revenue is declining across the board. Because, you know, they're fucking apps.

Who cares anymore? I mean, when was the last time you spent money on an app? Is anybody really spending money on TikTok? It's ad-based revenue, correct? It's ad-based. See, that's the thing. There's a lot of just kind of shuffling of numbers here. This is kind of number soup. Yeah. Could be just in service of a headline because, you know, TechCrunch does like to, you know, post way too much during a day.

Yes. They are definitely like the – they are the buzzfeed of tech journalism. And the buzzfeed now has, you know, Pulitzers. And then we still have TechCrunch. Mike Arrington's legacy lives on. But so, yeah, they're doing good. Here's the deal. TikTok's doing good.

So they can afford that. It's the number one social media site in the world right now. Of course they are. They're fine. They're doing great. I don't know about you. I've deleted it from all of my devices. I don't go there. I told you I was staunchly non-TikTok forever.

What was it? A month ago I downloaded it and I had it on my phone for a week. And that very next show I was like I deleted it because I discovered that – You lost an entire week to TikTok. Yeah. It's just you – You turned it on and then you were just in your underwear going, next video, next video, next video.

That's the way it works. You turn it on. You're sitting on the crapper. Next thing you've got a prolapsed anus. I know. Look, I did a you joke. Dude, it's really close to that. You know, I wonder how many rectal doctors out there are big fans of the talk. Yeah. So I deleted it basically instantly.

I just – I realized I was getting no value on it, but it was insanely addictive. And even though I was getting zero value on it, I was just mindlessly scrolling. It's entertainment. You get zero value out of entertainment. Come on. For what it does, it does it incredibly, disgustingly, scarily well.

It keeps you engaged. Yes, but my point is I don't need what it does. No. I really do not need that in my life at all. So I deleted it immediately. The world doesn't need it. Nobody needs it. Yeah. But it's good at what it does. And in more TikTok news, which everybody wants to hear, I'm sure, they are trying to get a deal to let them operate in the United States without changing their ownership structure.

Are we back to Oracle's going to host the database? Weren't we talking about this five years ago? No, no. Because if it was five years ago, that means Trump has been gone for five years, which I know it has not been that long. So no, sadly.

Right. No. So what they're trying to do is they're just working around how they handle the data. Here's the deal. This is never going to work. The Justice Department is working on this, but the Treasury Department says, maybe not. And it's just bad.

Just delete the damn thing. Delete the damn thing. Seriously. Just ban it. Kick it out. Ban it like Bannon, baby. No TikTok in the US. You want to use it, get a VPN. Just get rid of it. Nobody needs it. Trust me. Productivity wise, nobody needs this. No, we got enough shit to do here.

All right. I was watching the news tonight and they're like, quiet quitting is turning into quiet fired. Damn right it is. I'm like, I don't think there is such a thing as quiet fired. It's just called get the fuck out if you're not going to do your job. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's been an issue more and more.

I've been talking to not only people in my own organization, but people I know that are in other businesses. And it's like, okay, we put up with this crap for a while, but we know you're not working when you're at home now. Not everybody, obviously. Some people work incredibly well from home.

But it's become, now that we're kind of mostly back, it's pretty fucking obvious who's quietly quit. Oh, totally. And they are getting noisily fired. Yeah, that's fine. That's totally fine. Do your fucking job. Or don't, but then quit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave or not.

But this whole thing where it's like, I am going to work as little as possible. I'm like, apparently the millennials are back. I think that's all I can say is the millennials are back. So it's like, oh no, you guys were doing so good. You have families and houses and all this stuff, but now you're just like, I don't want to work anymore.

It's hard. Yeah, no shit. It's hard. Life is hard. Yeah. Do your goddamn job. And it's not about going above and beyond. It's not about going above and beyond. It's about doing the fucking bare minimum to get the company to where it needs to be so they can pay you. 100%. I'm not asking for people to work 24 hours a day.

I'm not asking for people to go above and beyond. I'm asking for the fucking bare minimum here. Do what you're supposed to be doing within a set period of time that I don't even care to set for you. You set it, but just get it done. Exactly. Now that I actually pay people's salaries out of my own pocket, I am acutely aware of these things.

I pay very much attention to it. The tables have turned. Yeah, it has. Like I said, when I opened this place, I'm like, ah, shit, am I going to have to be a Republican now? No, you don't have to go that far. No, I don't. But I tell you what, do your fucking job and we're all good. So I've had to have a few conversations.

It's not good, but we're going to get there. We're going to get there. We're going to move on. Speaking of moving on, Google is working to make search more immersive. What does that mean? It means that they're going to do more visual crap in your search results. Am I going to go down an intertube to find the amazon.com website link I was looking for?

No, you have to go to the metaverse. Will I enter the metaverse before I can click on the Wikipedia link? All search results are NFTs that you now have to buy on the Ethereum blockchain to actually figure out where you're going to have dinner. That's what it is. You have to buy an NFT reservation at the local sushi place just so you can get some yellowtail.

That's what it's going to be. Look, I understand part of our shtick on this podcast is that we kind of crap on technology and we make fun of things and we point out, you know, we're the devil's advocate in the back corner going, yeah, did you think about this? And so obviously, you know, we have a certain bent toward it, but at some point, can anybody else besides us actually stand up and just state innovation for no reason is a fucking bullshit?

No, because they have shareholders, Brian. Oh, yes. We have to do this stuff for the shareholders. It's like for the children. That's right. Yes. Remember, shareholder value. Even though we covered on this show, all of these CEOs says it's not about shareholder value. It's about the advancement of the human species.

Well, I call bullshit on that. You were just it was just a press cycle. And you guys, you signed the document and did it. You know how I'd like Google's search results to become more immersive. I would like the first 10 pages not to be fucking paid for ads. No shit. That would be pretty immersive for me.

Now, the one cool feature that they did talk about, which I do like, is if you're looking at a picture, you can like a picture of a guy in a shirt, you can say, hey, where can I buy that shirt? OK, I like that. Oh, boy. I sense I sense money flying out of influencers accounts as we speak.

Oh, seriously. Because that's what that's that's basically what influencers are. They're like, look at what I'm wearing. Here's the link to buy it. If we don't need your fucking Instagram feed for that anymore. Yeah. If I can just screen cap your Insta post and then say, Google, sell me this shirt.

You have just been cut out of the loop, mofo. Yep. You watch MasterChef, right? I watch MasterChef Junior. Oh, you don't watch the regular MasterChef? No, I love watching the kids do it. It's great. To me, that is the best show on television. OK. I love that show. Yeah, it's phenomenal.

It's my happy place. Chef Arone, is he on that or just on the main MasterChef? They swap them around and I actually haven't watched like the last season or two. OK. Just because I never know when it's on anymore because Canada, so. OK, well, here's the deal. I watch every every season of MasterChef and MasterChef Junior.

But Chef Arone has been on the last season and a half and he's been wearing these awesome floral shirts and everybody says, oh, you would look good in those. And I'm like, they're really hard to find. Like the good ones. The ones he wears are six hundred dollars. Right. I'm not paying six hundred dollars. But if I could do a Google search and find it and find something similar, it would be easier.

For, yeah, fifty bucks. Well, here's the deal. I found a friend who is at least better at Amazon than I am and she found a shirt for thirty dollars for me and bought it for me and it's perfect. I'm like, OK, saved a few bucks there. But, you know, if this could be a thing, then it would be great. You know, I know Amazon has something similar with, oh, no, that's the, does this make my ass look fat camera?

Yeah. Yeah. If I could just, you know, grab a picture of a shirt, put it up there, have, do the image recognition to find it and I can buy it. Great. Yes. Influencers everywhere are crying in their overpriced avocado toast right now. Is that still a thing, avocado toast? Yes, it is.

OK. All right. Something that isn't a thing again, at least for now. And I have questions about this and I'm curious on your take. Apple Pay Later, which was going to be released alongside iOS 16. This is the, you know, you don't have the money, but we'll, we'll finance it for you and that jack the price up and charge you for it and all that sort of stuff.

Feature that plenty of people and millennial, well, actually, I guess more Gen Z financial advice is like, this is a great thing. And, you know, economists are like, this is a very, very bad thing. Look, I lived through the 90s in Rent-A-Center. Yeah. I know that this is catering to lower income people and it is going to take their money and it is a terrible thing.

