Ep 483: What is “Loser.com”?

Robert Fogarty 0:02
grumpy old geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo. Discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet. And who's to blame.

Jason DeFillippo 0:16
Welcome to grumpy old geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

Brian Schulmeister 0:19
And Brian Schulmeister, the Canadian version

Jason DeFillippo 0:21
that's gonna say this yet today and boot technology.

Brian Schulmeister 0:28
And not quite that bad yet but yeah, you know, you know, it is what it is. It was a boost. It's a new boot. Yeah, I was able to enjoy the the five tense days of an election with some degree of calmness.

Jason DeFillippo 0:42
Right? It feels like it's been three months since I've talked to you.

Brian Schulmeister 0:45
It's only been a week. Jason.

Jason DeFillippo 0:47
It feels like three months since I've talked to you.

Robert Fogarty 0:50
It's been a long week. It's getting longer. The longer you're on Twitter, the you know, the coup in plain sight talk. And basically, you know, second by second blow by blow account of lawsuits. I've actually soared off Twitter as of this morning because I just can't take it anymore.

Jason DeFillippo 1:07
Yeah, it's getting bad. It's getting bad.

Brian Schulmeister 1:09
Yeah, I'll just wait for the big news to roll in on on the alerts on my phone.

Jason DeFillippo 1:13
They you know, at this point, I don't care anymore. I've given I've given up. I don't give a shit. I like okay, he won the election. I'm good. I'm good. Call me in four years when we got to do this bullshit again.

Brian Schulmeister 1:23
Well, I mean, honestly, it is somewhat out of our hands now, isn't it? We did what we could do. We voted at this point. It is up to the powers that be with the with the big guns or the big lawyers, not us.

Dave Bittner 1:34
See, the funny part is to you think about the last four years of hell we've all gone through, we went through it for no reason, because all we had to do was, you know, he got voted in. And then four years later, we fill out a ballot and we mail it in and we're done. Nothing we did or talked about are all the audio data and the stress that happened in between then and now made one fucking little bit of difference to anything in the world. So it was just like, so now I'm just like, screw it. I don't care. I'm gonna go do what I did for the first 44 years of my life before Trump was in office, and ignore the fuck out of politics.

Brian Schulmeister 2:07
It's just a better way, isn't it? It really

Jason DeFillippo 2:10
is. There's nothing you can do. I'm not about to go run for city council. I'm too fucking old. I just don't care. No, no, no,

Brian Schulmeister 2:16
I briefly thought about it like four years ago, when you know that when the agita first hit us so then I was like, Who am I kidding? There's gonna be pictures of me wearing makeup and that's that. Exactly. For this is California that might actually help you out a bit. That's a good point. It's not like after governor Newsome isn't caked in that shit.

Jason DeFillippo 2:33
Yeah. Well, and now you live in a country where you know, the Prime Minister wears blackface, so

Brian Schulmeister 2:39
yeah, that was that was a

Jason DeFillippo 2:40
big oopsie there. Anything is possible. biggest dream if you dream a little dream. Oh, God Fuck it.

Brian Schulmeister 2:49
Yeah, we

Jason DeFillippo 2:49
got to talk about

Brian Schulmeister 2:50
well, I speak out go speaking of being here in Canada, I've got to say that as much as the web is completely unusable beforehand. You move outside of the US and you still have us accounts. Forget it. Like oh, I am doing captures I am having to get text code sent to me or email confirmations. Every single time I sign into anything constantly and it doesn't remember it's not like PayPal remembers that they just sent this to me an hour ago when I logged into PayPal. I have to do it again for every single site. Man Can't you change your your default address to Canada so it doesn't happen all the time. But this isn't my default address yet. I'm going back

Jason DeFillippo 3:32
going back for a couple of weeks to pack up your shit

Brian Schulmeister 3:36
just pretend Yeah. Anyways, the VPN does wonders for that that does get rid of it right away but it is a pain in the butt and these systems that are supposed to be ever so smart not so smart.

Jason DeFillippo 3:47
Yeah, but you'd rather them be not so smart and protect you then not protect you yeah you know yeah it's a it's a give and take Brian it is a it is a security battle

Brian Schulmeister 3:58
I'm still waiting for the the actually getting something when am I going to be given something it's just take take take Oh poor baby. But I do have some good news for you. I believe you were bemoaning the fact that swingers was actually shutting down for good they are back yep yep the the iconic diner known for its let's be honest, crappy food and only good place to eat at 3am is back. They shut down early out of the pandemic after nearly 30 years but the the general manager of these the Beverly Boulevard location has gotten together some some PayPal donations and some GoFundMe type money and is opening it back up. Interesting time to do so as there is no chance of ever making a profit right now. But okay.

Robert Fogarty 4:42
Yeah, that's kind of silly. And you know, I was bummed that it closed. I don't care that it's back. Because, you know, I'm almost 50 now when I would go to swingers, I was in my you know, 20s and 30s. And drunk Yes, really, really drunk because that's the only really way you want to eat there. Because As the food is terrible and you're usually, you know, getting fries and ranch at three in the morning, that's what you need it for. I don't need that anymore exactly three in the morning. I'm basically getting up to let the dogs pee in. Let's be honest pee myself because I have to do that four times a night because I'm pushing 50. So,

Brian Schulmeister 5:17
again, back to swingers going right back to the kind of a silly time for swingers to reopen. It's not like there are bars that you're closing out to then go to swingers for right now.

Exactly. You are so drunk sitting at home on zoom without your pants that there's no way you're gonna go like hop on that bird scooter and zip down those swingers to you know, rekindle that. You know, that old feeling,

you know, and speaking of politics and politicians in general, I just thought that this news article was appropriate. Man missing most of his brain challenges everything we thought we knew about consciousness.

Jason DeFillippo 5:52
Okay, yes,

Brian Schulmeister 5:52
apparently, you can basically just not have a brain and you're okay,

Jason DeFillippo 5:57
if I only had a brain.

Robert Fogarty 5:59
So this came out in 2007, scientists reported that a Frenchman in his mid 40s walked into a clinic complaining of a pain in his leg as a child had had the same problem as a result of the ventricles in his brain filling with sight see Bruce spinal fluid. So the doctors decided to scan his brain to see if this was again causing the problems. And to their astonishment, they found that the ventricles had become so swollen with fluid that they'd replaced virtually his entire brain. Oh, my giving just a thin cortical layer of neurons yet miraculously, the man was not only fully conscious, but lived a rich and unhindered life, working in the White House and living with a soon to be ex wife. And two morons. Oh,

Jason DeFillippo 6:39
I see what you did there. Yes.

Brian Schulmeister 6:42
knew that one. Yeah. Got got to get him in while he's still there.

Jason DeFillippo 6:45
Yeah, it might be a while. So that's true. No need to rush. No need to rush on that one.

Unknown Speaker 6:54
In the US?

Brian Schulmeister 7:00
Well, Jason, you were right. I made the mistake once again of being optimistic and assuming that that that people had brains instead of just swollen ventricle sacks. But no, no, goober and Lyft. Got the result they wanted election night here in California, California residents approved proposition 22, which lets delivery and rideshare companies continue to classify their workers here as independent contractors rather than employees thus, not having to provide unemployment protection, minimum wage sick leave our other benefits to their gig workers. Any change in this law will now require seventh eighth majority in the California legislature, which basically said it's never going to happen. Yep, no, God. So there you go. This turns over a B five, the 2019 California law that required companies to reclassify their independent contractors as full employees which they never had to do because they instantly just started fighting it.

Jason DeFillippo 7:54
But to be clear, it only turns over a B five for drivers. Yeah, this doesn't turn over a B five for you know, the people that it should have been turned over for like, you know, copywriters, and truck drivers and things like that. This goes to just Uber Lyft doordash. And, you know, the gig economy shit. Yep. That they're trying to pull the real people that need a B five overturned or shit out of luck.

Brian Schulmeister 8:16
Yep, yep, that's true. So this law would have caused these companies which would have had to give workers salaries and benefits hundreds of millions of dollars per year as they should have to do. But they they all teamed up. As we know, we've talked about that and poured more than $200 million into a bid to get this passed, making it the most expensive ballot measure in California since at least 1999. They spent more than $6 million just to collect enough signatures for prop 22 to appear on the ballot. they shelled out roughly $10 per signature is the cost that worked out to more than $82 million went to TV and radio ads. And they also sent messages to its users via their app to push them to vote for the proposition. That's just the basics there. I really enjoyed this vice article, proposition 22 victory shows how Uber and Lyft break democracy. Hmm. Corporation spent billions to mislead voters about an anti labor ballot measure one and rebellions on the stock market. This is not healthy. Yeah, so the $203 million spent by them some 57 million was contributed by Uber and other $49 million by Lyft. But by Wednesday morning after news of this passing, of course, Uber saw return on its spending of nearly 19,300% while lift saw a more modest return of only 3,670% because their stocks shot through the roof. Yep. To recap, as the article states corporations with some of the most exploitative labor practices in existence wrote a lot of crushed labor spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create propaganda to convince or failing that mislead voters won and saw massive returns on their spending and stock prices, roads, this sort of flagrantly anti democratic behavior is normal for corporations in america, where they are empowered to write their own laws and buy support for them among the public. Yay.

