633: Brie Break

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. 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. You okay, Brian? I might take a nap in the middle of the show. Okay. My son, his tonsils are massive.

They grew. Okay. And apparently, we spoke to a few people about this. Apparently, tonsils can grow at a different rate than the rest of your body. His tonsils grew faster than, I guess, whatever you'd call that system, your mouth. Okay. Um, the side effect of having large tonsils is, um, snoring.

And, uh, little did one know that not only, um, seven-year-olds can not only snore cutely, but they can also snore like a 350-pound drunk man. Okay. And, uh, he's been snoring so loud he wakes himself up, comes into our room.

Oh, no. And then proceeds to wake me up. Uh, I think I had, like, two hours of sleep last night because then, you know, I'm scrambling. I'm moving around. I'm trying to go to sleep on the couch. Oh, it's just been a nightmare. And, uh, you know, luckily the doctor's like, oh, don't worry.

This will, this will resolve itself in about six months. Six to, yeah, you're saying six to 12 years. It'll be fine. I'm like, great. So that's our living hell right now. How are you? I, I would like to propose a technological solution for you. Yes. Get some noise-canceling headphones and strap them onto his head so he can't wake himself up with his own noise.

I don't know if he could sleep with them on, but it's worth a shot. Well, you can try. I'm going to have to try something. How about that? Like, I'm, yeah, I got to try something because it's, it's only been a few days and I'm already losing my mind. Fun times. Yeah. Well, I got some follow-up for us today. Going back to the old, the, I think the longest running joke that we've had on the show, which was Ello.

Oh, yes. The social network that launched in 2014. The social network that couldn't. Yes. The little social network that couldn't. Andy Bio has a nice write-up called The Quiet Death of Ello's Big Dreams. It's a long read, but it does kind of go through the entirety of Ello's history and why even do the failure.

I read through it. I read through it. And, you know, again, we were right. And I got all the Schadens and the Freuds reading it. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It could have just been, Ello, told you so. Yeah. I mean, you know, noble goals, but did not follow them.

Yeah. Noble goals did not a social network make. No. No. And in news that is surprising no one, George Carlin's estate is now suing the creators of that AI-generated comedy special. It wasn't particularly special in order to have much comedy. But isn't that special?

Yes. Carlin's estate is anticipating that the lawsuit could be met with a First Amendment defense, but feels that the special has no comedic or creative value absent its self-proclaimed connection with George Carlin. And that the AI-generated impersonation fails to satirize him as a performer or offer an independent critique of society.

Fair. Yep. Yep. 100% on all points. Yeah. They are going to win that one, I think. Yeah. So, yeah. Yep. They had no big surprise there. And I tried again, and it is so bad. I mean, that is one of those things. I wish I would have downloaded it just so I had a copy of it for future generations to say, see, this is what we were doing when AI first came around, and it was wrong.

Look into Jason's special collection. There's the George Carlin AI special and the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Don't tell anyone. I'm the last human being to have it. Peter Thiel's knocking on my door. Great. Big thank you to Jeremy for picking up my scanner that I mentioned two weeks ago.

It took me a while to box it up, but it should be in his lovely hands yesterday. So, it found a new home. Should be or was. I haven't checked the tracking number, and I haven't gotten a complaint yet, so I'm guessing it showed up. And sorry to listener Ben, who tried to bribe me to undercut Jeremy and throw him under the bus.

So, I just couldn't do it to another show fan, Ben. I'm sorry. I hope you understand. Threw him under the bus. In public. I didn't say Ben who. Shapiro? No, no.

And big thanks to Mike D from Wheaton, who long ago sent me those magnets on a stick. And I swore, I'm going to send you some stickers, and he gave me his address on a little three-by-five card that was with the magnets, which had fallen behind the dresser that I hadn't moved until last week where I found it.

And I'm like, whoo-hoo! Ironically, if it had been written on metal, you could have picked it up with the stick. Exactly! If it had sent me one of Kevin Mitnick's business cards, I would have been able to plink. There it is. So, but your stickers are on the way, Mike. If you're still even listening, after all these years, he's probably sitting in a bunker somewhere going, those assholes never sent me my stickers.

I'm never listening to those guys again. As he uses his stick to grab the can of beans. Yeah. Oh, man. And I did talk about Amex and those damn fraudulent Facebook advertising charges. Mm-hmm. Well, here's the deal. One or two of them, they're not going to do anything.

When you get 25 of them stacked up in a row, then they start to listen. Yes. So, it just takes time, I guess. So, they finally canceled my card because I'm like, I never have, nor will I ever. Advertise on Facebook and they go, sir, we understand 100%. Here's a new card.

Bye. In the news. Well, Christmas keeps on rolling, Jason. It's still pink slip season. eBay is laying off 9% of its workforce.

Wow. That's quite a lot. Over 1,000 rolls are being reduced, as they say. They're being auctioned off to the lowest bidder. I like how they did this one. U.S. employees were asked to work from home on January 24th, and those affected will be notified shortly.

They didn't even want anybody in the office. Yeah. They have to put all their computers that the people were using on eBay. Yeah. The company also plans to scale back the number of contractors they're using over the coming months. And so, they're blaming this again, like many people have, on having hired too many people in recent years.

A load of crap. While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business, President and CEO Jamie Ioni said in the memo. Yeah. I think this is just a lot of COVID contraction again. Yeah. I think so. Everybody over hired.

There's a lot going on. Yeah. I mean, when the carrot was in charge, we had lots of free money floating around. And a bit of the mask effect. All that money's put away. Yeah. I got that. Look, he decimated X and it's still running. Mm-hmm. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of. More layoffs here as well.

Alphabet is cutting dozens of jobs at its ex-moonshot lab. So, this is just days after Alphabet and Google CEO Sudar Pichai warned workers of more downsizing this year. He's laying off dozens of employees, mainly support staff at the moonshot lab. They're restructuring it to make it easier to spin out projects as independent startups with backing from outside investors.

So, I guess a lot of the internal admins going away and good luck is what they're saying. Find your own money. Good luck. Yeah. Go to the other X. Not that you can't stay here at this X. Shame on Engadget for misspelling Sudar Pichai's name.

I know. I just realized I just, you know, I'm a sheeple and I just read it. And that's, of course, incorrect. You know, well, after the Berenstain, Berenstain, Bear kerfuffle, I just never know what universe we're in exactly. What universe did I wake up in today? Did I wake up in the Sudar Pichai verse or the Sundar Pichai verse?

Yeah. I mean, with two hours sleep, I mean, it could be Bill Mates that ran Microsoft for all I know. No shit. No shit. Speaking of Microsoft, they're laying off 1,900 employees from Activision Blizzard, which, yeah, buy the company for $69 billion and start cutting heads.

Yeah. And if anybody's surprised about that, well, yeah, whatever. That's just, that's, you know, standard playbook because there's going to be duplication of roles, as they say. They also killed one of the new games that was coming out of Blizzard, which is kind of sad because Blizzard hasn't released anything new and exciting for ages.