I am so anti Pay Later schemes that it is right up there with NFTs with me. So go on. Well, I remember when they first announced it, you and I were very much like, I can't believe Apple is doing this. Yeah. This is, this goes against everything that Apple kind of like really stands for.

It's horrible idea. They better not do this. This is ridiculous. Well, it just kind of didn't appear. And now people are saying, oh, there's significant technical and engineering challenges and rolling out the service. This is Apple. They've got good bazillion dollars.

They've got a good bazillion engineers. Bullshit. They're having challenges. I think somebody is saying, no, maybe we shouldn't do this. Your thoughts? Yeah. They're saying technical and engineering setbacks, but yeah, I really do think that maybe cooler heads have prevailed somewhere.

That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking we're never going to see this. I think they're, they're rolling it back slowly. I really hope they do. I really hope they do because I hate Pay Later schemes because I mean, this is, it's going to implode. It's going to implode because they're going to find out, well, you know what?

Everybody's quiet quitting. Well, we're just going to quietly not pay that fucking bill and we're going to keep that big ass TV and you're not going to come get it. I look at things like this as really just, just terrible for lower income people who can't afford to buy something, but they can just click a button and get it.

It's like giving credit cards to everybody. Or I don't know what happened in 2008 when the entire economy collapsed because everybody was getting free houses. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see it as the same thing. I know I'm not an economist. I know I didn't go to school for finance, but I'm, I can pretty much have some little common fucking sense here and say, yeah, this is a bad idea.

A hundred percent. So we're great. Something interesting, at least for the US, I don't know what's going to happen here because this is always hard for me in Canada. We were actually thinking about getting a new car just because Toronto is an old city and the car that we have is too fucking big for downtown Toronto.

And, uh, you know, I, I've always kind of been like, after we got the last BMW, I'm like the next car I'm going to get is definitely going to be an EV, but there are no chargers around anywhere. And I think about, you know, my son's the age of where we're going to road trip a lot. There's no EV charging network anywhere.

And, you know, Musk was going to build one across the US, but that hasn't happened as quickly as one had hoped. But the department of transportation has approved EV charging plans for all 50 States now, as well as Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Although they might want to work on getting the power grid up in Puerto Rico first and maybe solving that issue before they, you know, fuck around with EV chargers, but Hey, whatever.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and by the way, shout out to our friends in Puerto Rico, Gabriel, I know what you're going through with your dad. Very sorry for you. My heart goes out to you and everybody down there that we, that are fans of the show. Yeah. I'm just, Oh God, it's terrible down there again. Again.

Jeez. Yeah, I know. And I particularly love this sentence because they use gaming terminology here. As a result of the DOT rubber stamping plans, the Biden administration has unlocked over $1.5 billion in funding for States EV charger projects. Hit two more mushrooms and what else are we going to unlock?

Yeah. It's not a fucking loot crate. Jesus. Come on. Oh yeah. So these funds are going to cover up to 80% of EV charger installation costs with States and private entities covering the remainder of the price. So, so, you know, this is a good, good move forward, except for the fact that we have failing power grids everywhere.

Electricity is already taxed left, right, and center. We're in a third world rolling blackout nation half the time. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. I'm, I'm going to stick with my Jeep right now. I know it's, you know, I'm burning dinosaurs, but I literally live a quarter mile from my office, so I'm not feeling too bad.

Yeah. I bet you're wishing you kept that mini though. Well, that's actually what we're going to buy. I knew it. I knew it. Yeah. We're going to sell the BMW and get another mini countryman here, but I was thinking about getting the hybrid one, but again, there's just not like, I would have to spend another 10 grand to basically outfit my garage with a, with a fast charger.

And I'm just like, oh, fuck it. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. Not the next car. The next, next car will be. Yeah. No, I wouldn't get any kind of plug in hybrid. It's just like, I mean, even our house is just like, it would cost a couple thousand dollars to, to retrofit that. And I'm like, that's a lot of gas. It's not worth it.

Like, and, and like, like you, like there's great public transport in the city here. We barely ever drive our car. Yeah. Like I fill up the tank and gas once every two months at this point. Oh, geez. Yeah. So who even cares then? Yeah. Yeah. Screw it. So, so that's, you know, I'm barely, I'm barely using a dinosaur leg at this point.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I think you're at the toe level. Yeah. You know, tops, you got dinosaur pinky syndrome. That's all. Yeah. You're good. You're good. So as you mentioned a little bit ago that we shit on technology a lot because we are the devil's advocates. I just want to talk about for a second how awesome technology is.

So we crashed a satellite into an asteroid to try and, to try and prevent another Bruce Willis movie about the end of the world, even though he is retired. We got, we got a story about him in a second, but the web telescope and the Hubble telescope have images of the impact and it is just crazy.

It is a very strange time to be alive when we're slamming spacecraft into asteroids and within a couple of days, we've got animated GIFs that we can meme out. Excuse me, Jason. That's animated GIFs? No, it's not. Unless you want to be the next motherfucker to land on an asteroid, it's a GIF.

No, it is cool as shit. Like, the thing is, like, my kid is super into space and all that and I knew what was going to happen and I was like, okay, okay, do I show him? Do I show him? Do we watch it live? And I'm glad we didn't because if you watch it live, you didn't see shit.

Right. But, you know, a day later, two days later, all of a sudden we have these amazing images of it and I've been showing it to him and it's just been like blown away. So, it's so cool. It is so cool. It is so cool. And then, you know, we have live NASA TV. They're like, hey, wait, the ISS, our space station.

Think about it. We always talk about it. It's like, oh, the ISS is up there, blah, blah, blah. But when you take a second to stand back and think, we have a space station. Yeah, I used to be able to see it before Musk put up all those fucking satellites. Oh, Jesus Christ. Don't even get me started. I was happy.

I was happy until you just mentioned that. Well, it's what we do. I'm just staying on brand. I know. I know. I know. Space internet is going to be a thing. Space is not going to be because he's going to pollute the sky so much with his stupid satellites that he can't get to Mars because he just imprisoned us for all of eternity.

So, thank you, Time Magazine. I'm with you. No, but the hurricane cover, my son also into extreme weather. So, like, he's having a banner week. Yeah. It's, yeah, I'm sure he's happier than a pig and shit. Yeah. Or a pepe pig and shit.

So, yeah, they had the live coverage of the ISS doing the hurricane flyover. And it was like, you know, 15 minutes. And it was fascinating to watch because we could watch live from a space station about how we're destroying the planet with all the technology we're using right now.

We can watch the Santas lose the election in real time because of this hurricane from the space station. It's awesome. Oh, I didn't even think about that angle. Oh, we've been a little saucy on the politics this one. I can just hear the unsubscribes. But you know what? I don't, I don't care.

Fuck off. You know what? I got a beer. I don't care. Yep. Yep. I got me a little potato vodka from Trader Joe's. I'm a happy man. I'm a happy man. But then, and you know, we've got all this amazing technology out there with, with space going on. What should we do with those animated GIFs?

Maybe we should turn them into fucking NFTs. NFTs. Yes. Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S. can now share NFTs and cross post between the apps. You talk about a company that is just- Bereft of ideas? Reaching.

Reaching. Reaching. Yeah. By the way, the, the, the, uh, Facebook's latest innovation is now peppering my feed with, uh, you may be interested in and like, not even like, just, oh my God, it's so bad. I fucking hate Facebook now.

Nobody I know updates anymore. It's such a waste of time. No, everybody's gone. Everybody quit. Yeah. Everybody I know quit. Like every now and again, I'll log in and see if there's any messages for me. And I look at my feed and I'm just like, it is, it, it's just nonsensical garbage. Yeah. That's a waste of time. Yeah.

I mean, that's really all it is. Screw the pooch guys. Bet the farm on meta, which is nothing. And now you're going after NFTs, which has been nothing for like six months now. What the hell's going on over there? Well, if that was bad enough, Brian, they've actually, you know how we talked about last episode, how they have like a research project where they released some new AI stuff, right?

Yeah. Well, they've got some new AI stuff. Okay. They've got a new, basically generator that you can put in some text and it will create a video for you. Oh. Yeah. Okay. And it's called, wait for it, wait for it, drum roll, please.

Mm-hmm. Make a video. Now, look, Microsoft had the monopoly for uninspired, uncreative software for decades. What?