Jason DeFillippo 10:08
Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that we've been bitching about that thing for so long. Yes. And, you know, as soon as I started to see the ads, I'm like, this is gonna pass. As soon as I saw the ads, I knew it was gonna pass but

Brian Schulmeister 10:21
incredibly misleading.

Jason DeFillippo 10:22
Yeah, and they did a great job on, you know, fucking everybody over. So you know, kudos to that ad agency. May you rot in hell. Yeah, it is what it is. But what are you going to? Oh, don't use Uber Lyft or doordash. I cancelled my doordash account after it passed. So good for you. No more. Yeah, no more. And they couldn't they could never get my order. Right. Anyway. assholes. It's not like they had a good service. So this one just came in EU hits Amazon with antitrust charges. A huge fine could follow coffee cash. Oh, yeah, pretty much pretty much. The ease investigation found that Amazon feeds non public seller data, such as the number of products ordered and the sellers revenues into its own retail algorithms to help it decide which new products to launch and the price of each new offer. And yeah, it allows them to marginalize third party sellers and kept their ability to grow. Yeah, we knew this they Amazon, of course, as we we don't do that. We would never do that. But the EU says, Yeah, you do. But

Brian Schulmeister 11:30
you do, actually. Yeah, you do. Yeah.

Jason DeFillippo 11:33
We know you do. Everybody knows you do. Just because you say it's so it doesn't make it. So, you know, Jeff Trump now that's, that's how it goes. So, yeah, we're gonna see if they get dinged for this, at least the EU does have a tendency to dish out, you know, finds with a bee in front of it instead of an M Yeah, we do here actually, here in the US we do a t h, not a T for trillions th for 1000s. If that. If that. If that? Yeah. So what are you gonna do?

Brian Schulmeister 12:02
What are you gonna do? So we, we laugh about AI here all the time. But apparently, there is an actual use for AI right now. Although I would still argue it's not AI. But nobody wants to listen to that argument anymore. But there you go. So unless you're a physicist or an engineer, you're not really going to give a crap. But apparently AI have have got the ability to solve partial differential equations or PDS, as they're called, which are a category of math equations that are really good at describing change over space and time and thus very handy for describing physical phenomena in our universe, such as like, seismic activities, safe planes, etc, etc. Apparently, they're very, very, very hard to solve. And, but the AI is doing it

Jason DeFillippo 12:47
when it comes to safe planes. I mean, so they can rewrite the manual for the, you know, the 737. max, because that's pretty much all that needs to be done to make that plane safe. Yeah, that

Brian Schulmeister 12:56
was no extra funding. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go. So yeah, apparently, these are the AI is really, really good at it. It's 1000 times faster than traditional mathematical formulas. And it's a maybe we'll be able to solve even bigger things faster. Planes safer, bigger, faster, stronger. Jason. Woohoo, thank you AI until something goes wrong in the black box. And we don't know what or why or how

Jason DeFillippo 13:19
are how exactly. Yeah, I saw this one. I just I just had to check out x Google CEO Eric Schmidt is reportedly becoming a citizen in the European island nation of Cyprus, which could cost him two and a half million dollars, but give him tax breaks that are obviously far more than that.

Brian Schulmeister 13:36
But he didn't want to just move to Cypress, California. It's a lovely suburb.

Jason DeFillippo 13:40
I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. And every time I think of Eric Schmidt remember that classic line, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. Okay, well, now we know that you're moving there, and we know what to do with your tax benefits. So yeah, good time to fire, Eric. Sorry. Yeah. At least he didn't go to New Zealand and try and build one of those, you know, you know, villainous layers and a hackneyed, like, inactive volcano like everybody else did, because New Zealand said no more. But apparently Cyprus is still open for business

Brian Schulmeister 14:11
sports for sale. That's basically what's going on there. Yep. And a little bit of cool Space News as well. We've been hearing about fast radio bursts for quite some time. Everybody immediately went, ooh, could be aliens and scientists went, Hey, hold on a second here, everybody. We don't know what they are. But they could be very interesting. Well, we've discovered that they are actually in the Milky Way we've detected them coming from our own galaxy. The theory here is that this is a these are events that take place from a magnet star, a type of neutron star with an incredible magnetic field. And we've had three separate studies that have come out at around the same time that seem to be showing that this is definitely the case. So there you go, not aliens, but something very cool and new that we're learning about space and it's a relatively close to us. If you consider our own galaxy close.

Jason DeFillippo 14:57
Though magnetar is my new stripper name. Look, I had an old

Brian Schulmeister 15:04
I think you were doordash

Jason DeFillippo 15:07
that was making a dash for the door. Nobody needs to see this slip. Okay. And this is a pretty fun when the feds just seized Silk Roads $1 billion stash of Bitcoin.

Brian Schulmeister 15:21
Alrighty.

Jason DeFillippo 15:22
Yeah, that's about it. Okay. That's all I got for that. Like, yeah, okay. Yeah,

Brian Schulmeister 15:29
we've been shut down for a long time now. Right. So this money has just been sitting in a wallet somewhere.

Jason DeFillippo 15:35
Yeah. And somebody came, came forward and finally unlocked the wallet for the government and said, Here you go, guys. Go go buy some cages for those kids. Perfect. Perfect.

Brian Schulmeister 15:47
Well, that can that can fund the investigations into voter fraud.

Jason DeFillippo 15:51
Oh, yes, that's right. That's right. Could have actually could have actually like bankrolled some actual voter fraud since there wasn't one to begin with, you know, billion dollars should maybe have given them another round.

Brian Schulmeister 16:02
Maybe what it should have paid that US Postal Service guy board $130,000 to live. Well obviously wasn't

Jason DeFillippo 16:08
enough. wasn't enough? Yeah, I just thought that was zing

Brian Schulmeister 16:13
is still never leaving.

Unknown Speaker 16:24
Security.

Jason DeFillippo 16:28
We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the cyber wire podcast. And Dave is also the co host of the social engineering podcast hacking humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co host of caveat with Ben yelin, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy and where every now and again, I am an unwitting guest host.

Dave Bittner 16:49
That's right. Yes, we featured you on our recent show. That's what I get for rolling my own backup of our recording for this show. I can just borrow borrow from it as need be nice to pop you in there and give the show a little little promo.

Jason DeFillippo 17:03
No flavor, no flavor. Yeah. I appreciate that. It was it was a good bit. And it was very fun to hear Ben's take on it.

Dave Bittner 17:09
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, check it out. caveat. So I'm grumpy today. I'm just warning you. I'm very.

Jason DeFillippo 17:17
I'm actually really

Dave Bittner 17:19
grumpy today. Let me just start off by saying that there are many things for which I am and should be happy about. Yeah. I'm happy about the outcome of the election. So that's all good, but I'm grumpy today because I am old. And when I 51 It's Monday. No, no, my birthday is over the summer. My birthday, July. Gotcha. But because I'm over 50 that means I have to get a colonoscopy.

Unknown Speaker 17:53
Oh, okay. And okay.

Dave Bittner 17:56
Yeah. And I'm getting my first colonoscopy tomorrow. Which means today is prep day. Now. I don't have you ever been through this before? Have you? Have you ever had to do anything to clean yourself out this way?

Jason DeFillippo 18:11
No, I haven't. But I've heard the process is not fun.

Dave Bittner 18:15
Yeah, I haven't either. And like you I've heard from other people that this is not fun. So and I'm already in. I swear I am so damn grumpy right now because I am not a happy, hungry person. And angry. I am so angry right now. I started off this morning I had to go get a COVID test, which is no big deal. Although now I recalibrated my sense for how far back my sinuses go into my head.

Jason DeFillippo 18:45
Yes. The brain ticklers.

Dave Bittner 18:47
Yes, so that was fun. The lady was delightful and very friendly as she was shoving this thing through the back of my skull. So that was fine No problem, you know, in and out over the hospital. But then today I can't eat anything solid. Because I'm gonna preparing myself for the great clean out which is going to happen tonight and tomorrow morning. So today it's just been clear liquids which means Fortunately, I can drink my Diet Mountain Dew which is the nectar of the gods. Oh, for my preferred caffeine delivery system because I'm not a

Jason DeFillippo 19:24
man after my man after my own

Dave Bittner 19:26
heart. Yes, I I prefer my caffeine delivered cold. Well, here's

Jason DeFillippo 19:30
the funny part I used to drink. I when I'd come into work in the morning, I would buy a 12 pack on the way into work. This is back when I was a coder and I was working, you know, 20 hour 18 to 20 hour days. I would put it next to my desk I would open the top and I would drink them warm because my theory was it would get into my system faster if it didn't have to warm up on the way down.