So, yeah, 8% of the staff done. Fatality. That's quite a few. And, of course, that's one day after their $3 trillion valuation. So, making money is not going to mean your job is safe either. Oh, God, no. They're like, we made, we're worth $3 trillion.

We want to be worth $4. Hit the road. And speaking of companies that are doing really well but still laying off people, TikTok is reportedly laying off workers to cut costs as well. A spokesperson from the short-form video platform Quibi, I mean, sorry, TikTok, told NPR that the company laid off around 60 employees, mostly from its sales and advertising division across its various U.S. offices like Los Angeles, New York, and Austin, and abroad.

These are part of a routine reorganization, but NPR said the company decided to let them go to cut costs. That's only 60 people. That's nothing. Don't even wake me up for less than 1,000. Come on. Well, there's an entire company that had to lay off everybody.

All right, now we're cooking. Now we're cooking. Doomed crypto firm Terraform Labs files for bankruptcy in the U.S. The company that wiped out over $40 billion from the crypto market with the collapse of its Terra, U.S. dollar, and Luna stablecoins, not very stable, has finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday.

The firm's estimated assets and liabilities are both in the range of $100 million to $500 million, quite the range, with the estimated number of creditors being somewhere between 100 and 199. Now, co-founder and former CEO Duquan is listed as the majority shareholder at 92% with an address registered in Singapore, where the company is incorporated.

He is in jail. Oh, whoops. Yes. Following the arrest of Kwon and his associate in Montenegro for traveling with forged passports last March, which gives you great, great comfort and knowledge that this is an up-and-up company that did everything across the board evenly.

Kwon is currently still in jail until his extradition to the U.S., likely by mid-March, where he will face security fraud charges. He's also wanted in his home country, South Korea, for similar charges, which reportedly led to him, his family, and some key Terraform Labs personnel fleeing to Singapore between April and May 2022.

Shortly before Interpol placed him on the red notice list in September of that year... You're fucked if you get a red notice. He denied that he was on the run, but the eventual discovery of his fake passports would suggest otherwise. Oh, God. I would just like to point out in the headline, doomed crypto firm.

I think that's redundant. Just crypto firm would have been fine. Or even criminals. They're all criminals. Has anybody not faced charges at this point? Is there a single upstanding member of the crypto community? Well, the Winklevii twins are still walking free, for now. For now.

For now. I saw this over on 404, and just the headline made me go, what? It's called Wikimedia's Pornographers. Yeah. So, apparently, there's a whole bunch of porn on Wikipedia, if you know where to look.

But the funny part is, is that the editors and, you know, all of the pedantic mofos that make Wikipedia run, they still quibble over the same stupid stuff. Like, no, that file name of the blowjob is just not right. You should name it to this, this, this.

It's just reading the excerpts of their, or the transcripts of their chats back and forth. They're just, they're way funnier than the actual homemade porn that is, you know, sprinkled around Wikipedia. Gotta love a pedantic pervert. Exactly. Exactly.

That's your show title for you. Speaking of pedantic perverts, also on 404 Media, they're on a roll here. There's another article called, How to Upload Porn to Instagram. So, Instagram is known for being the hardest place to get even a nipple through.

Yes. Except, here's the trick. Here's the trick. All you have to do is put a, here, I'll just run through this. If you make a video, all you need to do is put a three-minute countdown clock in front of the video, which apparently their content scrubbers get sleepy at two minutes and 59 seconds.

They move on at that point. They do. Like most people on Pornhub. Two minutes and 59 seconds is all you ever need. Then they just, then the video starts up and there's one video that had 2.1 million views at the time the article was written. So, apparently it's not that big of a secret.

Okay. I just feel like there's so many places one can go with less effort, but okay. Much less effort. Yep. You know, if you were on Pornhub, you'd already be done by now. It should be, should be there. You'd be home by now.

Exactly. Okay. Well, France has fined Amazon $35 million over intrusive employee surveillance or what Amazon calls normal behavior in the U.S. Our business model. Yeah, business model. Exactly. So, good for them for that. France's data privacy watchdog organization, the CNIL, has filed, has fined a 32 million pound or 35 million in U.S. dollars fine over the company's use of an overly intrusive employee

surveillance system that requires them basically to clock in and clock out constantly. They're tracking them on an almost minute-by-minute basis, which they've just said, that's one step too far. Well, yeah, this is France. Come on. Yeah. They have barcode scans.

They call out employees for periods of downtime as low as one minute, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, they basically just said that the accuracy of the system is illegal. Not so much the system itself, but it's too damn accurate, Jason. Well, when are you going to get your brie break in? Because you're definitely still not going to get a pee break.

No. No. Brie break. I love that idea. I could use a brie break. I could definitely use a brie break. This is a very, very disturbing story. A 60-year-old – let's see if I can speak this more. I need a brie break. A 61-year-old man is suing Macy's and the parent company of Sunglass Hut over the store's alleged use of facial recognition.

So, this is a guy who lived in California and was going back and forth to Texas. And the thing is, there was this robbery at a Sunglass Hut. Somebody stole a bunch of stuff. They pulled some video, used some facial recognition on it.

Turns out it wasn't the guy. He was arrested and then eventually let go because he proved that he was in Sacramento at the time of the robbery. But the rub here is, no pun intended, he was gang raped when he was in prison. Oh, lovely. And, yeah. So, now he's suing Macy's and the parent company for $10 million.

So, I hope he wins. Very much so. Very, very much so. Me too. Yeah. That's just – that's, you know, one of the unintended consequences of facial recognition is gang rape. So, let's put that on the list.

Okay. Noted. Yes. Meta's oversight board has raised concerns because that's all they can fucking do. That's all they can fucking do. Exactly. Over automated moderation while overturning a decision by the company to leave a Holocaust denial post on Instagram.

They've overturned a decision by the company that is non-binding that the company doesn't have to follow. So, they didn't really fucking overturn it, did they? Mm-mm. No, they didn't. The post in question depicts Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants and reported to include true facts about the Holocaust. However, the claims are either blatantly untrue or misrepresented historical facts, the oversight board said.

I mean, the only reason I put this story in here is because I just wanted to point out again that the Meta's oversight board is a fucking paper tiger that does shit. Yep. Yep. I would like to be on that board. They're going around and around about this one stupid post that keeps popping up and they can't get anything done and no wonder it's a shithole.

Mm-hmm. There you go. Big surprise. Mm-hmm. Big surprise. I think that's by design. I think that we discussed that at the very beginning. Oh, yeah. The whole thing's by design. Yeah. It's all by design. Yep. Now, some good news. Six deaf children were given some gene therapy straight into their ears, ear holes, and now they can listen to podcasts.

I mean, they can hear it again. Welcome, new listeners. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome, young bucks. Yep. So, it's basically upped their range of hearing because before they couldn't hear anything under 95 decibels. Now, it's around 45 decibels.