You didn't like paint? It just goes to meta now. It just goes to meta. Period. Period. Period. That's it. I got nothing. I got nothing. It's done. Is it any good? Like, I can actually see how this would be like useful to people like, oh, I don't know us because we're being told that, you know, you got to do reels and all that sort of shit and you and I cannot be bothered.

Do these things make reels for me? Can they promote grumpy old geeks with a good reel just based on our show title? That would maybe be useful to me except for the fact that I don't really care and I can't be bothered to put out reels. I don't care. No, but here's the thing. Well, it's not even open to the public yet.

Oh, okay. It's a brand new announcement. Still working on the pants. Yeah. Yeah. Can you? Yeah, yeah. Can I make a video of, what was it, Hangouts or whatever with pants? That's all I want. Pants, please. Mark Zuckerberg in pants. Make me a video.

Mark Zuckerberg with a soul, it might choke on, but here we go. Oh, has anybody put that into stable diffusion yet? I don't know. Hmm. Zuckerberg soul. Somebody try that. Hmm. I will run that through. I don't know. I can't even remember the name of the one that I got.

We had so much fun last week. I was done with it. Like, you know, when we were doing the show notes, I kept sending you all this shit. I know. You kept sending them to me and I was like, I was into it at first and then, you know, I tapped out about, oh, a good hour before you did and you were still sending them to me. And I'm like. Well, because I was doing show notes and editing and I just like, as I was listening to the show, I was just putting in phrases from the show.

I am no longer interested in generated art. Yeah. I was just throwing it into Mid Journey and fucking around with it because I could listen to it. I'm like, I know where the next cut's going to be because I was there. You know? I'm like. I mean, you know what? I don't get it. I'm not into it. I think it's as tremendous a waste of time as like TikTok, basically.

But people love it. I mean, have you seen our Discord joins since we announced all that artwork would only be on Discord? Like thousands. Not thousands, but compared to thousands. You know, percentage wise. We know thousands of people don't listen to this show.

So people seem to like that crap. But it's fun. That's the problem with it. It's fun. And here's the other thing. I mean, it's like, I don't know how you have an NFT company right now because you could just, well, maybe that's the thing. You can just make the NFT art with that.

But who's going to buy it when you could just make it yourself? That's the first thing I said about this stuff is like, it's an NFT factory for people that are never going to buy anything and you're never going to make any money off of it. But it takes all the work out. No, it totally does. I could just mint this myself.

I was telling my friend Joey Rabier, who's my video guy now, my old roommate from San Francisco, I said that, I don't know if you've noticed in Photoshop now, under export, there is a line item in the menu baked into Photoshop that says, learn how to export an NFT.

And he just like threw his fucking Coke. It's like, what the fuck? Like, that's the, that is the correct answer. That is the correct answer.

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Media candy. I had no idea that James Earl Jones is actually 91. I mean, crazy old, but not that old. Like, that's crazy, but, uh, you know, good on him. He seems in good health, but, you know, you're 91 years old. You want to fucking retire.

He had a good Kessel run. But a good Kessel run. Look at you dropping the Star Wars jokes. Bittner would be proud. I know. Papa B. Anyways, you hit 91. You want to retire. And, uh, he does. He wants to say goodbye to voicing Darth Vader.

And he has actually already done it. Um, Disney has, uh, with the actor's consent, involved an AI program, uh, called Respeecher. It's a Ukrainian startup. So hopefully they're still around since they're the ones that have got Darth Vader's voice going. Uh, and, uh, yeah, they used him for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

So that wasn't actually James Earl Jones. It was a proprietary AI algorithm based on his voice. So Darth Vader can live on. I tell you what, they did a really good job. I didn't know. They sure as hell did. Yeah, this was the first I heard about that. So. Yep. So we've already seen it and heard it.

Pretty cool. All right. So we will, uh, we will not lose Darth Vader's voice no matter what happens with James Earl Jones. So Disney can continue to screw the legacy as much as possible. Well, hopefully he got a good deal like Bruce Willis did because, uh, and, uh, uh, apologies to whoever sent us this link because we couldn't find where the original was, but we both know somebody sent it to us and we can't find it.

Uh, actor Bruce Willis becomes the first celebrities to sell rights to deep fake firm. Hope it's a good one. Yeah. I hope, I hope it's a good firm and I hope he got a good deal. Cause most of the companies that I know doing deep fake stuff, I don't want to see that Bruce Willis die hardest. Basically Bruce Willis, he's 67.

He's got aphasia, which is really bad. I, I have aphasia. I actually, uh, I think I talked about this on the show. I tried to write HTML and that was one of the languages I have completely lost. I cannot see it anymore. I look at it. I mean, I'm already dyslexic, but when I look at it, I cannot understand it anymore.

Well, I suppose it's time that we come clean. Uh, everybody, the, we actually have not heard the real Jason DeFilippo for five episodes. Now we sold his rights to a deep fake firm and we've been using. We've been using a combination of re-speecher and a deep, deep porn, uh, to recreate Jason DeFilippo for the last few episodes.

You did not notice. If you're doing deep, deep porn, that would be deep throat. Come on. Okay. Come on. You left that one on the table. I did. Uh, well, I mean, it's good for him that he's actually, you know, he's basically trying to, uh, make as much money off of his legacy as he can for his family and himself.

So. Yeah. I'm fine with that. Dude, dude, take, do what you can. Absolutely. Do what you can. That's. Sure. I just felt bad. I didn't know he had aphasia. I thought he had like, you know, diabetes or something, but, uh. Oh, no, no. We talked about it on the show. Oh yeah.

You have aphasia. You don't remember. Well, that's the thing. I think we talked about it before I had the stroke. So yeah, I fucking forgot. Sorry. My brain, no worky. So the problem with this is that we're now going to get more horrible diehard films.

Uh, the only way that this could have been worked out is if Alan Rickman also would have sold his rights before he passed away. And then we could have gotten a good Hans Gruber, Bruce Willis rematch, but that's not ever going to happen now. There's always the estate. There's always, I mean, look, look how many, how many websites did you do for dead people?

Oh my God. I'm still doing websites for dead people or at least close to dead. So what's the difference? What's the difference? How long is it till the deep fakes come out that come to music? There's a new Jimi Hendrix album. What do you think? We'll talk off air about that.

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. It's real. God damn it. I can't talk about that yet. Okay. Well, next up. Oh, but what I can talk about is Netflix adaptation of the three body problem, which will arrive in 2023 at its event the other day.

Netflix shared an update on its highly anticipated. Adaptation of the three body problem. To who? I am curious who's highly anticipating this. I mean, we read the series. The first book was really good. Yes. It went rapidly downhill after that, but it's one of those books that I have.

Well, let me clarify. It did not go rapidly downhill. It went from, it went 1600 pages downhill after that, which was very, very slow to get through. Yeah. It was, the first book was great. The, the, the next two, not so much, but even the first book, I, I scratch my head going, how are they possibly going to present this?

I, I just don't see it. We saw the trailer though. It doesn't help that it's Game of Thrones showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Oh no. Really? Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. I had no idea that was them. I saw the original trailer from the Chinese version.

Remember that one? Yes, I do. It was basically a deep impact type of trailer. It was, you know, um, what is it? Michael Bay. It was very Michael Bay'd out. Yes. Which is not the book at all. No. The fact that you said it was Benioff and Weiss.

Yeah. I will not even bother watching the trailer on this. These guys, they can't do a goddamn thing. No, we're done. We're done. It's over. Now, no, to be fair, they can do a damn thing.

They just can't stick the damn landing. That's right. That's right. Uh, well, neither could the author of the original book. So we've got two people here who can't stick the landing. Yeah. It's a match made in three body heaven. Oh God. Yeah. This is going to be a dark streaming problem, not a dark forest problem.

Uh, but speaking of shit that nobody wants to see avatar, the way of the water, uh, teaser trailer landed. Here's the thing though. You're wrong. I don't know why in much the same way that I don't understand why everybody isn't deleting tech talk off their phone.

God damn. A lot of people want to see this fucking dribble. Didn't they just make another billion dollars or something last week when they re-released avatar in China? Yeah. So it's like a hundred back out in theaters in the U S and it's, it's, uh, people are more people are going to see that through their movie pass subscriptions than anything else.

You know, there's a show called Pocahontas from Disney that you can get on Disney plus for four 99 a month. It is the exact same story. Yeah. But it doesn't involve seven foot tall blue people. Yeah. No. Yeah. Sorry. I hated, I hated the first avatar.