Dave Bittner 19:49
Sure, that's a such solid logic. Why not? I thought it was scientific. Sure, why not? I mean, so I can drink that. That's fine soda and things are fine. Drinking white grape juice and I'm drinking drinking a chicken broth so far, which is the most but I there's just nothing you know there's nothing that sticks to my ribs, there's nothing that makes me feel like I've had a substantial meal. And so I just want to eat some I want to have I want to have like a big plate of nachos. I want to eat something substantial and I cannot do that. And I will not be allowed to do that until tomorrow afternoon. So tonight, so when I when I hang up with you today, I'm heading over to the pharmacy to pick up my kit, which has evidently two bottles of stuff that I drink one tonight and one tomorrow in the Reno. I might as well be from from everything I've heard. So it'll clear me out. And then I'll go in tomorrow around midday and have this procedure done tomorrow we're off at the cyber wire for Veterans Day. So taking advantage of that to go have the procedure done. So as the actual procedure I'm not worried about I'm not nervous about it. I'm not I don't feel shy about it. I'm totally fine with that. But I am just I'm grumpy because I do not like being hungry. And there's nothing I can do about it right now. So I'm trying to be patient but that's my story. Dammit. And I'm sticking up snowflake. Yeah, I know right? Yeah the big Yeah. I mean talk about your your firstworldproblems you know that

Jason DeFillippo 21:28
I can only have chicken broth today right? Exactly. I

Dave Bittner 21:31
I'm unhappy with the choice of unlimited food I'm allowed to consume today. You know, it's not as it does not take the form that I wish it does not fill my belly to my satisfaction.

Jason DeFillippo 21:43
Good. I do Jenna's clear though.

Dave Bittner 21:47
Jen is clear although they do specifically say no alcohol because

Jason DeFillippo 21:52
it that I really why you're angry. Now we know. We know why you're really angry. This has nothing to do with food.

Dave Bittner 22:02
I can't drink today. Yeah, that's what it is.

Jason DeFillippo 22:05
But the first time in 51 years, I'm sober.

Dave Bittner 22:08
Right? Right. I'm reminded of that episode of Wk RP where they were doing the supply. More faster, right. The more you drink, the better. Faster he got. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So classic. So I say that to just give everybody a warning that if I am if I'm correct in my responses today, there's a good reason for it. And I appreciate everyone's well, which is I'm sure everything will go fine tomorrow. I say I have no no worries about that. It's just a routine test. But man, I can't tomorrow when I'm done with this thing. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go somewhere and get some food. Some fast ribs, some rehabs and a bunch of french fries. And I don't know what but

Jason DeFillippo 22:52
long john Silver's for everybody.

Dave Bittner 22:55
I'm gonna get someplace with an all you can eat buffet. get my money's worth. It's the it's gonna be the Wednesday colonoscopy special.

Jason DeFillippo 23:06
Waitress Bring me a tub of tater tots,

Dave Bittner 23:08
please. Yes, exactly. I got plenty of room.

Jason DeFillippo 23:14
So little spoiler alert coming here for people who have not seen this latest episode of the Mandalorian. So we're gonna have Mandalorian corner even though Brian is not here right now. Okay, we could I thought we could tackle this together. Yes, I'm game. All right. What do you think?

Dave Bittner 23:29
I enjoyed it very much. I think I think they continue to be doing a great job. I think it's hard to match up to that first episode of the season, which was outstanding. Yes. So I think you know, anything following that is likely to be a letdown. But I enjoy these little side adventures. I think they continue to handle the characters. Well. It was interesting to see the state of things with the x wing pilots kind of, you know, playing the part of the state troopers and

Jason DeFillippo 23:59
that was really cool. I got to give them that. Especially since I hate spiders. So I'm glad they came to the rescue of spiders that put that whole spider thing creeped me the fuck out. And we find out that baby Yoda is a baby killer. So he's

Dave Bittner 24:12
right. z le anything, right? really anything that doesn't need him first. I saw someone today tweeted that they'd like to see some kind of story written some short story or film made about how after Yoda died day gobo returned to it to being this lush planet because he wasn't there to eat everything.

Jason DeFillippo 24:32
That'd be great. Right? What do you think the odds are that maybe he's like holding the egg safely in his tummy and helping them you know, hatch?

Unknown Speaker 24:41
No,

Jason DeFillippo 24:42
maybe that might be an option, or he's just a dick. Okay. Yeah,

Dave Bittner 24:46
I think he's just a little kid who just wants to eat all the cookies.

Jason DeFillippo 24:51
I love to use the Force to bring the eggs over to this side of the the container just like you are mine.

Unknown Speaker 25:01
Yeah, yeah, I

Dave Bittner 25:02
like the the frog lady character was very interesting particularly how when she was freaked out, she reverted to leaping around like a frog. I thought that was a nice little touch.

Jason DeFillippo 25:12
It was cool that she hacked the robot to so she can actually talk to them. Yep. Yeah. But see, all in all, I thought that this was a solid episode. You know, I thought it was pretty good. And it's a two parter. So, you know, we get to see how it plays out. Well, they didn't get to the planet yet. And they were kind of going along in space, you know, so right. Right. So Well, yeah. Because once we get to the next planet, we'll see.

Dave Bittner 25:34
Yeah, yeah. Again, back to those x wing pilots, you know, interesting that they kind of, they saved his bacon, but then they also left him on his own.

Jason DeFillippo 25:43
Right. They're like, there's a limit to what we're gonna do for you, buddy. You did a solid. You did our people a solid. But, you know, from here on out. We we've done our part. Yeah, yeah, we're having Walker back on.

Dave Bittner 25:56
Yeah, we're even now. So. Exactly. So yeah, I continue to enjoy how they're fleshing out the world. I think they're doing in a very smart way. There's, you know, there aren't things that are happening where I'm going, or really, or that doesn't make any sense. Or it doesn't. Everything seems to feel like it fits really well in the world. So, so far, so good. Knock on wood?

Unknown Speaker 26:18
Yeah. Yeah, I

Dave Bittner 26:19
think it's what happens when you get people making this content? Who are the types of fans that we are and have a tremendous amount of respect for the content coming from that direction?

Jason DeFillippo 26:32
Yeah, no, I think it's, um, really, it's, for me, it's the best thing on TV right now.

Dave Bittner 26:39
I agree. I agree. I, it's the thing. I'm looking forward to week after week. So it's a nice escape and continues to be very well done. Yeah. Can't wait for the next one.

Jason DeFillippo 26:49
Definitely. Now, next up, we got about 15 people sent this into us, but it's funny that you put it in the notes before I did.

Dave Bittner 26:59
Yeah. Well, at least they'd send it to me on Twitter, too. So Surprise, surprise. Well, I mean, the you know, the joke of the of the world right now is whatever happened and the the, the unexplainable press conference that happened at four seasons total landscaping company.

Jason DeFillippo 27:24
And which I know, it's really hard to find words nowadays. Yeah,

Dave Bittner 27:30
yeah. A friend of mine said to me, since the place is situated, right, between a, an adult bookstore and a crematorium. It's a great place if you want to tell somebody to fuck off and die.

Jason DeFillippo 27:48
Exactly. I haven't heard that word. Yeah, that's a good one.

Dave Bittner 27:53
Yeah. So you know, that has been on everyone's minds.

Unknown Speaker 28:00
Yeah.

Dave Bittner 28:02
Anyway, but of course, we're anything fun is if there's a location to be had, and not long after that location draws people's attention, the Furies come running. And that is what has happened here. There have been some folks who have created a scene with the virtual Furies running around and frolicking all over the Four Seasons total landscaping company. And I have to say I am in full support of this activity, I think, good, good, good. This deserves whatever mocking can be thrown its way.