But here's the thing. It's gene therapy that they basically wrapped in a virus to get it into the system, which then counteracted some gene deficiencies that they already had, which is a really cool new therapy. That is awesome. It is so cool.

Like, can I get that glow-in-the-dark CRISPR recipe again? Because I would like to glow-in-the-dark, please. That is amazing. That's fantastic to hear. I love this stuff. I mean, I think science and medicine in the next 10 years is just going to blow our minds. Yeah. Yeah. So, we can stick around long enough to reap the benefits.

Keep saving now because it's going to be expensive, I'm sure. Yes, it is going to be expensive in the U.S. There's no doubt about that. No doubt about that. But something else that's expensive in the U.S. is tires for your EV, which apparently you have to replace really often.

I did not know this. This is definitely filing. It's going in the con column in my next car is an EV. Yeah, definitely. This comes from Florida. And they're saying that anybody with an EV down there has to change their tires between 8,000 to 10,000 miles.

That is not insignificant. No, it's not. There's another guy who has a Mercedes who has to change his about 7,000 miles. It's about $1,500 for a set. Look, from what I remember from insurance when I was in the U.S. and getting auto insurance, you could get a special rate if you drove less than 12,000 miles a year, which I did because I didn't go very far in my car.

It was a very short commute for my wife's work. I worked from home. We went to my mom's house in Orange County and that was about it. So I drove less than 12,000 miles a year and that was very, very, very little compared to most Americans and even most Californians for sure. I'd have to buy new tires every year if I had them.

Every year. Yeah. And I barely drove. Bullshit. Yeah. They're saying it's because of the added weight of the batteries and the power, the extra power that EVs have. Wow, there is a model for a tire that's built specifically for EVs right now.

There is a business model. They're working on it. Oh, yeah. They're working on it. So, yeah, it's very interesting. And by the way, I used to have that. There's an even lower one now. I think it's under 5,000 miles a year. I drive about 900 miles a year.

And so I get this super duper rate, which is great because I can't drive anywhere. My commute is 0.3 miles to my office in Bath. That's it. All right. So it's just – And Whole Foods is on the way, so you're done. I actually park in my lot and walk to Whole Foods because it's safer to actually do it that way than it is to drive in the Whole Foods parking lot in the morning.

Yeah. But it's nice though. I am equidistant depending on my budget constraints. To the left of me, I've got Trader Joe's. To the right of me, I have Whole Foods and I am smack dab in the center. So I just look in my wallet and say, oh, I do not have Whole Foods money today.

I'll be going to Trader Joe's. It's great.

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Media Candy. Brian, I watched the new Kevin Hart vehicle, Lyft, on Netflix. Is it a documentary about his shoes? His shoes. So he makes them taller? That would have been a hell of a lot more interesting. This movie is for people.

It would have been the greatest movie ever made if you've never, ever seen another movie. It was so fucking bad. You've never seen a movie before. May we suggest? Lyft, starring Kevin Hart. It was so horrible.

I mean, we made it about, we actually made it two-thirds of the way through because we're just like, it can't be this bad. That we're missing something. No, it just can't be. Where's the turn? Where's the twist? Where's the rub? Where's the other shoe? Anything? No, no. It's just really that bad.

It was, and it's not one of those, it's not even a popcorn movie. It's not one of those ones where you can just sit back, like a Mission Impossible movie there where you at least have to like kind of figure something out, you know, or whatever. It's like, this is a heist movie that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I mean, I'm serious. I just, I'm gobsmacked by how horrible this fucking movie was. So skip that one. Okay. The next, though, is Death and Other Details. It's a new series on Hulu starring Mandy Patinkin.

Oh, I love him. Love, love, love. It kind of throws you off. He has a British accent in this, which is very strange. But it is great. It is absolutely great. It's kind of like White Lotus meets, what is it?

The one with Daniel Craig where he's the detective. Oh, yeah. Knives Out. Knives Out. Yeah. And Glass Onion. Yeah, Glass Onion. Yeah, yeah. That series. It's that meets White Lotus. Okay. Phenomenal so far. Phenomenal. It's only four episodes in.

It's a, you know, it's a slow release. Right. So it's a perfect time. It's a weekend. Go get caught up. I love it. Absolutely love it. All right. My wife and I finished watching The Brother's Son last night. There's eight episodes averaging about an hour.

Fantastic. It was a wonderful series. We finished it. My wife and I looked at each other and went, that was stunningly great. Fantastic. Ended perfectly. No need for any more. Sat. The credits were running.

We went, we were cleaning up like the wine glasses and the cheese that we were having while we're watching it. Oh, no. I know. Credits end. There's a scene. Yep. Leaving it open for a sequel. Of course. And then we looked at each other and went, all right.

Okay. I'm in. I'm in. Sure. We're in. Why not? It was that good. I highly recommend it. Jason, I think you would love it. So you should definitely watch this when you get a chance. I watched the first 20 minutes of the first episode and I'm definitely in. I can't wait. I figured this is right up your alley.

And it's got it all. It's got the violence and the action and the humor. And then there's the whole, all the cultural stuff, which is phenomenal. It's just great. Yeah. No, I'm definitely looking forward to getting back into it. I took a side trip, though. Old show called Ultraviolet.

It starred Jack Davenport and Idris Elba and Philip Quast. Never heard of Philip Quast. Philip Quast played Javert in the original run of Les Mis in Australia. He was fantastic. Yeah, I flew over there for that. Yeah, me too. Several times. He's my favorite Javert.

That's why I know that. Okay. Which most people don't have. I guess it's probably true. That's not a very popular listicle on BuzzFeed, I got to say. No, but I bet Bittner has one. Of all the people, Bittner probably has one.

Anyway, it's a vampire show. Okay. It's a very strange vampire show. But it's got like Jack Davenport and Idris Elba before they were anybody, really. It's one of those BBC series, so it's six-parter, very short. So you're telling me Philip Quast was the big star of the show?

At that point, I think he was. Actually, I think he was. Okay. He was the draw. But I think, actually, I think Jack Davenport was, what was the sitcom that they did that he was in that we loved?

Oh, God. Blinking. Blinking on it. We used to talk about it all the time on the show. Coupling. Oh, okay. Yeah, I did enjoy Coupling. Coupling. Yeah. But Ultrafight, it's good. It's on freebie, so there's a couple ads in there. But highly recommend it. It's a good, slow, fun vampire watch.

We have been doing this show for so long now that the TV shows that we talked about when we started the show are now like ancient history. I know. I know. It's kind of scary. Crazy. Speaking of ancient history returning, Jon Stewart is returning to The Daily Show as a host.

Only one day a week, though. I don't know how I feel about this. We'll see. Yeah. After his last run. After his last show. Yeah. So he's back after a year-long search for Trevor Noah's replacement, the longtime host and Noah predecessor, has agreed to return on Monday nights through the 2024 election.

So, yeah, he will be hosting only on Monday with the team of correspondents basically taking the seat for the rest of the week. I don't know who needed this more, Jon Stewart or Comedy Central, because they both needed it, because Jon Stewart obviously struck out pretty big over at Apple with his very depressing show, and, you know, this has been a mess trying to replace Trevor Noah for Comedy Central, and if they don't get some...