I walked out of that movie going, my God is, I was laughing. I thought it was so bad. It's so bad. Jokes, jokes, jokes on us, Jason, best-selling, best-selling movie of all time. Well, we also, we also issued crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto and NFT.

So, um, yeah, I mean, we're right about a lot of things, but maybe we're really wrong about the things that the normies and the plebs want, I guess. So. No, I'll just stick to the fact that we're right and they're wrong. There's just a lot of wrong people in the world. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm fine with that.

I'm fine with that. I would just like their money, but damn. Well, we should make an avatar, an avatar, NFT through mid journey that we can sell on meta. Yeah. That's where we've got, that's really where we've gotten to. Don't worry. I've got the soundtrack covered.

It's going to be done by every great dead artist known to man. Okay. Yeah. We have to talk after this episode because I'm really fucking curious. Um, so Netflix is building its own game studio because you know, why not? Why the fuck not?

Um, I didn't, I, I, I know that their whole thing is renting your time. It's all about time. You give them, you give them some monies and they give you entertainment. I, this, look, I actually think this is a great move for them. It makes perfect sense. There's way more money in gaming than in TV and, and movies.

Way more. They used to rent games though, and it wasn't a viable business for them. Now they're going to give them away with a subscription, which I've got all of them installed on my phone. You know how many I've played out of like the eight games I've got one for five minutes.

That's it. Yeah. But I guess I'm, I'm, I'm not the target audience. I'm an old. You're not the target audience at all. Yeah. The target audience, honestly, that they're building this for is my kid who does not know no games yet. Yeah. Will soon. Yeah. That's, they are targeting my kid right now.

You know. Makes total sense. Look, I. Cause my kid already knows Netflix. He knows the interface. He can, he can zoom around it in on my iPad, like no tomorrow. You know, I, I am being kind of facetious about it, but Netflix has seen the future more than once.

So I'm cool with them giving it a shot. It's everybody is like down on Netflix right now, particularly, you know, with the stock price and everything like that. Everybody's like, Oh, Netflix. Oh, that's yesterday's news. Bullshit. These guys have pivoted. These guys have pivoted so many times already.

Yeah. And I think their move to gaming is incredibly smart. Yeah. I mean, I will never cancel my Netflix account. That is, that is like at the top of the list of the one thing that I will never cancel. Like everything else I will like, you know, flip through. We're going to talk about a Paramount plus in a second. And you know that I come and go on all of them.

I come and go on like I, my BET subscription is up at the end of the month. Cause I wanted to watch a Ms. Pat season two, you know, I come and go on those things, but Netflix is one of those ones where that's a staple. Yeah. For me, it's Disney. Like that's, that'll be the last to go. Well, you got kid.

I get it. Netflix, Netflix is way up there. Yeah. I mean, if I, if I had a kid shirt, Disney plus, but Netflix for me, it's like, there's always something, always something. And if you look at the, the money they spend on this shit, it's ridiculous. It's like, I can always find something there. So, uh, yeah, the game stuff.

Yeah. Go for it. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. Cops and doodads. Armchair Rambo wrote in a question about brave browser. It started, it's suddenly started showing me ads today. I've made four cents. Is this happening with anyone else?

I have $10 in my old wallet. So what the hell? My question, did brave just figure their shit out? And now suddenly I'm being served ads. Jason, I know you are using brave. I like it except when it sucks. I feel that way about just about everything. That's life, my man.

That is basically my life's motto. Yeah. Come on, Rambo. That, that is life right there. I love it except when it sucks. Duh. Ow. God, why didn't I read that before and find that funny? That's a fucking Sun Tzu right there.

Deep Thoughts by Armchair Rambo. Yeah. I don't see a more secure browser on the current landscape. Thanks for what you guys do, Rambo. Okay. Here's the deal. That, that ad shit, just get rid of it. It's done. Show title is I like it except when it sucks.

Well, I'm trying to paste it right now because it was such a great show title. There we go. I like it except when it sucks, which is, which is basically, that could be literally the name of our podcast. What's going on with my fucking tombstone? That is, actually, yep, that would be a good one.

I like it except when it sucks. Yes. Blowjob, same thing. All of it. Everything. The world. So, yes, you can turn that off. Get rid of that crap. That is the, you know, their, their bat. And you, you, you watch ads to get some bat.

Well, fuck the bat. Get rid of the bat. Turn it off. That, yeah, you get, you made four cents. The ads are intrusive. They're a pain in the ass. And I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I don't care what Brave says. Those advertisers are tracking your ass. So.

Yes, they are. A hundred percent. That's the way the entire ad model works right now. End of story. Yeah. So, I do have another Brave story, though. Brave browser is going to start blocking the annoying cookie consent banners. Well, Brave, I've already got a plugin that does that. So, you're a day late and a dollar fucking short. So, done there.

Thanks for being late to the party again, Brave. And turn off all that crypto crap, please. And I saw this, and I thought this was really interesting, except for one caveat, which I will add at the end. I saw Pitchfork noted that Apex Twin, one of my favorite music artists of all time, particularly his ambient work.

We talked about like programming, music for programming the other week. Just put on any of Apex Twin's ambient albums and you're set to go. And engineer David Griffiths have released Sample Brain, a free sample mashing app that turns audio files from your computer into sample blocks you can use for projects.

You can recreate a sample using tracks in your music library or craft a 303 riff from unexpected sounds, blah, blah, blah. The app is available and ready to use versions for Mac and Windows computers. You can build a Linux-friendly edition as well. You may need some technical know-how to use this app. It's not for rookie musicians.

This idea has been around for a long time. He said he first envisioned the app back in 2002. He'd hired an engineer to work on the software in 2014, but he didn't say much else about it until now. So, they basically just kind of, they didn't know how to stop building it.

So, they just stopped building it and released it. So, my point here being, just in time when nobody has music libraries on their computers anymore because everybody screams everything. Talk about a little bit late to the party. So, the lack of any kind of library on my computer anymore because I no longer have a library on my computer anymore.

This thing could run all day on my computer and it would find basically just grumpy old geeks audio files. That's the only thing that exists on my computer at this point. You would have some really good... Shocking remixes. Shocking. Shocking.

Shocking. What? Oh, now we're going back to like the original Dune. Shocking. That is. Oh, God. Brian, in the weirding way. That'll be the first track. Yes, my weirding module.

Yeah. I still have 150 gig of audio on my computer. So, I could probably use this. Well, I have my old drive and I'm curious. But like the thing is, I'm just old now. And like, if I would have had something like this back in, oh, I don't know, 2002, when you first came up with this idea, I would have fucking been as happy as a pig in the shit.

And I probably wouldn't have left the house for like eight months and crafted crazy albums. But, you know, you waited 18 years. So, I think Aphex Twin has come up with the same problem that I – well, I've come up with the same problem that he has with this studio. I am solving problems on a daily basis that I don't have because I think, well, what if somebody wants this?

Well, let me go spend – Has anybody asked for it yet? Well, let me go spend $5,000 to make sure if they do ask. Has anybody asked for it yet? No, nobody's asked for it. Then we're not building it yet. You need a project manager, Jason. I do. I do. I have – my entire team now knows that if I start to go down the line and just go that, they're like, doesn't exist.

We don't build it until somebody asks for it. That's exactly it. And is willing to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, everything in this room is almost basically around things that I – the mental model of, man, it would be cool if we did this here.

But nobody's going to pay me for it. But it would be cool if we did it here. So, I'm just – now I'm in search of the people that would think it would be cool if they could come here and do it because I can do it. So – and I think Apex Twin got caught in that loop in 2002 and just kept going, well, what if the app did this?

Well, what if the app did this? What if the app did this? Well, what if somebody wanted this? You know? I can see that loop. I can see that loop. 18 years later. Yes. Yes. My brain can see that. So, well, I'm glad he finally released – smacked him in the head and said, just fucking put it out.

Yeah. So, we got another cooking robot, Jason. Chipotle has a tortilla robot. Oh, I thought they had a salmonella robot. Well, they got that too. They're putting this one in a real robot or in a real restaurant, and I do hope they clean it occasionally so they don't have that issue again.

Yeah. This is good, and actually, it's right near where I grew up, so you might have to make a trip down there, Jason. You might have to go on a robot tour. Nope. Soon. The tortilla robot will soon be in Fountain Valley, California in October, and will start cooking tortilla chips.