Jason DeFillippo 28:38
Exactly. Exactly. You know, in the old days, we used to put this in Second Life, but a platform called a VR chat. But yeah, yeah, I'm not familiar with that one. But it's, it's awesome. It's just,

Dave Bittner 28:51
I heard somebody say, I don't know if this is true or not that the location of four seasons total landscaping is actually right next door to the location that they used for Fred Sanford's company in Sanford and Son. The couriers for Sanford and Son is right next door to this place. So if you go to Google Maps, evidently you can look at it and you Oh, yeah, that Sanford and Son. So I haven't checked that myself. But I heard somebody say that, which is kind of fun. Also, and probably half of our audience is going what's a Sanford and Son, but that's okay. That's true. Yeah,

Brian Schulmeister 29:25
I'll just

Dave Bittner 29:27
yeah, I'll just drink my chicken broth and

Jason DeFillippo 29:30
leave it to you to figure. Yeah. All right. Now this next one I found over at the writers detective bureau podcast. It's a podcast I listened to. It's a police detective in California named Adam, who is also a writer. And he gives people tips on how to make their writing more realistic from a police perspective, which is it's really cool. It's fascinating. It's a great short podcast, and you get to learn all about the procedural in and outs of how detectives work. It's really good. Yeah, it was just this random find that I found and I just I have listened to it religiously. He's coming up on episode 100. And there's all this real fun stuff in there, because people are like, I've got this plotline I'm trying to do this. And how would I do that? And what would the tech did like, you know, all the detectives do and the policemen and all that stuff. So in this episode, someone asked about partial license plate numbers. And is it feasible to give a detective a partial license plate number? And how does that work? And he went into the inner workings of the DMV. And they don't have partial license plates in the DMV, they don't have the ability to search for partial license plates in the DMV. So which I which I thought was I'm like, what

Dave Bittner 30:42
really surprises me,

Jason DeFillippo 30:44
it's a very antiquated system, I'm telling you, this is worth listening to. It's like, you know, 10 minutes, really worth listening to. And what he told us was, well, since Carfax is out there, now they have partnered with local law enforcement. So you can actually send a partial license plate to Carfax and Carfax will give you back some different options where you can then get the VIN number and then you could take the VIN number and go to the DMV, and then you can actually get the owner of the car, huh,

Dave Bittner 31:15
yeah, I was gonna say I would imagine that this is the sort of thing the data brokers would have easily accessible because they will have a long with the license plates that they gather, they'll note a lot of times what kind of car it is, because they can do basically the the facial recognition version of image matching for vehicle types.

Jason DeFillippo 31:33
Yep. Yeah. And they don't have that in the DMV. It's like, you know, either a two door or four door sedan truck, you know, it's very limited information the DMV actually has on your vehicles, which I also thought was very interesting. So what they do, they here's how they do it. Yeah, this is the deal that Carfax and the police have made. So if there's an accident with a car, that accident report goes to Carfax then they can match that accident report to the VIN number, and the VIN number goes into their massive database of every card that they have in the system. So that's how they can tell if a car has been in an accident and get you know, the relative damage to the vehicle from the police report. So that's the deal is like, okay, the cops get free information from CarFax. But Carfax gets free information from the police. Interesting. Isn't that interesting. And there's even fax for police.com where you can go read up on it. It's, I thought this was a very interesting symbiosis between the two between the two organizations. And I don't know if I have a problem with it at all.

Dave Bittner 32:36
Well, a couple things come to mind. First thing is a couple years ago, not long after I got my dashcam for my car. So I was riding high on having that. A couple days in a row on my way to work some Yahoo in a Toyota Prius was lighting up the highway like he was Mario Andretti just weaving in and out and, you know, cutting across traffic lanes,

Jason DeFillippo 33:02
basically being a pre Prius driver in general. Yeah.

Dave Bittner 33:06
So and and on day one. Alright, you know, who's this jerk. But the second day that had happened in a row, same guy, I went, and I pulled the footage, pulled it up, and I was able to get the license plate information off of it. So I was curious, what could I find out from this license plate information? So I ran a search on it. And actually, what I could find out is, it would match it to the car model and color line. Yeah, just by saying, you know, Maryland license plate this this number, it came back to me and said, that's a white Prius. wouldn't give me anything wouldn't give me the owner's name or the owner's address, or I don't think it gave me a VIN number. But it gave me the model. Oh, the year also gave me the year of the car, the color. And the model, which I thought was I was surprised it gave me that much, honestly. So I don't know where that's coming from us googled it. I did a Google search. And I don't think it was like Maryland MVA that came up. I think it was something else. And I suspect it was one of those sites where if I wanted to pay $20, right, they'd probably give me a lot more information. But I was surprised at that much information was available just for the asking.

Jason DeFillippo 34:26
That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what I mean, yeah, it's like anybody who wants to find out where anybody lives. You can google it now and spend 1520 bucks and you will get, you know, it's so much information. It'll make your head spin. That's why it's like, you know, we talked a long time ago about personally identifiable information. And it's like game's over, man. Game,

Dave Bittner 34:48
man. Yeah. The other thing that that this story reminds me of the guy from the writers detective bureau podcast is I am friends with general And who used to be the chief of police for our town. And I was having a conversation with him once and he was talking about how every now and then someone would come to talk to him to talk to one of the high level police people. And they come in saying that they were in the process of writing a book. And they just wanted to come in and ask a few questions or writing a novel. Well, for the purposes of this book, they wanted to know, you know, is there a perfect crime? if let's say the, the person in my book wants to kill their spouse? What would be the what would be you must have thought about this chief of police? What would be a way that someone might be able to do that and get away with it? Yeah, he's like this. He's like, it. This happens just more often than you'd think. And, you know, basically, they they say, Oh, I don't know. And then they leave that they're like, Okay, put a tail on this guy. You know? Like, if if somebody turns up dead, you know, this guy's at the top of the list. So, anyway,

Jason DeFillippo 36:09
funny. It's so funny. I had a I had a cop friend, he used to run a skate shop out in suburban Chicago, and he crookedest cop I've ever met. I mean, he was just as crooked as they come. And he was a professional photographer for Nikon as well, which is crazy.

Dave Bittner 36:25
just handed a lot of different things.

Jason DeFillippo 36:27
Yeah, yeah. When he got fired from Nikon, he actually flew to New York and ransacked the Nikon board meeting wearing a gorilla suit. Is that crazy? These guys are style. Yeah, yeah. And basically, this guy was is crooked as the day as long and so we're all of his buddies on the forest. So they would just they brought in photo books of them with all the dead bodies that they found. They like, you know, posing like Weekend at Bernie's style. Oh, and they had their entire like, it was just, it was really gross. But we'd ask him all the time, that same thing, and like, how can you kill somebody like, Oh, it's easy. And he would just go off on a rant on how you do it. And we're just like, I wish I'd taken notes. I was like, 15. At that time. I was thinking, if I was thinking, I'm like, this is gold. I should be writing this down. Because someday I might need this. Yeah. Yeah. I

Dave Bittner 37:17
mean, it's funny that you have the you know, there's that when you're a teenager, you have that empathy gap, where you're like, oh, that'd be cool, you know, and then as the older you get, you're like, I don't really want anyone to die. You know, or the, the list gets much less gets much smaller. Anyway, I guess you realize that the stakes are so much higher.

Jason DeFillippo 37:35
Yeah. Yeah. So my last story is I saw this on krebsonsecurity. This morning, ransomware group, it turns to Facebook ads. And I was like, hey, what? Let me check this one out. Have you guys heard about this one yet? Or covered? I have I

Dave Bittner 37:48
mean, yet another use for Facebook?

Jason DeFillippo 37:51
Yeah, I know, Facebook, that gift that keeps on given? Yep. So yeah.

Dave Bittner 37:56
He says, Oh, god, this book solution to everything is more Facebook.

Jason DeFillippo 38:00
Exactly, exactly. So the Ragnar locker team basically stole a bunch of information. And then they use somebody's hacked Facebook account to run ads against the company whose information they stole, saying pay up bitches. Yeah. That's kind of it. They publicly shamed them with a hacked Facebook account. And unfortunately, for the guy whose account they hacked, they got, you know, almost, was it almost $700 worth or $659 worth of ads out of them? I hope hopefully Facebook gave it keep the money back. But

Brian Schulmeister 38:35
yeah, what also

Dave Bittner 38:37
strikes me that if you were to hit a company, with ransomware, but then also as the ransom is due these days, you know, they extract the data, and then they they use that as leverage to get the company to pay the ransom. Could you Then could you use this method? Could you go on Facebook, and target people who are customers of that company? Right. And then basically run ads to them and say, Hey, I got your information.

Jason DeFillippo 39:10
Yeah, probably would not surprise me in the lead east,

Dave Bittner 39:15
right attention companies of Acme you know, printing. You, I have your we all have your information. If you don't want your information released, you should get in touch with them and tell them to pay the ransom. Yep. Which of course is no guarantee the information isn't going to go out anyway. But that's the world we live in today.

Jason DeFillippo 39:34
Yeah, it's so funny. Right before COVID hit. We were coming up with a plan to run grumpy old geeks ads and geotarget them to very specific locations in Silicon Valley, which were around the Facebook headquarters around the Google headquarters around the quarter. So anybody that worked in these geo targeted locations, would get grumpy old geeks ads. They're like, Oh, it people listen to our show. Lots of it. people listening Do our show. So let's target those people. And then you know, right as we're getting ready to, you know, put the plan into action. Of course, everybody locked down out the window.

Dave Bittner 40:10
But right, right now that's interesting. That makes sense. I would love to have heard about how that worked.

