 Boom. Welcome to Off Topic Tuesday, where we are going to be on topic, off topic today. Yes, we are going to stay on topic about the off topic things. Yes. That's how it works, right? We're progressing in our lighting situation. We have made progress. We've heard changes have been made and we heard the audio problem in the last one, which we couldn't fix in post because it was echoey because of a mic setting. I think we have that solved. Hold on. All right, that's solved. Two thumbs up. We're ready to go. All right, and we can't ignore the elephant in the room, the bad software that led to epic problem. This is actually scary. People said goodbye to their families. Oh my gosh. One guy, there's some stories I'm ready of what did you do when this happened and one person's like, I called my family said goodbye and I told them I was just gonna sit on the beach and watch the fireworks. Yeah, people were headed literally underground. In case you're wondering, one person had commented that apparently the former, the Clintons were on the island. Oh, really? And they seen the Secret Service getting completely all done up and everything went on locked down there. So I mean, it was like, they didn't know that this was a mistake. Now, I've seen people already pointing conspiracy this and that and there's more to the story. No, no, no. It's so true. And it comes down to bad design and someone made a joke of because we don't know what it actually looks like, but we from the descriptions, we've heard it looks a lot like what's on the screen right now. Mm-hmm. They had a little pull down and right next to it was like Miss Alert Test or Miss Alert. Yeah. And they had one person without verification who had this pulled on as an option on a computer. And look, we've worked long enough in the software and hardware and computer industry to tell you that dumb things happen. Bad UIs are designed all the time and you're gonna tell me that the lowest bidder that built whatever government program sends the Miss Alert out has a good UI design. We've seen billion dollar companies with bad UI design. Yeah. Trust me, I'm not thinking that. Yeah. Why is it like when I want to download an app, I have to click yes, I'm sure, 17 times. But when this person clicks the pull down of tell Hawaii a missile is coming. So that just goes. Yeah. There's no, are you sure? Yes. It's just. Or maybe there was, but the last time they did it, they checked the don't show me this again. Something like that. That was probably it. Don't show me this again. This is just clicking next and yes. And there's apparently there wasn't a confirmation either. So that makes it like, are you sure you want to panic everyone in Hawaii right now and all the government people and everything else? So, yes. Yes, I am. They might have still clicked it. Yeah. That's why we sometimes need human intervention as much as we like all these systems. We need another one. Bob, should I press this? Yeah, go ahead. All right. You know, so it's have people go ahead spend if that's what you want to spend your time doing believing there's some deeper game at play here. And that it's not just a bunch of stupid people in mass build a program. Well, which is usually the more likely case and a much more plausible explanation for so many. It's a little more comfort to believe that there are evil people in charge of the world as opposed to stupid people. It is. It's one of the. I love this. This is one of the reasons people love conspiracy theories because you can beat them. Do you know how hard it is to be groups of stupid people? Oh my gosh. You can't. It's easier to think that there's some behind the scenes person plotting and going it's because it becomes us versus them. We've seen this in the movies and if we can figure out their secrets and who they are and unmask this villain, we could take over. When really you're like, oh boy, it's a whole lot of dumb people. And then it comes to the quote, never underestimate stupidity in mass because it just gets worse. What is it? Don't don't argue with a stupid person. They'll drag you down to your level to their level and be with experience. Yes. So yeah, I know. I know it's fun and conspiracy theories are entertaining, but I'm sorry. It's unless the conspiracy was putting that pull down in knowing that one day somebody would click the wrong. That's the conspiracy. That's the conspiracy. All right. Now, because Spectre and Meltdown was so much fun, we have a do-do-do-do-do-do. Inspector Gadget. Do-do-do-do-do-do. It's a little gadget made by Steve Gibson over at Gibson Security Research Corporation. If you're not familiar with Steve Gibson, he's a co-host of the Security Now podcast. I know there's people that have mixed emotions about him. I don't agree with absolutely everything Steve Gibson does, but I think he's a pretty intelligent guy. He's been around the security community for a while, and I love when he writes these little tools and gadgets like this one. It tells you whether or not you're vulnerable to the Meltdown or Spectre. It's a little Windows tool, and it lets you know whether or not you've been patched and if those patches are in place. Cool. We want to give you something useful today. And it's on topic, off topic, so... Yes, see. And this show, when we go off topic, we're on topic. And Steve missed the opportunity to put a little Spectre Gadget logo and call it Inspector Gadget. So if Steve actually bothers listening to me, which I'm sure you don't, I'm going to tweet this at him. Please recall it that and make an Inspector and Gadget-inspired Spectre logo. Because that would be wonderful. And I love that kind of humor. And please, when you fire it up, let it play do-do-do-do-do. And that's it. Yes. That's all I wanted to do. When you start it do-do-do-do. I want to do do-do-do-do-do when it opens. Recompile it, Steve. Please. That would make me so happy. We beg of you. CES. That's a big thing that's been going on. Yeah. Well, it's done now. So it's done. The blackout was wild. There was a part of me, and I've seen someone tweeting about this. This