Feedback from customers and workers will help the company decide on a national rollout. If I were the worker, I would be cooking the robot into tortilla chips. Because you will not have that job soon. Or I just poured some hot grease in the robot. Oopsies!

You know? Yeah. And it's something that does make a little bit more sense, but I mean, again, solving problems that don't exist. Artificial intelligence will influence some human cooks too. They're piloting a demand-based cooking system that uses AI to tell staff what and when to cook based on forecasts for how much they'll need.

That's smart. Now, that's fucking smart. It is. It is. But do we need an AI system to do that? Because I worked at Disneyland when I was 16, which was many, many, many, many, many, many, many moons ago. And guess what? They had those forecasts without AI.

They knew almost to the person how many people would be in the park every day ahead of time, well ahead of time. They knew how many people to staff for every day, weeks in advance because they had those forecasts without any AI model.

I used to work at McDonald's. It was my first job when I was 16. We knew when the dinner rush was. We knew when the lunch rush was. We knew how many patties we had to have on the grill by certain times of the day. You know why? We had a human that looked at the books and said, this is how many we sell. So let's do 10% over that, see if that works.

And then we check our wastage after that. And if the wastage is too great, then we dial it back. It's not a hard problem to solve. It's already a solved problem. Except you have to hire a human to do it. And they don't want to pay the humans. They would rather pay.

And they build the tortilla cooking robot. Well, no, they'd rather pay 300,000% for software developers to write a fucking program that is going to be probably half as useful as the human that could do it. You did it. You saw it. I saw it.

Yep. I didn't even think about that until you brought it up. I remember the charts. I was 16 years old busing tables on Main Street in Disneyland in Orange County. And there was a chart that lets you know exactly how many people would be in the park a month in advance. And your schedule was based on that.

Like, this is back in the day where I probably had, oh, I don't know, two drives in my computer. Both of them floppy. Here's the deal. When we were both 16, we both worked at restaurants. And the restaurants knew how to do this, period. So we don't need AI.

Nope. Now, one thing we do need is the OG app. It's called the OG app. Original gangster. I put the link in here because it's about Instagram. The IG, they had the OG for the IG. Now, I put a link in here to the TechCrunch article that says, the OG app promises you an ad-free Instagram feed.

And I did not even read the article because I read the title and I said, this will be dead in the water by the time the show airs. What's the next link I have? It's already gone. People remove the OG app from the app store for unauthorized access to Instagram servers. No shit. Duh.

Fucking duh. You shall not disturb the advertising feed. You shall not disturb the Zucks bucks. Period. Period. The links will be in the show notes. I'm not even going to fucking go into it because it's like every great app that works on APIs gets killed because – You're building on an API that can be changed.

Well, and shut off because if these companies gave the API developers a path to monetization where everybody could win, we would be in a much different world because we would have all the best Twitter apps in the world. We would have all the best Facebook and Instagram apps because these people build great software that they did, but they just don't want to work for you.

So anyway. But that would have been great software. Let's talk about bad software for a second. Star Trek's Lower Deck, The Badgy Directive. This is an iOS and Android game. I've seen bad games in my life. This is worse than Lower Deck Season 1 is all I got to say.

And if you've listened to the show before, you know what I'm saying. Have you tried it? No, I'm not a gamer anyways. Why would I try it when I didn't even know it existed until you sent me a text saying this is the worst piece of shit I've ever played in my life? Okay, we're done. Next. Amazon had their event. Okay.

Which one? I don't know if you knew, but they do hardware and stuff. I know something about that. I forgot to mute my – well, I will call it an Alexa because I use a different word for it and that won't make it go off right now. So, they've got new Alexas, Kindles, and Ring devices.

They also had a few surprises up their sleeve for Eero and some of its subsidiaries. So, we've got a Kindle with a stylus. Yay. Yep. There's some big innovation there. The Kindle Scribe features a 10.2-inch, 300 PPI front-lit display and a magnetic pen.

Ooh. They've updated Alexa by doing a new Alexa Studio that features a new spatial audio processor that Amazon claims allows the speaker to deliver better stereo sound with greater width, clarity, and presence. Okay. Mine work fine. They sound great. Yeah. My old ones. Echo Dot, the useless hockey puck.

Yeah, that thing was terrible. That does nothing. They gave it – they apparently gave it a larger driver, which I'm sure still sounds like crap. Oh, shit. Yeah. The adorable sibling, the Echo Dot with clock. Oh, the one with the camera in it. No camera anymore, I think. Now features a more capable display that can show information like current artist and song title.

Well, all I wanted is to show me the time and the weather, but it had a camera in it that did not want it. Yeah, no camera. Yeah. Remember the security drone and patrolling robot that they announced that nobody bought? Yeah. Yeah, they stopped going down that stupid path and they're just kind of doing regular things now.

Two new cameras from Ring, the Spotlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Plus. Won't buy either. Which include advanced bird's eye view motion detection technology. Okay. Exciting. Blink, their other home security company, because why have just one, is also releasing new products.

Today it announced the $100 wired floodlight camera. Have you ever tried to wire up a floodlight camera? It is a pain in the ass. You have to hire an electrician to do it or you will die. Period. Yes. Actually, I'm pretty good with electrical. I would probably only get maimed.

Okay. Well, you'd only lose a couple fingers. Yeah. Eero has some new announcements. But if you already own one of the company's mesh Wi-Fi devices, I guess you'll appreciate whatever. Because now the useless Echo Dot speakers will now double as Eero Wi-Fi extenders.

Nope. Don't care about that. Next. Yep. Don't care. I'm already taken care of. Yep. Add one to your existing network and you can add as much as 1,000 square feet of additional coverage. They are also preparing an internet backup feature that will automatically switch your router to an alternate connection during internet outages.

That's good. That's actually really good. That is actually kind of nice. Yeah. I like that. Mm-hmm. So, we'll see. Unfortunately, that's available in the dreaded air quote coming months. Probably when my lease is up in the place that I'm at that I could actually use it for. Great. Thanks.

Yeah. So, they've got also a more business-aimed thing. The Eero PoE6 draws power from an ethernet connection, making it easier to mount on a wall or ceiling, offering speeds of up to 1.5 GPS and a maximum of 2,000 square feet of coverage. It will be available this October for $300.

That would be great. That actually I would have used in my house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would normally get the – because that would actually be perfect for my studio here because I could actually put that in the middle and run ethernet up to it. But for $300, I could actually spend another $500 on an electrician to come in and actually run the cables for it.

So, that might be something I get. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, because the other problem with the Eero's – the Eero Pros with the Eero Pro 6s is that it is really hard to get like true gigabit over that stuff.

So, if this can do 1.5 – Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah, yeah. If this can do 1.5, it's actually useful. So, that – we've got one. We've got one. One thing to try. Just quickly through these other ones because we don't really give a crap. They have a no-contact sleep tracker called the Halo Rise.

Stupid. It's a low-energy sensor to detect movement and respiratory patterns to the person sleeping closest to it. If you get busy, it gets confused. Well, yeah, yeah. Seriously. Do you want an Amazon device staring at you while you sleep? Nope.

We didn't even want the is this my ass – is my ass fat camera. Do you want something that's literally staring at you while you sleep? No. Nope. I mean, even when I look – when I wake up and my dogs have their eyes open, I get creeped out. I'm like, God, don't look at me. Come on. Yeah.

They've refreshed their Fire TV Cube. I bought one of those when it first came out and they hoped that it would actually allow me to control my TV, change channels, and all that sort of stuff. That thing never worked. I'm sure the new one doesn't either because it's all too complicated. If you really want it to work with your TV, you will also just buy their TV because now they're doing TVs as well called the OmniLine.

What else? There's some update in the future for Echo Show 15s that will let you basically play more of their video, which I don't want. I want it to play music and tell me the weather and let me know when the Dodgers are playing, and that's about it. And I don't want my kid to be able to start asking it to play videos, which is what ends up happening.

So to hell with that. And there's a new Echo Auto that nobody will give a crap about. Yeah. I thought that was dead already. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, it's not dead yet, but now they're trying to get in – I think they're trying to get in with the auto manufacturers and have it baked in. We'll see.

Based on your recommendation a couple of weeks ago when you gave me that list of old school sci-fi titles, I got The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Yes. Love it. Absolutely love it.