Jason DeFillippo 40:17
I really, really would have. Yeah. Maybe next year. Okay. Well, you didn't seem so grumpy this time. Dave. I know you said you were grumpy, but it didn't really come out. So

Dave Bittner 40:27
no, you know what, I have a lot of energy and, like I that I'm channeling my grumpiness to try to to distract me. So I don't know, I'm kind of all over the place. I'd say I'm a bit of a spasm this afternoon because I, again, I just want to eat something so bad. I just want to shove some food in my mouth. And I I'm sort of ashamed to say it because I, you know, I'd like to think that I'm in better control of my impulses. But

Jason DeFillippo 40:55
apparently, you're the baby Yoda of podcasting. Yeah.

Dave Bittner 41:01
A long time since I've fasted and evidently it does not suit me well, so you get used

Jason DeFillippo 41:07
to it. You get used to it.

Dave Bittner 41:09
I'm sure I will I get this is just a nuisance and I should stop complaining. It'd be like you said be such a snowflake. But. But hey, what good is having a show called grumpy old geeks? If you can't come on and complain about things?

Jason DeFillippo 41:19
Exactly. That's why we haven't This is therapy for us.

Dave Bittner 41:23
Yeah, I do feel better. Actually.

Jason DeFillippo 41:27
It doesn't pay the bills, but damn, we feel good after. Yeah.

Dave Bittner 41:30
So there's something there's there's that.

Jason DeFillippo 41:32
All right. Well, good luck with your colonoscopy.

Dave Bittner 41:35
Thank you. I'll provide an update next week when I find out you know, that's

Jason DeFillippo 41:38
okay. That's okay.

How many fingers am I holding up? Right. Exactly.

Dave Bittner 41:49
Moon River.

Jason DeFillippo 41:51
Alright. Have a good one Dave.

Robert Fogarty 41:59
Media Candy

Brian Schulmeister 42:02
found some good news for you Jason. This week. I thought this was super interesting. It actually, I guess this was about two weeks ago, but I didn't see it until this week. Danny Elfman, the lead singer, and one time ago, Boingo front man has released an actual pop single, again, not just not just his soundtrack stuff, it's a full on sounds kind of like going go by and go song called happy. He was slated to actually play Coachella this year to you know, one of those legacy acts to show up and was gonna make this kind of a signature thing as part of the show. Brand new song but since it's got shut down, he released it anyways. So I'm assuming you've listened to it?

Jason DeFillippo 42:39
I have not. I have not I saw this cuz I'm going through my notes on my computer that doesn't actually have a speaker and I was like, Oh, I need to go listen to this. And sadly I haven't

Brian Schulmeister 42:49
I believe you'll be happy.

Jason DeFillippo 42:51
Well, it's called happy but i don't know i there's just no happiness anymore. So well, it's you know,

Brian Schulmeister 42:57
it's about Halloween. So how happy is it going to be? Oh, perfect. Perfect. There you go. I think you'll really enjoy it. So ping me when you've actually listened to it.

Jason DeFillippo 43:05
Well, next week, media candy follow up.

Brian Schulmeister 43:08
And we had the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame such as it was it was a virtual event. So if your idea of a good time is watching a bunch of aging rockers sit on a zoom call without playing any music then this was the event for you.

Jason DeFillippo 43:21
stab me in the throat with a fork.

Brian Schulmeister 43:24
The sad thing is that it does and it was because I watched a lot of it. No live performances at all obviously. Yeah. And literal zoom calls. That's all it really was. And it's really sad because this year two of my favorite bands of all time were inducted I would have loved to have watched Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails perform at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony but it was not to be if you have any such interested actually just seeing their zoom speeches. Links are in the show notes.

Jason DeFillippo 43:52
Well, hopefully they'll have a makeup you know, I seriously

Brian Schulmeister 43:55
doubt their money. It's just it's way too much to like get together. Right like good luck. Like a suit by the way because I mean, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails. Let's be honest, they're they're richer than fucking gods. But yeah, I mean, as soon as as soon as something is cleared enough for them to all get together and perform. They're going out on the fucking road.

Jason DeFillippo 44:13
Tour. Exactly. They're going on tour. They

Brian Schulmeister 44:16
go into Cleveland, they're going on tour. So I

Jason DeFillippo 44:19
yeah, I gotta say I saw Nine Inch Nails that are part of the setup at Riot fest a couple years ago. Damn good job, man. Damn good.

Brian Schulmeister 44:28
They're always solid life. I haven't cared much for their recordings over the past few years, but life can't be at them.

Jason DeFillippo 44:33
Oh man. Yeah. The What did they call it? trends tambourine of doom. He bet he was he loved that fucking tambourine. I'll give him that. Yeah, well, you

Brian Schulmeister 44:43
know all he does is work out now system since he doesn't drink so he beats the crap out of it every night I'm sure.

Jason DeFillippo 44:49
Okay. Beating the tambourine. That's what I haven't heard before.

Brian Schulmeister 44:53
Also your other stripper name? No, no. Okay. Okay, I found myself with a little time here. Not much and once I finally sorted out some VPN woes because you know Star Trek or CBS all access is quite a quite onto the VPN game and weren't keen on me watching anything here in Canada. I did finally catch up on Star Trek discovery seeing episodes three and four of this third season.

Jason DeFillippo 45:17
Yeah, and I love

Brian Schulmeister 45:18
I love this season. I was min about season one. I was okay with season two. I'm all in right now. I love it. It's okay. I love it. I thought Episode Four when they went to the trill homeland. I thought that's fun. I thought that was straight out of Star Trek The Next Generation it felt like a 90s episode where they ended up on like planet riser whatever the pleasure planet like it was the people people that fucking sleeveless robes wandering around. It was great.

Jason DeFillippo 45:45
Oh, no, but I mean, you think trillia think DS nine, you know, but yeah,

Brian Schulmeister 45:48
but still, it's just it felt that way to me. It had that feel and I'm interested to see what they're gonna do with it. I mean, they can't go back home that much of a glaring plot hole so the fact that they're like, hanging out with like an ancient ship and and basically what is it galactic wasteland? It's like America and four more years. Like it's awesome.

Jason DeFillippo 46:08
Yeah. And with the only drive they can actually get them around the universe with the spore drive that nobody else has. Yeah.

Brian Schulmeister 46:14
Which is convenient writing.

Jason DeFillippo 46:16
Very convenient. Very convenient. I'm guessing they figured that part out a long time. I told you that was going to be something that they were going to have to do to get rid of that damn thing. Yeah, but I gotta say, We chatted a little bit about this on text. One night. I the weakest part of the show is the star.

Brian Schulmeister 46:34
Yeah, she's a horrible actress. I hate to say she's, she looks great. She looks the part. You look at her. I just find her acting leaden. And I'm not thrilled about the two new actress, actor and actress. They added the as the trill and the symbient. They also felt really flat to me. And just this. Yeah. Which is horrible. Because the rest of the cast is awesome.

Jason DeFillippo 46:56
Yeah, even the new guy that they came in, well,

Brian Schulmeister 46:59
who will hopefully be back, Booker. Hopefully

Jason DeFillippo 47:01
he'll be back. Yeah, Booker was great. But yeah, she's always exasperated. Yeah, everything is like the most emotional moment of our entire life. And I'm just like, come on, you're just trying to get a coke from the replicator. That's all you're trying to do. You don't have to go. This Coke is going to be the craziest coke in my family is with me. Now that I've found you across the years and the stars. And I just this is the craziest coke. I mean, that's how she acts. It's terrible. Yeah, I'm

Brian Schulmeister 47:31
not a fan either. He and I definitely agree about that. It's it's she is the weakest link.

Jason DeFillippo 47:35
You are the weakest link. And Spotify is, this is the more media news. But it's podcasting news, which drives me crazy. Because I always talk about the goddamn carpetbaggers are coming in and ruin our ruin in our GIG, not giving us any of the money. Yeah, ruining

Brian Schulmeister 47:52
this incredibly lucrative gig we have.

Jason DeFillippo 47:56
You know, I'll talk about that in a second here. Spotify has bought megaphone which is a it's basically a hosting platform. It used to be panoply, which they did a bunch of really good shows back in the day. And they they finally said, Hey, you know what, we can make more money, actually, you know, hosting podcasts and making podcasts, which we probably should have done. And now that now Spotify is gonna buy them, they're gonna get a bag of money and all that good stuff. Great. Yep. Just what we need more consolidation. Thank you, Spotify.

Brian Schulmeister 48:32
I don't remember we talked about the Spotify pay a little thing on the music side of stuff that did. I don't remember if we talked about that last week. I think we did. We talked

Jason DeFillippo 48:39
about a little bit about how they they're like they want musicians actually paint like, take a lesser

Brian Schulmeister 48:45
depth. Okay, so we did talk about it. Yeah, I've talked to the the anger in the music industry is going is building on that. So I expect we'll hear more about that pretty soon.

Jason DeFillippo 48:53
Yeah, yeah, I'm on the fence every day about whether we should pull our show from them. Because it's like,

Brian Schulmeister 48:58
I don't know, two of our listeners over there.