is so awful. There were people who had their phones and those charging things that you lock. You know, you put them on the charge. When the power went out, they just... They couldn't unlock the box. Right. So they just had to watch their phones slowly dying that they couldn't get into the box for because there's no power. That's going to be a horror movie in like 20 years. That's tragic. That's tragic. People just like scratching at the... So are you ready to talk to your toilet? You're assuming I don't already. True. I just talk crap to it, so... Well, sometimes you have to tell it to choke it down. So the... So, I don't know. I... CES to me this year was a lot less exciting. I didn't go, which is also... I never went, so I guess I would have saved if I went. But it wasn't exciting. I usually look forward to some new products that might come out that are cool. But it's just like the phone market. Guess what chip is in my new phone? The same chip that's in all the new phones. It's become almost cookie cutter boring. But where the differences are, we put assistants and everything because they introduced 8K TVs last year, which means this year they're going to introduce... 16? Nope. They've been the help of the standard yet for 8K. More than 8K for transmitting the data. So we're still stuck at 8K. Oh, by the way, we're still working on... There's a lot more 4K content. I don't know where the 8K content maybe it'll come one day. So there just didn't seem... Other than they made some TVs bigger and brighter. But what they really did was not just shove one assistant. Some of them shove two assistants in them because we want an assistant and your assistant, man. And then we put an assistant in your toilet. Yeah, some assistants need assistants. Sometimes I need assistants when I'm on the toilet. Yeah. I mean, on the off chance that you didn't bring your phone to talk to while you're in the bathroom, you have a toilet that strikes your ball movements and you can talk to it. These are some of the products that... It's keeping you healthy. It's the Kohler Numi and Internet Connected Toilet. My wife just said no. She's just like, that's stupid. And I'm like, well, it's $5,000 which will also set me from buying it. Wow. Yeah. I know. The Kohler's latest high-end toilet connects the Internet in response to your voice commands. Beyond flushing, you can ask Amazon's Alexa as well as Google's Since and Apple series to lift the seat or activate your favorite bidet spray configuration. Programmable bidet spray. That's what I missed. I went to CES because I probably would have more footage of this than I should. I want to test the portable configuration alpha. I love my Alexa bidet spray. This is like Star Trek. It's losing it here. Hey, serious. This is like spraying my butt. I mean, I want to know the Amazon skills that I have to enter to get it to control the bidet. The tech pattern alpha. I want it like a Star Trek. I want to hear Picard's voice doing it. The tech pattern alpha. See, we thought the feature would be spaceships. No, no. See, it's how it attacks other things, dingling. Okay, we're getting way too mature. But they made this. This is a product. I'm laughing because this is a real thing they made. And they intend to sell it and people will buy it. You know what? To be honest, I would get one. I would totally get one. If I had just money to spend. Yeah. Yeah. Some people want solid gold toilets. I want to talk to them. I tell you what, if any of you buy this. Oh, please. I will do the video review. Yeah. As long as I can travel to wherever you're at, I probably can. No, Tom, think bigger. Kohler, send us one of these. Kohler, please. Believe me, we will punish it and let you know how well it works. You've seen our hot sauce videos. Yeah. So this is just, yeah. Go read about it. It's just off the wall. That's what we wouldn't want to hear though, is at one point our toilet would be telling us guys, lay off the hot sauce. Oh, man. So that's so far, that was the king of the prize. I should have left it last, but that one was pretty bad. But the cringe, the cringiest thing. So maybe that was definitely the most immature thing we've come up with. The cringiest thing has to be CS20 LG robot Chloe repeatedly fails on stage at his unveil. Oh, if you're ever feeling bad about how your day is going, if you're ever worried you'll mess up a presentation, you can't fail bigger than LG. No. The robot didn't respond to him, didn't respond properly when it did before it quit. So it's probably better that it stopped. And it's another thing that I don't get it. Well, and remember the whole point of the presentation was that it was a smart kitchen. It's part of your smart kitchen. It's part of your smart kitchen, right? So the headline is a robot created by LG to help users control it from repeatedly failed on stage at its CS20. Chloe was meant to be a centerpiece at South Korea's first presentation where it was supposed to show new artificial intelligence that could use enhancing kitchen appliances. Quick plug in your toaster to the internet. Yeah. So from someone who cares a little about security and a lot of these companies that plug toasters into the internet, don't. If you were a hacker, you could turn on the toaster when you don't want the toaster on. These are problems I foresee. You know what I don't have a problem with? If I want my toaster on, there's a knob. I'm complete. Matter of fact, I don't even have a digital toaster oven. I got one with a knob and a little clicky thing. Even if it's unplugged, the clicky thing counts down. It's amazing. Yeah. It's just one of those it ain't broke. Don't fix it. Yeah. It's like a better mousetrap. You don't need it. It's just, it's going to make your bread brown. Yeah. So I, I don't know. They're trying to really make the ultimate connected home. I sometimes feel, and this is where I get jaded a little bit with CES. Like, are you just trying to come up with something like just like, what can we put in here? A toaster that talks to your fridge. Okay. What does the toaster have to say to a