Yeah, really good, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm picking up the rest of the series. Good series. It's hardcore, just like, you know, strong sci-fi. I love this book. We 100% agree on that. I also love the series. It's fantastic. A little bit of sad news in the world of sci-fi.

Matthew Mather rather unexpectedly passed away. Not that old. He was born in 69, so kind of closer to you. 52 years old. Died suddenly on September 13th. I heard it was a car accident, unfortunately. Oh, well, good. Okay. Okay, that actually is a relief to me.

When I hear people dying of natural causes is when I get upset. If he died in a car accident, yeah, that's tragic. But, whew, whew, dodged a bullet on that one. In addition to writing, he worked in cyber security and as a hardware and software developer and technology consultant. I do remember that was in his resume, basically, when I first found him.

He is a prime example of what I called shitter sci-fi. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. I thought he was your shitter guy. They were super easy reading. It was basically the same blueprint every time. You know, it was the strapping professor type who ends up having some sort of relationship with some great woman.

But the technical details were always spot on because, you know, cyber security and a hardware and software developer. He was really good with near future sci-fi stuff that was technically spot on and just fun kind of like action, quick shitter reads.

Perfect shitter sci-fi. So, sad to hear that he's passed. And now I have to like go through and see like, was he in the middle of a series? Because like, I don't remember anything about any of his books except that I liked him when I was reading them. It's kind of like Daniel Suarez. So, sorry to hear that. You know?

Very similar to Daniel Suarez. I think Daniel Suarez was probably a bit more of a, like, good sci-fi writer when he was hitting on all cylinders. First two books ever since then, shitter sci-fi. Yep. Come on. Exactly. You know, those first two books, Demon and Freedom Downtime, fantastic.

Those were great. But, yeah, the rest of them, even shitter sci-fi is giving it a little more credit. More shit than sci-fi. Exactly. Give him a little more credit than he's fucking worth on that one. But first two books, fantastic. So, should, okay, if I wanted to pick up a Matthew Mather book for just shits, literally shits and giggles, is there anyone that jumps out that you would like the most?

Ooh, I would go with Nomad. Was it a series or was it a standalone? Nomad actually goes into a series, but I think it, yeah, it was probably one of his best premises. Added to the queue. 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 the new Control Loop podcast, where they discuss ICS and OT. Hello, Dave. Well, hello. I have to admit I'm a little grumpy today. I'm looking forward to your grumpitude, sir. Is there anything that you can share with the audience that may explain your state of mind?

No, it's one of those things where it's not any one particular thing. It's just been a week that has kind of pecked away at me, and I think I am tired and exasperated, and I can't point to any one thing that, you know, ticked me off or put me over the edge.

But I'm just – I've had enough, and I'm ready for the weekend. So this is the perfect time to be recording this show. So away we go, damn it. Woo! Let's do it. That's right. That's right. Let's go get some jalapeno poppers and some cheap beer and call it a day.

There you go. Yeah, yeah. You can't drink all day if you don't start early. Exactly. Exactly. That has been my life philosophy. That's the way it goes. I may have an idea of why you're so grumpy. I have a new show coming up called Boot Up with Jason.

Yes. And it's late. It has not launched yet, but it will be launching on Monday because daily shows are hard. And if there's anybody that – Hold on one second. Hold on. Just give me one second. Okay.

I'm back. You were saying? Hopefully that released a little bit of the grump. Yeah. Oh. So it turns out, yeah, it's not just workflow changes. There are lifestyle changes that have to be made because you have to be there at the same time every day.

I mean – Yes. So the show that I'm doing, I have to record at 7 o'clock at night because it needs to come out in New York for the morning. Right. And I figured 7 o'clock is a good time instead of getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning to do it, which was originally my idea, by the way.

Get up early and do it. That was stupid. But it dawned on me that it dawned on me that, wait a minute, all of the news is done for the day basically by 6 o'clock West Coast time. So come to the office, you know, finish writing everything right across the day but then finish writing it up and then record it and publish it and go home and pet the dogs.

Yeah, that's still hard. Just getting that down because usually by 7 o'clock at night, I got my jammies on and I'm watching TV. So it has been a difficult transition. But hopefully it will be out on Monday and yeah.

Yeah. You know, obviously I've lived this life. It's a little easier on me now than it was when we were in the earlier stages of our startup mode when it was just a handful of us and everything was up to me. Yeah. When I was the talent and I was also the editor and published everything and all that kind of stuff, I have a lot more support than I used to and the ability to take a day off because I have – we actually have a pretty deep bench these days.

But I certainly know what you're talking about and to me, this is one of those things that illustrates that the folks who do this type of thing well make it look easy. But it's not, right?

Oh, so not easy. Yeah. Yeah. And we've seen lots of organizations come and go even within just our little corner of the world doing cybersecurity stuff. Every now and then somebody will spin up a cybersecurity daily and we wish them well and very few of them stick.

Yeah. Tell me when I can buy your microphones is pretty much what I ask new podcasters. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Let me know when the fire sale is coming. That's it. Right. Right. But to your point though, specifically, it does take away some of your lifestyle flexibility.

It's the old time to make the donuts thing, right? Yeah. From the old Dunkin' Donuts ad where you can't just say, you know what? I'll do this tomorrow. I want to go to the movies today or whatever. No, you are on a schedule and a daily publishing schedule that demands a lot from you and yeah, it's a real challenge.

So I – you have my empathy, my friend. You have my empathy. But I think also once you settle into the rhythm of it, you'll figure it out and you'll figure out ways that you can build in a little bit of flexibility and heaven forfend even take a day off from now and then or find a backup or something like that.

Or even just build up – well, build up enough goodwill with your audience that if you say, hey, everybody, we're not publishing tomorrow, that they go, oh, OK, that's cool. Of course, it's hard – now, the other part of this is that if you have advertisers, which I suspect is part of the ultimate goal here.

There you go. Yeah, that it's harder to say to them that we're going to take a day off and then they go, oh, cool. Yeah, OK, we'll still send you money. It just doesn't generally work that way. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. So that's the thing. It's like getting everything in order so it's ready to go so I don't miss those days because I did a bunch of test shows and then life happens and it's like, oh, I didn't account for this.

I didn't account for that. That's why I haven't published yet because I know that when I start, I need to stay on it. So I just – I thought that you would get a kick out of the fact that I'm starting up a daily tech news podcast. I do, I do, I do. But you know what? I think you're up for it. You've got the – you have the stick-to-itiveness to see something like this through or at least take it – you're not going to quit after six episodes like most people do.

Oh, god, no. Right? No, no, no. And I already even figured out like – because the studio is still only a quarter of a mile from my house but it's still a quarter of a mile that I have to get in the car and drive. So I set up a little external home recording studio so I can still record at home with the same quality just in case I have a sick dog like I did this week.

That was one of the reasons that we were on – I couldn't get it out because I had a sick dog and if there's a sick dog, you drop everything and you take care of the dog. That's right. Yeah. That's right. So I set up a whole recording studio at the house again even though – I'm in a $100,000 studio right now and I – Right, right.

I have a microphone on a stick at home but – Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I keep trying to get out and they keep pulling me back in. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, no, I mean – because the impetus is that I read 4,500 headlines a week for this show and we use like eight.

So it's like I'm just tired of wasting effort and the competition out there for general tech news shows for daily stuff is abysmal as far as I can tell. So I'm going to throw my hat in the ring. Why the hell not? Yeah, I had a friend a couple of years back who is – her career had been as an editor of a regional newspaper back in the heyday of that when that was before all the bad things we've seen happen to those sorts of things.

So she was really – the wave when – it was a weekly newspaper that was over 100 pages and she had hundreds of reporters and photographers and all that kind of stuff. And a couple of years ago, she and I were having lunch and she said, you know, I think the future is not so much for the editors, which was the job she did.

She said, I think it's for the aggregators because people value their time and they want their news filtered through someone they trust. And to me, that's one of the big value propositions you're presenting here with your boot-up show is that with your background and your knowledge and the fan base you already have, people are going to be able to say, yeah, that's a filter.

I want to get my news through. And so I think you're going to – I think you're on to something here. I hope so. I hope so. And the other thing is, yeah, most shows just find one source and read it verbatim, which drives me crazy because if I'm listening to that show, I'm like, I've already read that article.