Jason DeFillippo 49:01
Yeah.

Brian Schulmeister 49:02
So I'm sorry, we're up to dozens. Sorry.

Jason DeFillippo 49:05
Yeah. And that we figured out 2% of our audience comes from Spotify. And the downloads did ran the numbers on it for the last year. And so we did 1.3 something million downloads of this show over the last year. And like 27,000 came from Spotify. Which is, you know, not huge, but you know, yeah, whatever. Whatever. Yeah, we're never gonna make any money from this bastard. And now wondery is trying to sell itself okay. You know, they did dirty john and Dr. Death, which both I think got tv deals out of it. And that's worked

Brian Schulmeister 49:43
out so well for all the rest of the podcasts that have had tv deals.

Jason DeFillippo 49:47
Oh, man, I watched some a dirty john because it had Christian Slater in it. I think it was dirty john might have been. I'm pretty sure that was that one was terrible. It was god awful, right. So turn that one off. Yeah, all of these pages. Cast to tv deals. There's a reason your podcasts stay that way. But here's the great part wonder is looking for three to $400 million. That's so high three. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny because we'll talk about the the new Apple hardware that came out today. And I was looking at some of the acquisitions that they made for their, you know, their semiconductor fabs and and talent that they got. And they were buying, you know, semiconductor companies for like, you know, $250 million, and they made something. Yep. They actually fucking made something, they made something that's really hard to do. These guys talking to a microphone, you are not worth 300 to 400 million fucking dollars. But this is also probably why. Well, the funny part is earned. And Lopez the guy who founded wondery, I don't know if you noticed, saw this one in the LA Times. But it's been going around for a while. We knew this on the back end. He's He's in a little trouble with the law hoops right now. Yeah. So I think that that's probably going to be the downfall for this deal. And Spotify actually passed on the by they're like, you know what, we're good. We're good.

Brian Schulmeister 51:14
Yeah. Like we don't want to Spotify took Joe Rogan and they're passing on you. How bad are you?

Jason DeFillippo 51:20
Exactly under active investigation for fraud? Well, guess that's I guess that's the line they won't cross we can have alex jones back in the frogs are gay. But nope, nope. Sorry. Hernan, you're out, you're out. And it's funny. I was listening to this week in tech the other night, like half asleep and I and they were talking about this deal. And Leo's like, man, I could use some of that juicy podcast money. And I was thinking twit.tv You know, this week in tech, one of the oldest podcasting networks around period. I mean, they're the godfathers of it. That I Why haven't they been picked up yet? I don't get it. I just don't get it.

Brian Schulmeister 52:01
Yeah, so well, you know, I wonder why nobody throws us any cash to.

Jason DeFillippo 52:06
Yeah, well, it could be just because we suck. But yeah. You look at the gimlet deal. That was that was garbage. I don't know. I just don't know what these people are thinking. They are tagging fucks up son, dude. Brian, the hunt is over my quest, my quest for a hub for my, my MacBook and my air and all that good stuff. It's finally over. I went with the bridge stone Pro. Now,

Brian Schulmeister 52:36
sure those aren't tires.

Jason DeFillippo 52:38
That's what it does sound like, does sound like a set of tires. It's a port hub. It's not really though because it sits underneath your computer. So you don't even see it. It's you get like you know, a bunch of Thunderbolt ports, you get a bunch of USB ports, you get a display port, you get a headphone port and a SD card port in there too. And,

Brian Schulmeister 53:01
and it tilts your laptop up for you.

Jason DeFillippo 53:04
Yeah, which I don't really care about. I care about that it's tilted up. Because that way all the heat when the fans come on, and it tries to achieve lift off every time I turn it on, then yeah, I care about that. But in but then the nice part is it's one plug from the the hub to the computer, and then you still have at least on a MacBook Pro, you've got three ports open, right, so you can still even plug more shit into it if you want to. It was like 250 bucks, but they were running a deal where I got 40 bucks off. So it was still a little over 200 bucks with shipping. It arrived today I plugged it in works as advertised. You know, I got tons of shit plugged into it, and it works. And when I need to do it, I can just unplug the one plug after I unmount all seven hard drives that are attached to it. But yeah, it's it's not bad. It's not a bad piece of kit. And the power brick on it is three times the size of the actual hub, though.

Brian Schulmeister 54:00
Oh, boy. Yeah. Okay. It's huge. It's huge.

Jason DeFillippo 54:03
All right. So and this next one I put in for you. It's called kettle.

Brian Schulmeister 54:07
Yeah, I took a look at it. This is sponsored by Google. It's supposed to be a Google search engine. I'm a bit gun shy of these things having been burned by YouTube for kids, the app which, which definitely features Russian crazy videos all the time and it. But I haven't had a chance to poke around with it too much. But what I've seen I like I'm not quite ready to open up the browser for my kid yet and let him know that that world exists. Because he's got damn smart. And I mean, you know, digital native is no joke, Jason. I mean, this kids barely over four. And he knows how to work my iPad better than I do at this point. Perfect. Oh, yeah. The tech support builds in tech support and a few years definitely there's no doubt about that. But this looks cool. So if you've got a slightly older kid out there, you might want to take a look at this and I'm going to be poking around with it over the next couple weeks to just to see what actually comes up as I Search for things and how I can break it. So yeah, before I can fix it, you know,

Jason DeFillippo 55:04
yeah, it's a visual search engine for kids. I don't even know if we said that yet. But that's basically what the what the promises of it so if you got a kid check it out. I don't and I don't think bamm bamm knows how to use a mouse yet so we're gonna pound not yet. Yeah.

Brian Schulmeister 55:18
So when I came to Canada, I was trying to pack lean and mean because we were just basically taking three suitcases and whatever we could bring with us as what we brought wing with us. So I did not pack my Apple TV. I went, alright, let's give it a go with just an amazon fire stick because it's a very small goddamn, that thing's a piece of crap. Good. I'm glad I didn't buy one. No, it's it's horrible, it is slow, it is sluggish. I've never actually tried to use it day to day like I've had it for a long time. And I've had it my TV in the bedroom in my place in Santa Monica. So like when my kids watching something, and if I want to watch a soccer game, or a baseball game, I can run in the back, like load up Fox Sports or whatever, and watch the game or just have it on. So that doesn't actually involve like switching between things or you know, trying to, you know, then go to, you know, like, whatever, you know, Netflix or something, some other huge integrated app on top of it. And it was fine for that purpose, but trying to actually use it as my only thing to watch TV. I was ready to throw it out the window two days here. So of course, I ordered immediately a new Apple TV that came here the other day, and my God, God, that experience is so much better. I got the new Apple TV 4k. I was hoping to get another year of of Apple TV plus out of that. I'm pleased to say that I do get to enjoy three months of Apple arcade something I will never use instead, which is a bit of a bummer.

Jason DeFillippo 56:48
Well, your kid might

Brian Schulmeister 56:50
Yeah, well, I don't want him on games yet. Like we're already trying to limit screen time as much as we can. That's that's not something we want to get them into at this point. But the Apple TV 4k is it's just such a better experience for for be you know, just running apps and watching TV and streaming it I can't, I will never use that fire stick again. I will burn it in a fire before I actually use it again. So it's great. So we will eventually bring my other older Apple TV over here it will have the two of them. And one thing that they did is they made an attempt to fix the biggest problem with Apple TV, which is the remote.

Jason DeFillippo 57:24
I was gonna say does it come with that same shitty ass remote,

Brian Schulmeister 57:27
basically, but they've put a slightly appraised ring around the menu button so it's easier to find menu.

Jason DeFillippo 57:35
That's all I did. I just put duct tape on mine because the problem was he didn't know which way was up.

Brian Schulmeister 57:40
Well, now you do because you've got that appraised ring. Right. So okay, so that it helps with that. But yeah, I have a sticker on my remote at home too. It was the only way I could tell what the hell's going on.

Jason DeFillippo 57:49
best thing to do is just use your phone. I just use my phone with mine. Yeah, the remote app on the phone is perfect, especially when you have to type in passwords and crap like that. Yep. Yeah, it works great. And there's an Apple Watch app for remote as well.

Brian Schulmeister 58:02
Yeah, I'm sure that'll be useful.

Jason DeFillippo 58:04
Yeah, of course. I haven't tried it. Like, I mold I can't see like squint to get my watch for that. I've got the older Apple TV or the one that came out right before the 4k. Yeah. And I have to use it every now and again. I don't use it mostly because I've got a Roku TV. And I have to use the Apple TV when I want to get anything on HBO max because fucking Roku still does not have an HBO max app. Right? assholes. But I will say that I do like my my Apple TV. And I know what the problem with your fire stick is. There's just not enough processor. No, it's just a USB stick.