They needed this, otherwise the show was going to die, basically. Yeah, because there was the whole big kerfuffle with Hasan Minhaj. Yep. Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because he was just a... Liar? Yeah, that's the word. That's the word. I was going to say exaggerator, but...

Exaggerator is fine for comedy, but then they're straight up lying, so... Yeah, so a little problem there, which is too bad, because I like him. Well, I liked him, though. Yeah, he seemed funny. I don't care if he's lying. It's comedy. He's telling a story, whatever. I know. I think it's a bit too... Yeah, too woke. I guess we're being old men here.

Yeah, we are. Anyway, ah, it's just some Nazi jokes. Fuck him. Let him through. Yeah. I guess we can put him on Star Trek Discovery. Whatever. So I'm looking forward to it, because, you know, we're up again for another... It's basically a rerun, so rerun a year, so why not have a rerun host?

Let's get him back. We always said we missed him during the Trump years, so we've got to get a second go. Yep. And I hope he keeps it light-ish. You know? Ish. Yeah. Don't go Apple on me. Please. Speaking of Apple, Apple just dropped a mysterious trailer for its latest sci-fi series, Constellation.

I don't know what's going on over there at Apple, but they are approving sci-fi left, right, and center, and I am here for it, even if it's shit. Well, you must be, because Foundation is shit, so... Foundation is shit, but Silo was fantastic, and some of the other ones are pretty good.

Like, not great, but good. Like, at least somebody's funding this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Monarch was okay. Yeah. I actually really... I enjoyed Monarch. I didn't need that many of the creatures, so it was fine for me. I liked it a lot. I finished that as well.

I forgot to even put that... It was so memorable, I forgot to put it in the show notes, but I did enjoy it. See? Okay. Well, you were asking if... What's-his-name was coming back from the first episode, John Goodman, and he did come back for a little bit at the end there, but you can... I mean, if you can't tell exactly...

If you can't write season two script from watching season one, you're an idiot. Look, we're also old enough now that we've seen all this stuff before. We can write almost any script for any of these shows at this point. Yeah. Yeah. My roommate hates me for that. Like, I watched three minutes of a mystery, and I'm like, oh, that person did it, and here's why.

And then she's like, no, that's stupid. And then as the show goes on, it's like, everything I just said unfolds. And she's like, fuck you, man. Shut up. I want to hear your theories. I watched the trailer for this. It looks really good. It's an astronaut played by Noomi Rapace, who I like a lot, returns to Earth.

Weird stuff starts to happen. And then it's going to be like mystery sci-fi. So it looks good. I'll give it a shot. Okay. Any Ape Has Killed Ape action in there? It sounds like the plot for Planet of the Apes. I didn't see any apes. It might be more ghosts. All right.

Or aliens hiding somehow. I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out. We'll find out. We'll also find out about Masters of the Air, which is finally launched. Taken forever for this one. I was, while we were getting ready to watch the last episode of The Brother's Son last night, I pulled out my phone because my wife was getting something.

And I opened up like Instagram or something like that. And I got the, I got an ad from Apple TV. It's like 11 minutes until the premiere of Masters of the Air. Like, okay, wow. Thanks. Yeah. Well, Band of Brothers fans are looking forward to this.

Yeah. Well, I was until I watched the trailer. Right. Then I'm not. I'm not really looking forward to it that much. What I am looking forward to is watching it on the 75-inch TV with my AirPods in. Right. I think that is going to be an experience.

That's going to be fantastic. I mean, I'm sure the production values are just going to be through the roof on it. I'm looking forward to watching it. Yeah, it's the story that I care about because the thing about Band of Brothers is it had everything because they had just come off making Saving Private Ryan. So they had all the skills to do that exact type of show.

I think this is just going to be a lot of CG and, you know, obviously going to be CG. They're not going to be flying out a bunch of, you know, flying out. They're not going to be blowing up planes. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Netflix, they want more money again. This is – they're getting to the tipping point now where it is going to be easier to pirate again.

Yeah. That's – they're right on that inflection point right now. Yeah. I mean, I think it's 80 percent they want more growth and they want to drive up their stock price. And I think it's 20 percent they're figuring out that the ad model doesn't really work very well. No, the ad model is working better than anything.

The ad model makes more per user than paid subscriptions do. Oh, well, what the hell are they doing then? That's why they're squeezing people out to use the ad models. They're cutting off the cheapest ad models coming up in Canada and the UK initially and they're going to start squeezing everybody else to higher paid ad models.

Right. Kind of like Amazon. So basically what we're going to end up with is fucking cable TV again with ads. Yeah, we're going to go straight back to we're paying for it and we're getting ads. Yep. This has all happened before. This will all happen again. Maybe we'll get a new reboot of Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, yeah. They're working on that too. Are they really? Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, it's in development apparently. Hopefully a new team. Hopefully an ending. Yeah, seriously. Hopefully a plan. Hopefully a real fucking plan this time.

Apps and doodads. Brian, one of my favorite apps has updated this week. And I am very, very happy. Screens has updated to version 5, which I think is – at first I thought, why? Screens worked so good as it was.

Why do you need to update it? Well, because the new version is that much better. It is actually really, really good. So I don't know if you've done – like dove into that one, but it's prettier. That's for sure. I just don't know if it's worth the effort because I really use it just to get into my mom's computer if something's wrong so that I would get into my mom's computer and upgrade her version and then whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. If you had the previous version, I think the upgrade cost was like $25.99 a year, which I think is 50% off. You can do a full buyout for $75 if you just want to own it flat out and not have to do a subscription if it's going to go for a couple years, which is what I did before.

But it turns out the time frame is about the same. You end up paying about the same. And it's an app that I use. I literally use it daily because I've got one, two, five machines that are always in contact and doing stuff on. You know what's been more valuable to me for fixing my mom's stuff is it's not her computer usually.

It's the internet. And because I set her up with Eero and I can control her Eero from my phone, I can reboot her Eero. That has solved 90% of the problems. Oh, that's good. Yeah. That's good. Look into that one. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's like my internet's not working.

I don't know what's wrong. Go into Eero, reboot. Okay, give it five minutes, mom. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I've got Eeros everywhere. So I should give that a shot. At least get some for my dad because I think that'd be the only place I ever need it. Actually, no, I have a brother for that.

He fixes all the internet problems. I don't need an Eero. Fuck it. You're fine. I'm fine. I do want to talk about one more set app app this week. One of my new favorites. It's called Paste. Have you ever seen this one? Nope. This is kind of a clipboard manager.

Okay. Everything that you copy basically goes into your paste bin with paste. And so you can retrieve anything. It's like, oh, I copied that and I just, oh, I copied over something. God, crap. What was I? So you just basically pull up the little panel. There's everything that you've ever copied.