And the best ones is when they say – they reference the image in the article. It's great. It's like scroll up or whatever. I'm just like, did you not take the time or even want to retake it and edit it? No. Why not? And those shows are getting 75,000 downloads an episode.

I'm like, oh, my God. Well, that's how we started Cyber Wire. It was originally just going to be me reading the daily news because they had already been doing the email newsletter for a few years before I joined up. And so the original idea was I was just going to read that and that would be it.

So it would just be a different way to consume it and that didn't last long because – but we saw the ways – all the ways that that doesn't work, which is what you just described. But then we also started to see all the other opportunities of doing interviews and just making it its own thing and that's led us to where we are today.

Yeah, which is a juggernaut. You are the guys. I've actually worn your T-shirt to the gym and people like to stop me and say, hey, I love those shows. Oh, that's nice. That's great. Yep. No, it's been quite a ride and we're still going.

You're still going. Every, every day. Every day. All right. Well, you know, this is the security segment so we should talk about Star Wars next. Yes, absolutely. So I have not caught up as much as I would like to because we've had a sick family member and we – the deal is we watch these shows together.

But I did watch the first episode of Andor and I enjoyed it very much. I know you guys are a couple more episodes in than I was. So I have to say I was left scratching my head a little bit that Brian would have said he was bored by this show because to me there was a good amount of action.

You know, there was all kinds of stuff going on in the world building. There were some funny moments. So maybe episode two is a real snooze fest. But so far, just with the one that I've seen so far, it felt like Star Wars.

I thought the characters were interesting. The situations were interesting. So I'm certainly going to continue watching. Well, good. Yeah. I mean I love the first episode. The second episode was more character building, which is great. I love character development. You know, they kind of leave that out in TV shows nowadays.

So it's a nice refresher. And then by episode three, it's full on action and kicking off. And then episode four slows down a bit. But it's still awesome. I absolutely love this show. I think it is one of the best ones. I, you know, I'm a fan.

I like it better than Boba Fett personally at this point. Okay. So. Yeah. I saw someone mention this week that evidently this show has now officially made sex canon within the Star Wars universe. Okay. Hmm. Yes. So I don't know if there's some lovers or someone comes out of a room putting their boots on or something, you know, the way they used to do it in Star Trek.

But I, and then someone countered and said that, no, no, that that had already happened in the, uh, the hotel that, uh, Disney has down in Florida, the Star Wars hotel, the galaxy star cruiser. Yeah. But I don't know. Again, I'm, I'm, I'm behind. So I don't know. Actually, it's the episode that you saw.

If you remember the first scenes of the show take place in a brothel, I believe that's what they're talking about. Okay. Sure. Cause, uh, the rest of the show makes sense. There ain't no hooking up the rest of the show. So that would be the only thing I could think of. Yeah. If that's the case, then I think it's fair to say that there was plenty of subtext in Jabba's palace in return of the Jedi to say that, you know, Boba Fett wasn't walking around with those dancers and just, uh, you know, going out to tea.

I don't think they were, there was, there was some canoodling going on. So definitely, definitely. Well, definitely stick with it, man. It's really good. It is really good. At least in my humble opinion, as the, as the least Star Warsy guy on the show. Mm-hmm. I just, I did want to mention also that, uh, I have just started, and again, in continuing my pattern of being far behind everyone else, I just started watching The Boys, uh, with my son, Jack, and, uh, I'm liking it very much.

Is this one you've watched? How old is Jack? Jack is a sophomore in high school. Oh, boy. Let me tell you, there, yeah, I know, I know, I know. No, we've already had some, there's already been some, now Jack is a very old soul and he's a very mature, uh, young lad.

And I'm generally, his mom and I are both generally pretty loose when it comes to, uh, what we allow him to watch. Very few restrictions. Um, part of that is because we're, we're hip to the reality that every young person now is walking around with access to all the world's information, including all the world's pornography in their pocket.

So, you know, it's a different, we're not, we're not keeping any secrets from our kids, folks, you know? Yeah. Uh, so, but yeah, we were, we were watching, uh, the show and, and in the first season, there's a scene where one of the superheroes, um, kills her landlord in a very graphic way.

And, uh, that was fun to watch with my teenage son, let me tell you. Yeah, yeah. It's only going to get, uh, more uncomfortable as the show goes. I'll look forward to that. He's already seen the whole thing. Oh, yeah. So, okay, well then never mind. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he, yeah, that, that, that horse has left the barn. So it's me. Got it. And he's very much enjoying me experience it as we go. He's probably enjoying his old man squirming too. Because, you know, why not? Why, why wouldn't he? Totally. But, uh, but I like it. I think it's an interesting concept and I think they're handling it, uh, overall pretty well.

So, uh, yeah. Enjoying that one. All the way through. I really enjoyed it. There were some, there are some scenes that are just too gratuitously just cringy and violent that I couldn't take. So I fast forwarded a couple of those in season three. Um, but all in all, it is definitely a very interesting show and I love it.

I love it. I loved it. I really loved how they left season three because we're going into season four, uh, is going to be the final season. So. Okay. Yeah. Cause I mean, it's based on a comic book and, uh, I guess, uh, well, I guess that doesn't matter anymore. Just look at game of Thrones. They just make it up as they go along anyway.

Yeah. I, it's just an interesting idea that, you know, the, just, I, I, I never really thought about it, but it makes total sense to me that all of your superheroes would have deep mental health issues just cause they're super here. I mean, to live in a world where you have all these capabilities that other people don't, that's a fascinating thing to explore.

So I'm enjoying it. Good, good. It is, it is excellent. And I do also recommend a She-Hulk attorney at law. Yeah. I'm a, I'm one episode into that as well. Oh, so good. It is so good. So good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so let's do a little quick wrap up here, uh, just because we have to.

So it looks like Cloudflare is going to start launching eSIMs to start protecting, uh, cell phones from like, you know, the, basically the bare metal level, which is a pretty good idea. Yeah. What I don't, I can't claim that I have a clear understanding of what's going on under the hood here.

Do you? What I, what I believe they're trying to do, because it is a little bit, uh, confusing because they've got a couple of things coming out, but with the eSIM, I believe they're basically going to be tracking all of the data from, you know, the, the base, uh, uh, transmission level instead of like going into a VPN and, and out from that, it's going to be tracking everything that happens at the lowest level that they can get.

So it's under a VPN level. And, uh, I believe that that is going to be more secure because, you know, Cloudflare is pretty good at this kind of thing. They've been doing it for a long time. Yeah. Um, so this is just kind of like a, an under the sheets level. And they're going to also start doing things with carriers as well to be able to have, you know, tracking across the phone.

So the, the biggest thing is it's going to stop, uh, SIM attacks. So, you know, that's the biggest issue. So you can't do, you can't do a SIM swap attack like you can right now. Like I can call AT&T, pretend to be you, have them send me a new SIM card, pop it in my phone. And then, then now I'm you, you know, and then I can use your two factor and all that.

Yeah. That brings me to my next question, which is, you know, I just got an iPhone 14, which has an eSIM. It doesn't have a SIM card. So is, is this the same eSIM that we're talking about here? Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how it works myself because I haven't gotten one yet.

You know how it works with the carriers, but it would still be interesting if I have an, another iPhone 14 that is eSIM capable and I send AT, like I call up AT&T, I send them my, uh, was it IMEI number, you know, my identifier for my phone and have them, you know, issue me a new eSIM.

Does that work? You know, since this stuff is pretty new, I haven't dug into the real mechanics of it yet. I'm sure we'll get letters, but, uh, please. Well, one of our listeners I know, uh, who I follow on Twitter also got an iPhone 14 and, and he has, um, installed multiple SIMs in his phone.

So evidently the iPhones, I believe they can, they can store six, but two can be active at a time. Yeah. Which is great if you want to have a work phone and a home phone, you know, you to co-mingle the two. I suppose that's a, uh, obvious use case there or international travel.

So you have your, your US eSIM and then you have your, you know, your UK eSIM or you're just your Europe eSIM, which would be really cool. Yeah. You know, I wish I still traveled. I would go check it out. But as this stuff, as this stuff progresses, I think we'll get, get a better understanding of it.

But it's interesting that Cloudflare has jumped into this, like, you know, out of the gate. So it'll be a couple of months till it's out, but, um, it's part of their whole zero trust platform that they're working on. Right. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah. Good for them. Pretty awesome. So just a couple of quick things here that, that I threw into the rundown.