Brian Schulmeister 58:39
They're tiny, which is exactly. But you know, in terms of trying to use it as day to day to do anything. Forget it. It's useless.

Jason DeFillippo 58:47
Yeah, we've got a Roku stick in my roommates bedroom. And every time we try and watch something on the Synology like streamed over the you know, the house network. If it's an mkv Forget about it. It there's no sound because it doesn't have the processing power to actually transcode the audio. Yeah. And I know that there's a way that you can do it in the Synology. But I've got an older one and I don't want it to catch fire while it's sitting out here in the garage all by itself. So I have to transcode everything in handbrake anyway now but yeah, we found that out the hard way. There's just no juice in those little snacks. You need something with some power to it. Yeah, speaking of things without any power, though.

Brian Schulmeister 59:26
Do you remember the Slingbox vaguely it was to the beat Roku out of the gate? I think they did. I think they were one of the first of those type services.

Jason DeFillippo 59:35
Well, what sling box was it was a box that you put in between your cable box and your TV. And then when you left the house, you could actually stream to wherever you're at.

Brian Schulmeister 59:45
Yeah. Which which is awesome. Like, awesome. I would love that right now, especially since I still have cable in Los Angeles and I'm sitting in Canada.

Jason DeFillippo 59:54
Well, turns out you're not going to get one and yeah,

Brian Schulmeister 59:56
you know why? Because they don't want you to be able to do that.

Jason DeFillippo 1:00:00
Well, there's no there's no real, you know, there's no real market for it anymore with all the streaming services. And so they're shutting down their services permanently in two years. And they're going to have like this tiered degradation, and different models will become inoperable over time.

Brian Schulmeister 1:00:16
And, you know, the sad part is that they become inoperable, if they kept running, those things would end up becoming extremely valuable. And let me tell you why there is a market for this, I would pay you money to install a sling box on your TV set right now, so I could get access to all your channels. And then I would put a sling box here, and if you wanted to watch Canadian shit, because we have a lot of weirder other stuff on our Netflix is and all that sort of stuff, you would be able to access that how great would that be?

Jason DeFillippo 1:00:42
Well, we have a very smart audience who likes to do hardware hacking types of things. I bet there's a Raspberry Pi solution out there that will let us do that type of thing. So guys, if you listen to the show, and you know about something that is like, you know, and like Slingbox OS open source type of deal, let us know because maybe, you know, you throw me a few bones to upgrade my internet access, because that's what I'd have to do only got 20 meg up then I would be more than happy to slap that puppy in here and let you watch all the soccer you can you can handle

Brian Schulmeister 1:01:14
sweet actually, soccer is much easier to get here. Thank God for that. Okay, this is the Food Network that you're missing. I really miss the Food Network man.

Jason DeFillippo 1:01:23
I knew it. I knew it. So the big one more thing event from Apple was a was a thing today, which I didn't watch because I've learned my lesson over the past 30 fucking years. Didn't

Brian Schulmeister 1:01:35
they have like three events in the last three months too? That's why this is one more thing. Yeah, exactly. This was the third because we couldn't apparently edit our program down to one event.

Jason DeFillippo 1:01:46
Yes, yes. This is the Return of the King. No, wait, return. The king was the second one was it?

Brian Schulmeister 1:01:53
No. That was last. Oh,

Jason DeFillippo 1:01:55
it was the last one. Okay,

Brian Schulmeister 1:01:56
yeah, cuz that's where you get the king Jason.

Jason DeFillippo 1:01:58
I know. I can't remember. You know, how long was it go that we watched those long time?

Brian Schulmeister 1:02:03
There was another one after that. Oh, Jesus.

Jason DeFillippo 1:02:06
Oh, the hobbit in the hobbit two Electric Boogaloo and The Hobbit three 3d. Fuck. Anyway, so the new m one powered Macs are out and they actually look pretty sexy. I got to say the specs on them are pretty damn amazing.

Brian Schulmeister 1:02:26
I saw somebody post online Oh yeah, let's use a first gen Apple device shutter.

Jason DeFillippo 1:02:31
Oh god no never ever ever. I mean I least waited a year before I got my 16 inch MacBook Pro and it still sucks so but you know these things seemed to be the next wave the the battery life is incredible. Everything's faster so I didn't even bother to go look at Intel stock today because I'm sure it was in the crapper. But the sad thing is my Apple stock didn't really go up. I was like, come on. Come on. Come on, guys go up. So I can sell it. I'm sick of this. But yeah, we got a new MacBook Air. We got a Mac Mini and new 13 inch MacBook Pro. Yeah. Which none of which I will be buying because I have enough processing power in my house to launch like in the next 17 Tesla missions. So good.

Brian Schulmeister 1:03:21
Yeah. when you really think about it. I mean, how many times could we send a man to Mars with just our phone? Yep.

Jason DeFillippo 1:03:32
We don't have a moron of the week. We have a hero of the week. I can't figure out who owns this domain because obviously, if we have Whois privacy nowadays, but loser.com Just go to loser.com you've probably seen it by now. But if you have it if you're one of the very few people who have been living under a rock, just go to loser.com that's all I'm gonna say. And you know, this is a multimillion dollar domain and that they have the hatred in their heart to do what they did. I salute them and they are a fucking hero.

Brian Schulmeister 1:04:03
So beautiful domain it's the most beautiful domain I've ever seen. So beautiful

Jason DeFillippo 1:04:09
feedback loop over at Patreon we've got Deseret Thank you Deseret she's our our staff was the sweetest, you know, she's Yes, she's one of our Swedes. But she's the one that back like went back and found the first instance of Bitner and the first instance of the furry comments, which we haven't even talked about with Bitner yet saving that for when you come back on and we've got Nolan Graham, miscellaneous misc leaf and circus

Brian Schulmeister 1:04:40
leaf. You should be old enough to remember. Oh, wait.

Jason DeFillippo 1:04:46
Okay, yeah, yeah, no.

My Nordic shit, they're SOC s. And then Brian beat with a Y. Yes. Like everybody who senses feedback thinks yours is spelled with a Y which it's not. It is not And he has a message for us. Would you like to read this one? Would you like to paraphrase it?

Brian Schulmeister 1:05:05
I'll paraphrase it again because I this this obviously this happened the episode I was gone and this isn't the only comment that come in I actually I deleted the other ones that came in because I didn't really need to get into it. I assume you you've slandered Indian programmers again, you did it in your not so careful verbiage as per usual,

Jason DeFillippo 1:05:23
right. And in the past in the past, when we have slandered Indian programmers, you have jumped on just as much as I have. No,

Brian Schulmeister 1:05:30
I agree. But I also explain it I'm talking about when we when you outsource to an Indian programming company, not not just you know, not Indian programmers. In general, we're talking about these these low rent $100 for your code that should have cost you about 10 grand Indian developers companies exist out there the you know,

Jason DeFillippo 1:05:51
episode, I'm pretty sure you're on the episode. We were talking about this because we were talking about how iPhones were going to move to India to get made but they were going to keep them in India. Or maybe that was no, no, you ever see this with air? Yeah,

Brian Schulmeister 1:06:03
because I remember, because I was off for the week. And then all of a sudden, I saw this vitriol coming in. And I was like, oh, what Jason do now. Okay, so

Jason DeFillippo 1:06:10
yeah, let me explain here. So this is a long running joke on the show. We bang on Indian programmers all the time, because it's fun to do, because we both got burned with, you know, basically the fiber of India is what we had to deal with back in the day. Now, I know, dozens of Indian programmers, I've worked with dozens of Indian programmers over my career. And I have very many friends who are in the tech industry who are Indians. And they get a chuckle out of every time I bag on them. Because they're smarter than I am. They build better software than I do. And it's just fun to bust their balls. This is just busting people's balls that I'm friends with. So this is no slam against, you know, Indian programmers in general. This is because back in the day, we got shipped code from them. And it's just fun to remind them over and over again about how bad it was back in the day. This is no sleight I'm not a racist. Give me a break. This is just busted my friends balls.

Brian Schulmeister 1:07:06
Okay, that was almost as long as his screed against you. Fair. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. No, I'm with you on this. I know why I didn't listen to the episode. So I have absolutely no idea what you exactly said. But I do know Jason has a habit of like, you know, not covering his ass when he says these things.

Jason DeFillippo 1:07:22
Yeah, I just assume everybody's listened to every single episode of the show and have has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything we've ever said. You know,

Brian Schulmeister 1:07:31
nobody Deseret has that.

Jason DeFillippo 1:07:33
Obviously, obviously, it over at PayPal, we've got nevolin David Theodore Florian breed Andrew mark, Miko as this is the late night. I was gonna say Raphael, but it's Michael and Ralph. They're going to become one person one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and of course, our great friend Martin.