So you can go back and pull it up and drag it back in. You can also set it to auto turn to plain text. Sounds to me like a poor man's password manager. Well, that might not be. Yeah, it might not be good for that. Great for that.

But it works for, it works across all the machines too. So you can sync across. So it's a really easy way instead of copying on one machine, pasting it in notepad, opening notepad on the other machine, just copy it on one, then open, paste on the other and boom, it's there. You know what?

Maybe it's just me, but this supposed ability to be able to copy something on your laptop and then be able to paste it on your iPhone never fucking works for me. Ever. Well, you have to have a certain set of skills turned on. I think I have all those skills turned on. I have gone into the documentation on this and it still never fucking works.

Oh, it works great for me. Great. Well, that's good for you. Well, then what you need to do is go get paste because there is an iOS part to it too. So you can get that with Setapp. If you get Setapp, you get paste on all your machines and the iOS version. I shouldn't have to pay for something I already supposedly have, Jason.

Well, you don't. I don't. Either way, this is part of the Setapp bundle. And I've been, like I said, every week I've been going through trying to find fun stuff. And this one actually is really handy because, like I said, it does sync with iCloud, which you've already got. So it's just you toggle it on and it's on all your machines.

So very fun stuff. There you go. Tesla is reportedly building a compact crossover codenamed Redwood. This is definitely something they need. I'm not surprised by this at all. So they need something kind of in the middle and cheaper for people to get behind it all.

Of course, now that we know how much it's going to cost you in tires, I'm still not so sure about this. No, no, no. Brian, the tires are made of Redwood. That's what they're going to do. It's called the Flintstone. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll see about this.

They haven't. We don't know when it's coming. We don't know what the exact price is going to be. Supposedly 2025. But this is Elon. So probably 2030 at this point with the way he works. But, yeah, good for them. It's what they need. The Apple car apparently still exists and could debut in 2028.

Okay. What they've done is I guess the internal plan was they wanted to be fully autonomous and they backed away from that. And now they're going to do like a car. Yes. They're going to do a fucking car, which is all we ever wanted in the first place. I didn't want an autonomous car.

I don't want an Apple car. Yeah. Why do you want an Apple? Nobody wants an Apple car. I think it'd be cool. We'll see. It's going to cost $400,000. Look, their ski goggles just cost five or four grand. For fuck's sake. You want an entire car?

Jesus. Oh, you know what the car is going to be? It's going to be the goggles with a bird scooter.

Oh, God. And no charging port. Hey, at least he won't have to pay for the tires. I need to take a break and kind of go back to something sci-fi-y that I've been enjoying and is somewhat familiar.

So I went back to the Peter Cowderan series. He's the author, if you remember, that has written 20 some odd books all about first contact. It's an interesting concept that he went with. And they're all, you know, different explorations of the different ways the first contact could take place. Most of them I've really enjoyed.

There's actually really only been one that I didn't like. This one was not the greatest. It's called The Artifact. You know, he's also exploring different styles, as you would if you've got this sort of thing. And this is the Indiana Jones action adventure hot girl with burly guy.

And they finally, you know, they're completely different people at first, but forced together in this extraordinary circumstances. They come to appreciate and fall in love kind of thing. Isn't that special? Yeah, the actual alien aspect of it wasn't so great. So not the best one, but still I like his writing.

I like the concept and I've liked most of the books, so I'm not going to hold this one against him. All right. I have an up and coming title that I wanted to talk about called Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. I'm a Cal Newport fan. Sometimes his podcast drives me nuts, but most of the time I find it very useful.

And I'm a big fan of deep work and deep thinking about work and long, long blocks of uninterrupted time, which are really hard to come by. I don't remember if it came from him, but it's certainly part of that world, the 90, 90 minute, 20 minute thing. No, that's not him.

Well, I mean, he's about blocking off long blocks of time, but 90, 20 sounds more like kind of like almost Pomodoro-ish, which is usually 45, 15, 45 on, 15 off. Right. But no, his stuff is a little more, a little deeper than that.

And, but if you pre-order now, you get a bunch of goodies, including like a half hour treatise on, like a kind of a warmup on what the book's going to be about. If you listen to his podcast, you already know basically what the book's going to be about. But my favorite book, I think that he ever wrote was So Good They Can't Ignore You, which is a fantastic book about just being, becoming a rock star.

Just get really fucking good at your job. And then- Hang on. Can we go back a second here? Yeah. If you pre-order the book, which means that you're going to get the book, you get a 30-minute short version of the book telling you what the book is going to be. Kind of. But it's got some other stuff in there.

That's ridiculous. No, it's actually really good. I watched it. It was pretty good. Okay. No, it's- You've already bought the book at that point. It's a sales pitch for the book that you're buying. No, it's extra stuff. It's extra stuff. Okay, okay, okay. No, it's, it's, it's, look, get it if you want, don't if you don't. I don't give a shit.

I got it because I'm, because I'm a fan. Okay. So, that's all. I'm just trying to pimp my boy Cal here, man. No, no, no. It's fine. I just found a curious extra. That's all. Busting my balls. I'm not busting yours. I'm busting his. Look, man, he's a computer science guy.

That's not hard. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with podcast super host Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast for all your cybersecurity news.

The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines have feelings too. Hi, Dave. Hello. How are you doing today? I'm doing okay.

I have a, I have something I want to rant about a little bit. By all means, the floor is yours. Hold on. Let me, let me delete all the security information. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how long this is going to go, but this, this is, this is observational and something I'm curious about.

So, you know, most of my professional career, I work, I was self-employed, had my own company, had my own little office and all that kind of stuff. Right. Sometimes, and there were years when I worked at home. But as of late, as you all know, with my employment here at the Cyber Wire, I work in an office building.

We, it's a, it's a four story office building. Um, here in a nice little suburban area, there's a, probably half a dozen of these four story office buildings around. So it's very nice. New, I'd say relatively upscale as these things go.

So, uh, there's this issue with the men's room that I'm furious about. And I'm wondering what you, you're all's take on it is. I have noticed, I have established, I have observed, I have tracked, I have recorded that for whatever reason, the men all throughout our building, no matter what floor they're on, come to our floor to use the men's room.

Now here's my guess. My guess is that because half of our floor is taken up by data tribe, which is the startup incubator that we're part of. The other half is a women's health clinic. So what I'm guessing is that folks on the other floors have figured out that our men's room has less traffic than some of the men's rooms on their floors.

And so I don't begrudge them that they want to come to use a men's room where there is less traffic and they can take their time and do all, you know, and take care of all of their, their restroom business. However, in doing this, they've made my restroom busier than it otherwise would be.

Now you have to go up to their floor. Exactly. So this, this makes me wonder, is this just a guy thing? Like do, do, because I think Joe Kerrigan was telling me that I was sharing this with him a while back and he was saying that one of the first things you do when you join a new organization or for him, like it's a campus, you know, at Johns Hopkins, is you figure out where you're going to go to poop, right?