Um, the folks over at Skeptoid ran an article in the past week or so, uh, called how your smartphone is listening to you. And I put this in here for the sake of completeness, since it is something that we have touched on repeatedly.

Ad nauseum. Right. The horse is well and truly dead. Yes. As, and I will express my grumpiness that, uh, the, the headline here is how your smartphone is listening to you. And then the article is how your smartphone is not listening to you.

Right. So it's, it's the, it's the obvious clickbait of getting people to read the article. But I will say that I think this is a good explainer. If, if, if this comes up and people say, oh, my phone's listening to you can send this to them.

Oh, good. Uh, because it, it really does lay it all out and it explains the technical and you know, what happens when you, that you don't have to search for something. It could be someone in the same room as you or, you know, all these things that we've talked about over and over and over again. But, uh, it's interesting to me that this old chestnut keeps popping up.

Um, and I thought I would include it as much because the headline annoys me as anything else, but interesting article. Yeah. No, we started, we started to get, uh, advertisements in the house about, uh, radiation therapy because my little brother is a, um, medical physicist.

My dad came to visit me and after he left, we started to get all of the ads for it. So it knew that he was, you know, he was adjacent to him and then he was in proximity to me for a while and my roommate. So both my roommate and I started to get ads for what my brother does for a living because my dad came to visit.

Wow. Isn't that crazy? There you go. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. It really is. Uh, yeah. Uh, and then finally, uh, there's an article here. I, I, I'm not sure if you guys covered this already. This one's, uh, from a week or so ago. Uh, this is the folks over at Petapixel.

Um, and this is an individual who is searching public cameras. So your public security cameras, your, your webcams that you can, uh, get feeds of to find where Instagram photos are being taken as they are taken.

So for example, you have an Instagram influencer who takes a picture of themselves. I don't know. Let's do something obvious like the Eiffel Tower, right? Well, there you, you know where the Eiffel Tower is, but this person will, uh, use some automation.

They say that they're using some AI who knows, um, that will find the public feed cameras to show you basically from the security camera. So imagine the, the high wide shot of the influencer getting their picture taken for the pictures that they post on Instagram at the exact same moment from publicly available feeds.

And I think this is fascinating, chilling, interesting, but it really is. It's another example of the panopticon in which we live. Yeah. I saw this. We didn't, we didn't actually cover it. It kind of came in, in between cycles.

So we did, we, we left it out, but, uh, yeah, um, no, I'm glad you brought it up because it is creepy as hell, but not unexpected. No. Yeah. I remember, I think I talked, I may have talked about it here. I remember a couple of years ago, there was, uh, there was actually a shooting at, uh, our local mall and I saw a presentation from local law enforcement and they went through just all of the publicly available cameras that they were able to use to track the progress of the

shooter from the moment that they left their house in the morning to when they visited the ATM, when they got breakfast at McDonald's, when they entered the mall, you know, it was just camera after camera with timestamps, just showing the movement of this person that law enforcement was very easily able to gather and then string together to make their case.

Um, you know, this is along those lines. And, uh, I just think about sometimes as I'm going about my business, the number of times that we're all on camera every day now. And there really isn't any easy way to escape. I suppose you could wear a disguise. No, it's, and you know, we have this in the neighborhood.

People get their houses broken into all the times. They have the video of it, but it's like the level of crime has to, you know, be raised at this point to find, you know, the, the, uh, wherewithal for law enforcement to actually get off their butts and actually do something. We have all the footage now of everybody breaking the law, but it's getting somebody to do something about it.

That's the problem. Yeah. I remember when I was a wee lad, I was probably 10 years old or so. And, uh, I had a moment, uh, where I lost a little bit of my innocence because my bicycle was stolen. And I expected that when we called the police that there was going to be a hard target search and, you know, like they were going to go door to door and they were going to find my bicycle.

And they were like, uh, no, we'll, we'll, we'll take a report. And if it shows up, you know, we'll let you know, do you have the serial number? You know, basically if, if it gets dropped on our laps, we may call you otherwise, you know, that's, and that's the way it is these days. And I get it, you know, the law enforcement has lots to do, but, uh, it's a shame.

Yeah. Here in LA, they've just upped the amount that, uh, that, uh, basically a misdemeanor is. It's like, okay, you can still up to a thousand dollars and we're not going to, we're not going to bother with you over, over maybe it's like 5,000 now. I forget. They, they raised the bar so they wouldn't have to actually keep going after people.

Cause if somebody now gets their phone stolen, you know, that's almost grand theft because they're so expensive. Oh yeah. You know, so they had to, they had to raise that number so they wouldn't have to like be going after every single person that had something stolen. Wow. One world.

All right. That's it for this week. Well, that's what I have. I hope you're, I hope you're feeling a little less grumpy. I am actually. Thank you very much. It was fun to come on and vent a little bit. Uh, I miss Brian, of course. Hopefully he'll join us next week and we'll do it again.

Yes, sir. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we have crickets again. Actually, we, we have worse than crickets. We have a bleeding, sucking, vacuous hole of people leaving. That makes me sad.

It does make me sad because all the allegations were unfounded. Yeah. Not a word. Yeah. Patreon's still solid and it's, it's been great for us people. Yeah. Yeah. really, you just, uh, uh, yeah. Patreon screwed the pooch on their own company. Here's the, here's the deal in the future.

We fucked ourselves because we are the ones that reported on the Patreon allegations. We're going to keep that shit on discord on the future and you guys can figure it out on your own because we're not going to mention if anybody's child porn anymore. No, no, because you know what, you know what I lost this month?

Uh, my car payment. So thank you. Thank you very much for everybody that left Patreon. What do we got over at PayPal? I'm just going to go cry. Humphrey, Oliver, Charlie, Simon, and Matt. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much. Over at Stripe, we've got Daryl, Ashley, Adam, Nick, and Anne. There you go.

And we got a new five-star review to help heal the whole, the Patreon-shaped hole in my heart. Uh, Chris, who gave us five stars, love these grumpy old geeks. I don't like Star Wars, Star Trek, sci-fi novels, but I do love this show. It is the one show that I check my downloads hourly for on release day.

That must be infuriating because Jason's all over the map. I'm so sorry about that. I've been in IT since the days of Punched Cards. These guys keep me up to date on the latest industry activity and a lot of stuff I never knew I wanted to know. Keep on grumping. Chris, just follow us on Twitter or, well, not Facebook because you'll never see a goddamn thing.

Just Twitter. Or Instagram or Discord because we post, we always post as soon as it comes out. So you'll know then. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been trying to get everybody out as fast as possible, but you know, life happens. I do have ailments.

And now, now I have to go get that extra job because everybody left Patreon and literally I just lost my car payment this month. So thanks everybody. You might have to downsize from your Jeep to a Yugo. No, I love my Jeep. I love my Jeep.

And it's cheaper than your BMW Evo or even your, your little mini, but. Yeah, it will be. My little, my little mini is going to be exceedingly expensive. Yeah, those minis are expensive and, but I got to say that it, that had more, uh, carrying capacity than my roommate's, uh, Hummer H3.

That's why, that's why you can, you can fit a lot in those minis. I like to call them my maxi pad. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's wrong. That's very wrong. That's, uh, beer number two. Sad news, uh, to report at the end of this, uh, it's not our fault because I don't think we've ever discussed him, but Coolio was found dead at age 59.

I know, that was so sad, so sad, and that we still don't have any cause of death, but, yeah, yeah. Not that I was a Coolio fan or anything, but, uh, those, those benchmarks from our youth are starting to pass, which is very sad. No, I thought he was a talented musician.

And the only way I found out about, I found out about it was because Weird Al posted about it. I'm like, yeah. That is actually one of my favorite Weird Al, uh, covers that he ever did. Oh, it's fantastic. The game, yeah. Amish Paradise was unbelievably funny.

Yeah. Yeah. Bummer. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help keep us on the, okay, please visit gog.show slash donate and Patreon is still fine.

It's fine. We get the same amount of money as if you went to PayPal, but you get extra stuff. So please come back, come back because yeah, it hurts. I mean, we are on the edge of the precipice for doing this show anyway, so we need you.

Come back. Ah, 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 572. 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 and talk about why you hate Patreon.

But don't do that. Just sign up and give us a few bucks, please. 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 five stars.

Stay grumpy.

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