Brian Schulmeister 1:07:51
Another good stock bet. Apparently, apparently, and over at Gog dot show Brian who spells it correctly with an AI wrote in. Not sure if you guys have seen this or not, your old Android device will no longer support many websites in 2021. According to a report from Android police, how do we get Android police but not internet police? I know like Yeah, what the hell yes. Many secure websites will no longer work on devices with Android versions prior to 7.1 point one new get would you trust an operating system called nougat?

Jason DeFillippo 1:08:22
Is that Ted nougat? is delicious. Lee racist.

Brian Schulmeister 1:08:27
In a loincloth? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, basically, the certification nonprofit organization Let's Encrypt recently announced that its partnership with Certification Authority ident trust will end on September 1 2021. With no plans to renew, they are planning to completely switch over to its own root certificate and stop default cross signaling for identity trusts on January 11. Basically, meeting your old Android ain't gonna work anymore.

Jason DeFillippo 1:08:53
Here's the easy fix. Go download download. You got me on the loincloth go down down Lloyd Bridges. Down Lloyd Bridges. Okay. There's definitely some poppin going on with this new microphone. That's crazy. I would say just go download Firefox because Firefox ships with its own root certificates and they updated the old built in browser that comes with the old versions of Ted nougat will not work. So you can just you can sidestep this by just going to either buy a new phone or download Firefox. There you go. And Barrett writes in for good laugh, head on over to loser.com All right. One of the many people who said that into us, yes. should be placed our bets on how soon Trump will manage to get permanently banned from Twitter. And this is an article from the verge Trump, Trump Trump Trump telling you man, it's you got me late at night. I should be asleep right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:45
Later. It's six o'clock.

Jason DeFillippo 1:09:48
I go to bed at seven. I've been up since three in the morning. All right. Trump will lose his Twitter public interest protections in January, which means he could lose his account. Praise be to all offer that

Brian Schulmeister 1:09:59
automatically. He Well, as soon as he doesn't have the special privileges of being a world leader anymore, because God knows he's not going to change, so Oh, no,

Jason DeFillippo 1:10:07
no, no, no.

Brian Schulmeister 1:10:08
So we'll move over to whatever the right wing version of Twitter is. I can't remember what it's called anymore.

Jason DeFillippo 1:10:13
Yeah, again either something something they did actually, he'll probably go back to ELO.

Brian Schulmeister 1:10:19
That'd be awesome. Ralph writes in high grumps research into COVID safe concert venues is yielding some potentially promising results everything from ventilation systems to seating alternatives to snack distribution options are being investigated. This article is a bit long but very interesting and this is over the New York Times Coronavirus study in Germany offers hope for concert goers. I have been following the story for quite some time well before the New York Times synopsis about this but analysis of an indoor concert staged by scientists in August suggests us the impact of such events on the spread of the Coronavirus is low to very low, as long as organizers ensure adequate ventilation, strict hygiene protocols and limited capacity. According to the German researchers who conducted the study. I don't know the last time that you went to a concert venue. But I do not remember there being at events, there was no ventilation, there are no hygiene protocols. And I packed in like sardines. So so then there is no argument for not having such a concert, Dr. Michael gackle, part of the team at Martin Luther universities Halle Wittenberg, who conducted the study and is obviously never been to a concert in his entire fucking life, said in an interview, the risk of getting infected is very low. So again, to for venues of almost any size to achieve the kind of strict hygiene protocols and the adequate ventilation discussed in these studies will cost a lot of money more money than any venue has, after having been shut down for almost nine months. Now. The limited capacity is is a real problem. So basically, there is an argument here, Dr. Michael, it's a financial argument of venues cannot afford to get themselves up to the capacities required. And then the things required for this. And the reduced capacity required, basically makes it a money losing proposition for the venues for the artists and for the promoters. I trust me, I've talked to venues, artists and promoters, and based at the level of the number of people that you have to cut it back to to make it safe. It's not financially viable. It just isn't. I can see this being good news for small scale local events, churches, things of that nature. But even then they'd have to have that infrastructure in place for the various protocols. The ventilation alone, schools don't have fucking proper ventilation.

Jason DeFillippo 1:12:38
I'm sorry, I've been to a lot of concerts in my life. Most concert venues don't have the budget to clean the fucking bathroom. Exactly. So I don't think they're gonna put in space age ventilation systems.

Brian Schulmeister 1:12:49
I don't think people realize what a low margin industry the music industry really is, especially touring. It's just very low margin, even with the incredibly large ticket prices compared to when we were kids, that the people don't have this kind of money. And it's just never going to work at reduced capacity. It's just not so

Jason DeFillippo 1:13:09
rip concerts. And it goes on to say hey grumps, gotta love those algorithms tweets have spoken Twitter search links Trump to loser I tried this out. So if you did search for loser on Twitter, it was pretty fun.

Brian Schulmeister 1:13:22
If James sent it Yeah, this week brings a chuckle and this is the link over at YouTube the Mandalorian green child of mine sweet child of mine parody.

Jason DeFillippo 1:13:32
I didn't get a chance to look at this one was a good

Brian Schulmeister 1:13:34
i don't know i hate Guns and Roses.

Jason DeFillippo 1:13:36
Yeah, same here. Anyway, Vincent writes in dear BMJ, that sounds wrong please read the company name in the article aloud like you do in your amazon shopping order voice that might cheer me up because for some odd reason the alcohol aisle was closed at 6pm today in the local supermarket here in Dublin want to blasphemy level five COVID restrictions doesn't mean alcohol is non essential last time I checked. Island Exactly. And this is a link from the Guardian company forced to change name that could be used to hack websites the company now legally known as that company whose name used to contain HTML script tags limited set up by a British software engineer now the original name was basically a cross site scripting.

Brian Schulmeister 1:14:24
Yeah, backward Chevron Chevron script source equals https colon slash mjt dot x ss.ht Chevron Ltd there was my Amazon

Jason DeFillippo 1:14:37
Yeah Dad the other call sorry.

Brian Schulmeister 1:14:38
Yep.

Jason DeFillippo 1:14:39
Yep. So pretty good.

Brian Schulmeister 1:14:41
Pretty funny. Clever. Yep. Mario writes in hi I thought you might find this interesting if you haven't already covered on the show reminds me of all the dirty laundry that poured out when Verizon bought and bought Yahoo almost an Amazon. That would be funny. FCC fines T Mobile $200 million for Sprint's alleged abuse of low Income subsidies turns out sprint was claiming that there were a whole bunch of people claiming the low income monthly subsidies. And they were just pocketing the cash that they got

Jason DeFillippo 1:15:11
motherfuckers Damn,

Brian Schulmeister 1:15:14
we're in the wrong business and we're way to go wrong

Jason DeFillippo 1:15:16
business. Yeah, that's the problem. There's your problem are actually nice guys. Believe it or not. In over at iTunes. We've got one from Little slime. This is a five star and the title is excellent. The perspective. The pie 400 plus just shows everything goes full circle. Remember the Commodore VIC 2064 and Amiga 500? Certainly do a keyboard with all computing built into it. When are we gonna see the return of the five and a quarter inch floppy? Just saying go work for the military and working working to missile 740 707 47? Yeah, yeah.

Brian Schulmeister 1:15:49
If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to Gog dot show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to Gog dot show slash review. and toss us a five star and snarky review. And here's where Jason pimps overcast and the desperate hope that we'll get back to number one.

Jason DeFillippo 1:16:07
I gave up bekam. Okay.

Brian Schulmeister 1:16:13
Shout out to everyone who voted. I know it was a million years ago. Now. I'd say it doesn't matter who you voted for. But if you are one of the 70 million people that watched the last four years and said, Yeah, let's have some more of that. You're fucking insane.

Jason DeFillippo 1:16:27
Yep, pretty much.

Brian Schulmeister 1:16:30
And of course, a shout out to Alex Trebek. I mean, my god. I'm so glad I went to to one of the tapings I got to experience that Jeopardy is just one of those shows that I have watched on and off my entire adult life and it's a sad sad he's gone.

Jason DeFillippo 1:16:46
Yeah, we saw it coming but a at least you got to see the the election called. Yep. And this is a shout out to listener I don't know how to pronounce this. It's shell chiz Sure. Something like that. I was gonna say shekels but something like that over on discord who lost their mother this week to see 19 so we're very sorry for your loss. And we just wanted to give you a shout out and say stay strong and you have our sympathies, for sure. And to everybody else. We're fucking mask

Brian Schulmeister 1:17:14
please do. Until next time. I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Jason DeFillippo 1:17:17
And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks. This show is a labor of love but your support keeps the show going. If you like the show, or or tolerate the show, please visit God dot show slash donate to help us out and we'll love you forever or visit Gog dot show slash shop and pick up some good old fashioned swag. And we still need to update and seriously update it if you can't do that then please pass the show along to a friend word of mouth is the only way the show grows. So spread the grump far and wide Show Notes for this episode are at Gog dot show slash 483. From there you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag and get links to stuff we like. Stay Grumpy!