Yes. Because it can't be too close to where, you know, that whole, you know, don't foul the nest and all that kind of thing. So, but I'm wondering, is this, is this a guy thing? Like do girls care about this the way men do? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I could certainly ask, but, and I was curious if you guys had any thoughts on my, am I being unreasonable here?

Uh, no, I, I think that, uh, you, you poop on the floor that you're on that that's, unless your, your, your company is multi-floor, in which case you have a bonanza of opportunity, uh, but it should be the, the, the ones assigned to your company is, is where, is where you poop.

Um, yeah. Adam Carolla, who I used to listen to, he used to do morning radio in Los Angeles. And this is before he became kind of a bright thing, Macca freakazoid, which he has now become, he's leaned into that pretty heavily, but he used to be pretty funny and pretty middle of the road.

Um, he had a poop theory, uh, especially when he started running his own business, he got really upset at all of his employees for coming to the office and pooping. He's like, you are an adult now. You should have a schedule with your poop. And if you cannot take care of your business and assert your schedule so that you poop before you come into work, uh, woe betide you, you are a poor example of a human being.

What are you doing? Pooping at work, sort out your shit, literally. Okay. So that, that's his take on this. So nobody should be pooping at work. Now, obviously, you know, you, the accidents will happen and you might've, you know, ate a bit spicier than normal the night before and you don't have much control over that.

So occasionally it will happen, but people who poop regularly at work, there might be something wrong. Well, you know, I actually thought about making us some signs that said, please poop on your own floor, but that doesn't sound right. That sounds completely wrong. That sounds completely wrong. Yeah. Yeah. You need to please poop on the toilets on your own floor.

I think you need to add that. So, right. So I've been trying to think of, is there, is there a way to make our restroom less attractive to other people? I've thought about, you know, chocolate sauce on the handle, put an out of order sign on the door, except for when I need to use it.

Right. Uh, I could do that. Uh, yeah, I didn't think about just fouling the whole place, making it, you're right. I put a lock on the door on one of the stalls, you know, just all that. Right. I put a very conspicuous, uh, security video camera looking down at one of the stalls, you know, just to, I've thought about many of these things, but, um, you know, I think is I don't want to be a jerk.

Uh, a sign that says we're water conscious. If it's yellow, let it mellow. That'll probably stop a lot of people from going in. Yeah. Or, or abandon hope all ye who enter dead men tell no tales. Right. Right. It's been a X number of days since we found a dead body in this restroom.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, and I have seen, um, it was a funny years ago, there was a funny gag somebody did where they got a, like a pair of, uh, like mannequin legs and, uh, and like clip them to the toilet seat. So from outside, it looked like there was a pair of feet there.

And then they put like an endless loop recording of just the most symphonic bodily sounds you could possibly imagine. It just played nonstop and it kept the bathroom cleared because everyone was either too embarrassed or didn't want to be there for the aftermath of whatever poor thing this person was suffering through.

That seems a bit elaborate, but, um, You know, it strikes me as, as we're talking about this, that, uh, when we were talking about shaving incessantly, I made a joke about soon, uh, showering and shitting and here we are. Here we are.

Yeah. Well, I don't even know if it's fair for this to be something that, that bothers me. And maybe this is just that I'm getting to be, you know, a grumpy old man. Uh, I don't know. I guess I need, you know what? I just need an executive washroom. I need an executive washroom.

Yes, you do. Right. You need your own. Yes. Oh, so let me add, let me, uh, just add a little wrinkle to this. So there are four floors on our building. The fourth floor is an executive washroom. They have a key pass, you know, little electronic keys. So only the executives of the company up there can use that washroom.

How silly to do that in a, in a building full of, uh, cyber security enthusiasts who could probably crack that code. You need to do just a little social engineering, Dave. That has crossed my mind as well. Uh, I could just hang out in there, you know, whenever they come in, just say, Hey, how's it going?

Oh, look, it's, it's, the code is P O O P. Okay. Right. Right. Uh, anyway, it's a silly thing, but it does, it does annoy me. So I'm curious if any of our listeners have, have dealt with this or have come up with an effective way, you know, the more subversive, the better.

Of, uh, you know, solving this particular problem or even if it's even a problem elsewhere. I, I don't know. I don't, again, I don't have a whole lot of experience in offices, so this is all kind of new to me and I don't like it. Yeah. Can't help there much.

Cause, uh, I've been work from home for a very long time and my office experiences with this are, are very small. And even now when I go into the office, I'm generally only there for a few hours. So it never comes up. Yeah. Well, it comes up at my office and, uh, unfortunately there are four men's rooms on the, in the building that I'm in.

This is not, not a large building, but, uh, the, uh, the management at this building nipped to that in the bud because the keys that they give you only work on the one that's closest to your office. See, there you go. Yeah. Problem is now that they're doing construction on my floor and they gave the key to my bathroom, which was generally a private bathroom for the most part to about 20 day workers who come in and I swear to God have dead raccoon for dinner every night.

Right. They just wreck the place. Oh my God. It is, it is, it is, it is unlovely. They fix the rest of the building and they wreck the restroom. Exactly. Okay. Something a little less, uh, a little less fecal. Schatological. Yeah. It's a little less scatological, even though it is kind of a shit show.

Uh, Google photos, Dave, you got me into Google photos because of their, their facial recognition over time feature, which was, I think it's phenomenal. It's a phenomenal feature. Yes. But, uh, the problem I have with it is there was a, some change up with my credit cards because of some Facebook shenanigans that someone did.

And, uh, Google could not charge my card for my extra storage. So they just said, Hey, you're over, you're over budget and you have 60 days to either pay us a bunch of money or get your shit gone. Well, so my Google photos account is tied to my Google organization account.

So it wasn't just, I can't cancel my Google photos account. And I didn't want to give them any more money because I'm taking this opportunity to give them less money because they're such jerks and can't figure things out. Uh, so I go to Google photos and I need to delete my photos in Google photos. There is no way that you can easily select all and delete your photos in Google photos.

Really? Three hours. It took me of selecting, selecting, selecting, selecting, delete, move to trash, select, select. I found that you can, the most you can generally get is about 5,000 images by clicking one, then holding shift and scroll and scroll and scroll, select some more, scroll, scroll, scroll, select some more, move to trash.

And if you do any more than that, then it just has a, an aneurysm. Huh. And since I have a couple hundred thousand photos, it took a while. So, uh, yeah, that was my, my Google photos story for the day. I, you know, select all, delete or delete all photos or, you know, just close this portion of my account, please.

Uh, yeah, that would be nice, but it is Google and we know that they don't care about end users. So I guess we're stuck with it. That's true. Um, did you have to go through any process of getting your photos off of there or was Google photos just a backup? They were backup. Okay.

Huh. I wonder if there's an API. Uh, it'd probably taken longer to go figure that out. Then I have to deal with, you know, API tokens and I'll have to rate limits and all that other crap. Then I, then I got to write code and I don't know how to do that anymore. So I did the caveman way.

Select, select trash, select, select trash. Right, right. This is why I have kids. This, just this kind of task is why I have kids. You want to eat? All right. Here's the deal. Go delete all the photos.

Start deleting photos, kiddo. Yeah. I mean, I suppose in some ways it's a good thing that, uh, it's not easy to delete all of your photos, but you would think that, you know, they, there could be a happy medium here where there could be several screens of, do you really mean it?

Are you sure you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pain. Hey, but I did just get a prepaid, uh, virtual card from a Google settlement for the Google refer header privacy litigation suit for $7 and 70 cents. Oh, I just got that as well.

Yeah. All right. Good. It's not a scam. Nope. Or it's a big scam. It will be out. I've been dealing with scams all, all mornings. This guy tried to scam one of the people that were managing into doing a live stream. They were going to pay him $5,000 for it. And we even did, we got through two zoom calls with the person.

And then my roommate this morning woke up and goes, this doesn't smell right. And then I went back and I'm like, oh God, she's right. And it totally was totally as a scam trying to figure out what the scam is. Cause they were trying to pay us and give, you can, we'll pay you through Venmo, PayPal or bank transfer.

And, you know, and, but part of the process was it was a Facebook live set up and they wanted their technician to work with our talent to like be able to post from their Facebook page. So I'm guessing it was a, it was a plan to, to gain access to their Facebook page and steal it.

I see. That's what I, that's all I can think of because I'm like, you're going to Venmo me the money who, okay. Then, then pull a scam where you pull it back later somehow, you know, um, or pay us from somebody else's fucked up account. I don't know how that would work, but either way, the whole thing just stank.

And I completely missed it completely like went over my head. And I'm just like, I'm getting, I don't know, I'm getting sloppy. I just expect kids nowadays to not have any, any, you know, care about business paperwork or things like that. Cause they got, they're making millions of dollars. Let's just dare just five grand.

Come on our show. And I'm like, and my roommate's like, you know, they never asked for a W nine. I'm like, huh, huh? She's like, anybody that's going to give you $5,000 is going to ask for a W nine. And I'm like, okay. Then I went and checked. I'm like, yeah, she was right. Totally right. So did you just cut off contact with them?

Yeah. This just happened before the show this morning that we figured it out. So I reached out to the person who they were impersonating, whose organization they were impersonating, but I also have their zoom meeting ID that they use multiple times. So they have a zoom account that is going to be tied to them. So I might end up giving that to the authorities to go have fun with.

Yeah. Wow. But there was, there was technically at this point, there's no crime committed. So, um, I don't know if anybody's going to do anything, but either way, it's a clever scam, except, uh, I guess he gets fraud if they're pretending to be someone they're not. That's true.

But the guy said he was in the guy, when we did the zoom call, he said he was in Johannesburg, um, sounded very German to me, but, uh, and we couldn't really see out the window where he was. So who knows? Could probably be anywhere. Yeah. You know, nowadays, these kids, these kids.

Glad it played out well. It's as frustrating as it is. You didn't, you know. Oh, I'm going to be eating crow for record. I'm going to be eating crow for weeks. Cause my roommate is going to just, cause I'm the one that's supposed to catch you like this. I'm the security guy. And she got it like, damn it.

Got through. So we got, uh, we got a note here from Elaine to you, Dave. Hi guys. Happy new year. I have just listened to your last episode for 2023. And despite being a vegetarian, damn, did Dave make that roast sound good. Though I don't eat it. I have no control cooking.

I have no trouble cooking meat for others, but I don't cook roasts. I think that is something that I'm going to have to try in 2024. Cheers. And thanks for the show. Yeah. Uh, let me just say the holiday roast was also delicious. Uh, and, uh, and I, I, you know, I've been talking to more people from, from our generation and it turns out that we're absolutely correct that, uh, we did not know how bad our, our parents cooking of meat was until now.

Uh, yeah, it seems to be a pretty universal thing. These over dry roasts. Uh, that required gravy universal to save them at all. Yes. Uh, twisted shorts wrote in, uh, again, to one of your queries, Dave, uh, one hour shows with laugh tracks.

Eight is enough. Also on ABC in the late seventies. Yeah, that's right. That's a good one. Thank you. Twisted shorts. All right. So we got two now. Yep. Any more out there? Also ABC. I wonder if it was eight, it was eight is enough.

Cause that love boat was an Aaron spelling show, right? So it was eight is enough a spelling show too. I wonder if that was like his thing. I don't know. Cause there weren't that many hour long comedies. That's the thing. That's what makes it so unusual. Yeah, definitely. That's a good catch. Okay. All right.

Now, now you got me thinking about it again. Well, thank you. All right. And Aiden writes in for Dave security cameras. It's the Dave show. I was surprised. No one mentioned the issue with Yuffie saying that data never leaves your house, then sending thumbnail pictures of your camera for notification, which is of course taking the pictures off your network.

And they sent a link to anchor finally comes clean about its Yuffie security cameras on the verge. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's, yeah, not a deal breaker. No, but I get what this person is saying that, um, I mean, I think what Yuffie is saying about the data, not leaving your house is that they're storing it locally on the hub, like the video footage and all that stuff is being stored locally on the hub rather than in their

own cloud service provider, unless you pay them extra to be on their cloud. Um, so I think that's the point they're making, but yes, if you want to get picture notifications on the app, there's no other way to do it. Right. So I don't know.

And they're saying that they're, that they are now all encrypted. Um, I am having an issue with one of my Yuffie cameras, um, where I'm unable to live stream from it at the moment. It's kind of weird because I can still get stats from it.

Like it tells me when it's batteries charging and things like that, but it's not streaming video back to the base. The problem is because it's completely wireless, if I want to reset it, I have to get out a ladder. I have the same problem with my Logitech camera too.

That's above my garage. That thing has been dead forever, but it still has a light on it. So I'm like, it's good enough. Right. I mean, that's the, that's the thing. You want it to be in a place where people can't mess with it, which means it's hard for you to mess with it. And I've seen people say like, I've looked up this problem that I'm having and they're like, oh yeah, just reset it.

It'll be fine. Oh, great. I'll just reset it. Let me go get my ladder. You just need a really long stick. Yeah. That's not a, it's not a crazy idea actually. Hmm. So, but overall still pleased with the Yuffie system.

I think it's been pretty good, uh, so far and it's been fun. So I like that. All right. Well, another camera system is in the news ring. And we've talked on the show many, many times about rings, uh, giving access to the local law and law enforcement agencies.

Very, very, uh, very, very gladly like here have some more footage, sir. Kind constable, will you please take our camera footage? Uh, well, apparently they're, they're turning that off and it's come, it comes as quite a little bit of a surprise. Everybody's like, why are you doing that?

Oh, maybe it's all the negative press. Maybe. I don't know. Uh, Dave, do you have any insight into this one? No, I mean, I don't have any like behind the scenes insight or anything. I'm just as surprised as everyone else because just ring doesn't strike me or anybody who keeps an eye on these things as being the kind of company who cares about.

We expect them to be horrible. Yeah. Right. Right. Um, I bet they got sued. I, I, my guess is either they got sued or they cease, they're trying to get ahead of something that's coming down the pike. So there's some kind of regulation or legislation.

Um, you know, the FTC has just been taking all kinds of, uh, closer looks at companies when it comes to their privacy and their AI stuff. Um, you know, good old Senator Wyden, uh, is, is doing the things that he does of, of asking the questions about these sorts of things.

So maybe they've, they've just decided this is the time to try to get in front of this, but I mean, it's good, good, good for them. I, I, I think this sort of thing should require a warrant. So yeah, for them. Definitely. All right. Well, some good news from the security front.

Woo. Shocker. I know. Right. And we had been talking about, uh, just a few shows ago about the one good feature that, uh, Android phones had over iPhones, which was stolen device protection. And that was coming in a beta and it's now out officially. In the wild. So if you download iOS 17.3 and iPad OS 17.3, you can switch on stolen phone protection, which basically just means, uh, you can lock them out of the system by forcing face ID or touch ID access.

If somebody manages to steal your phone and it works, even if they have your passcode, they will not be able to get to get in there. So good for Apple for putting this out. I enabled it immediately. So I did as well. And, uh, it's about fricking time.

Well, there's no excuse to have a fucking Android. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's a good feature. And, uh, like I said, I've got it enabled. Do I, do either of you have the, um, enhanced security functions enabled on your iOS device?

No, I haven't either. I've, I, I haven't even played with it, but I've seen stories of folks who have, who've said that it really doesn't seem to, there doesn't seem to be much of a downside to it. Um, but you know, looking at my own security needs, I don't really see a compelling reason to turn it on, but yeah, same here.

I mean, it's, when is my phone not on me to begin with? Like, it's just, it's so just constantly with me 24 seven, which is a problem in and of itself that I should probably address, but you know, different show or at least different segments. That's right.

Yeah. This is good. This is good. I think I might turn that on if I travel the enhanced, but since I don't travel, no need, but, uh, for around the, around the normal day to day, I don't do anything where my phone is literally not glued to me. So it's, I'll just keep, keep the normal, normal stuff with the, of course, with the new stolen device protection.

Yeah. It's a smart feature. Glad they finally got to it. So. All right. That's it for this week. Okay. I got to go get my $7 and 70 cents from Google now. Yeah. Go buy some teepee. I'm going to go put some, uh, uh, police, uh, barrier tape on the men's room here.

Crime scene tape across the door of the men's room here with a gap that's just big enough for me to crawl on my hands and knees through it and lock it, lock it from inside. So see you next time, guys. All right. Closing shout outs.

So Brian, you were bitching last week about Patreon's new mail system. Well, in my normal email system, I got an email from Patreon. Now this, this made me want to throw something through the wall at the head of the, the entire C suite at Patreon.

Get this. Look, we've been complaining about them for a while. They're a bunch of fucking morons. This, this, this takes the cake. Yep. Recently, we identified an issue in our systems that resulted in some of your members being charged the incorrect currency. We've resolved the issue and have initiated a full refund of those incorrect charges back to your members.

You may notice a slight fluctuation in your payout balance due to this corrective measure. Please note that this action has canceled the affected members' recurring billings and also impacts their ability to access your Patreon. We've notified your members regarding the refund with a link to rejoin your community.

We deeply apologize for any inconvenience and we're taking steps to ensure the issue doesn't happen again. Please reach out, please reach out with any questions or concerns you may have. Thank you, the Patreon team. Fuck you, Patreon team. There's my concern and my question and my comment all in one.

Cancel, you cancel somebody's membership because you fuck up? Yep. What fucking world is that logical? I don't know why that became the next step. I don't understand that at all. Like, okay, ding us for a couple bucks for things that were charged incorrectly, but why would you cancel them?

Fix it. Don't ding us. Eat it. You fucked up. Yes, they should actually technically eat it. Yes, that's true. That's how you do customer service. This is not how you do customer service. Well, I guess we're going to leave. Nope, that would be too much effort. Too much effort.

Although I have found a couple of companies that can move us with keeping our recurring systems in place because everything's done through Stripe. So there may be an option here in the future. Okay. I wouldn't mind because Patreon just doesn't, they add nothing of value and it's just problem after problem now.

Yeah, the only reason we're sticking around is because we don't have to pay the Patreon fees that everybody else has to pay like nowadays because we're grandfathered in. And at some point, they're going to say, you know what? We've identified a problem with your grandfathered in subscription. Yeah, we're not getting paid. That's the problem.

Yep. And R writes in, for fuck's sake, Patreon sends me an email. Your subscription to GOG was charged the wrong currency by our system. For my convenience, they canceled the subscription. Well, I'm back. Thank you, R. Thank you. Thank you for putting up with their shenanigans.

And we also have a new member, Philip. Sorry, you're walking in apparently on the parents having sex because that's what this sounds like. And you're like, oh, no, what did I get in for? Oh, shit. Yeah. Just another day on the internet. Yep. Over at PayPal, we've got Tom and Joseph. Thank you both so much.

Thank you. And over at the tip jar, we've got Eric, Brian, Ross, Scott, Daryl, and Josh. Thank you all. Thank you, everybody. No reviews. No reviews. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Got a couple sad notes here today. Dave Mills, the creator of NTP, which everybody on the internet uses because it's basically the time protocol that keeps all servers everywhere in sync.

His time apparently was up, so he died at the age of... I've written many a PHP conversion program using NTP. Yep, yep. He's one of those guys that, one of those unsung guys that basically is, you know, the plumbers of the internet that we all use today that I think don't get enough credit.

Oh, they're completely forgotten about except for us old folk. Yeah. I actually met the guy who invented the SMTP protocol back in the day. And me and my girlfriend were just geeking out. We're like, you wrote SMTP? That is so cool. He's like, you guys are weird. And we're like, but you wrote SMTP?

That is neat. The weird thing is you were both correct. Yeah. It was cool and you were weird. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Well, let's spice it up a bit. Unfortunately, porn star Jessie Jane has died at the age of 43 from an overdose. Another sad one, Masumi Max, also dead at 45.

And Jessie Jane and Masumi are people that crossed my path back in the old days. So in my former careers. So it's very sad to hear that. They were way too young. And I am so sick of people dying from fentanyl. You have no idea. Yeah. I don't know why people keep taking it.

It's unbelievable. Could be that it's addictive, maybe. Well, there's that. Yeah. Yeah. No. Since I started my alcohol recovery in the places that I end up hanging out at, the recovery centers and things like that over the past year, I think I know about 30 people that have died from it, which is really heartbreaking.

Really heartbreaking. So stop it, guys. Get some help. Get some help. Until next time on that fun note. On that joyous note. Yes. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at gog.show slash 633.

gog.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment. Sharing the show with your friends, enemies, or anyone in between is free and can be almost as good as cash. At gog.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans and don't be an ass and get kicked out.

We had our first person we had to kick out this week. Good time. Head over to gog.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about. gog.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air. Stay grumpy.

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