fridge? They make this cooking thing. I remember it was a problem. I can't remember the name, but because it always goes out to internet to get cooking stuff. It's like when the servers were down, they couldn't finish cooking something. I'm like, this is just wrong. Just turn the damn oven on. Right? Yeah. Oh man. The refrigerator is like, that's, that fail is so cringe worthy. It's just, the refrigerator is like, Hey toaster, you're pretty hot. Toaster's like, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. Killing myself. I know. Anyway. Oh yeah. Do yourself a favor and watch that video. Yes. I mean, but you will feel good about yourself. Or watch Silicon Valley season three where he hacks the fridge. Did you see that? Yes. Epic scene. Love it. That's the future right there. Yes it is. All right. Foldymate can fold your entire load of laundry in four minutes if you do most of the work. That's the caveat. I will admit, less a fan of folding laundry. So I don't. Here. I won't lie. I bought all of the same socks and I continue to buy all the same socks. So I never had to pair socks because I got rid of all the socks. It didn't match and I have all the same socks all the time now. Well, but the only problem I have run into some socks are newer. Some socks are older as I keep replenishing the stack because my toes wiggle all the time because I'm fidgety and I wear holes in my socks. So some socks now become lighter gray and darker because they're been washed more times than others. I saw that by just not matching socks. I think life is too short to match socks. In fact, right now I'm wearing a red sock and an orange sock. My kids do that because I just don't. Well, that's like it. And I find out it's like a style trend, but I haven't matched socks for years. He was cool before it was cool. Yeah, man. Here's my thing. It's like you have to load the laundry in and then it folds it. But you got it. I don't know. It's dumb. We'll leave a link so you can watch it be dumb. It's just. Yeah, I don't. I don't understand. I mean, yeah, that's how I feel. I'm watching you load it going. I don't understand. So you put in a towel straight and it comes out folded. By the time I straighten it, Tal, I could do this. Yeah, that's just it. It's just not that hard. What I want, if any of these people are listening, it makes stupid technology that I just dump all the clothes in dirty and then they end up back in the door. Yeah. I had to have kids for that. Yeah, right. I don't have kids. So it doesn't work for him. My clothes live on the couch in the basement. I mean, having kids is a real expensive way to do it. Now, if this machine will fold a fitted sheet, it might be worth it because those still just kind of end up in a ball. Yeah. I roll stuff. So you just roll up your clothes. I guess that'll work too. Matter of fact, if you take pants, I just throw them out. You don't fold them. I roll them and they don't become wrinkled. You know, I've been doing that for a long time. I never, you know, I do that when I pack. Like in a suit case. You didn't know you were going to find on a tech channel. I don't know why I didn't do that. Why don't you just do that? So every day instead of when I'm just. Yeah. I do it when I'm packing. I like to go on a trip because it takes up less room. All my pants are in rows. I never really thought to do that. By the way, if you didn't know, if anyone ever wonders about this. One, Tom wears lots of swag shirts and I'm a, I don't know. There's probably a term for it. I'm a straggler that hangs out when shows are about over. So it'll give me all the shirts. So I have like three and four and six of the same shirt and it makes me really happy because I don't like to think about what I wear. I think they call those cheap bastards. I'm a, maybe, but when I, and even when I buy pants or things like that, they don't have pants to give away at any of these shows I've been to. That's an untapped market. Trust me. I'll drop trial and put whatever pants you have on. So if you've got some pants that got some logos on them, I'm in. I don't care. I want some pair of pants that says, free-nass on the blinds. I want some free-nass pants. P-F-Cents. P-F-C-E-N-T-S. This is actually is. I mean, they have the pink ones that everyone's wearing. Right? Yeah. Why not have tech pants? I'll put my, I'll put, I'll put your logo on my butt. I'll wear, I'll wear Linux logos on my butt. Anyways, what was I saying? Oh, pants are everything. Like I just buy all the same pair all the time. If I find one that fits, like I try one on and if it fits, I go buy all the rest of them in the wrecks I have. So I'm like, these pants fit. They're like, but it looks like you're wearing the same pants every day. I'm like, I don't care. They're comfortable. So now I have seven of these. So I can go on entire seven days of changing my pants, but having the same pair. And I'm so happy to do that. When I seen Zuckerberg talk about having an entire closet of gray shirts. Yeah. My man. Well, it's a great idea. Right? I mean, like, I don't think about what I'm going to wear. Yeah. But I'm like, I grabbed my shirt and I put it on. I think, I think style's fascinating. I have none of it though. So. So that's your folding mate story. The last thing is a fun thing we've seen on Reddit here. Let's get this opened up because I somehow closed it because I'm stupid. It kind of revolves around this urban legend thing. So the urban legend thing is why NASA uses pens. This is the joke that NASA's dumb. Ha ha. And let me pull this up so I can actually read it word for word and be accurate here. When NASA started sending astronauts into space, they realized that the bullet point pen would not work in zero gravity. A million dollar investment in two years later resulted in a pen that could rate in space upside down at almost any surface and temperatures ranging below freezing over to 300 below. When confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil. Ha ha. NASA, you dumb. You spent money. We get it. So this was posted on Reddit. Quit your bullshit, which I love. And here is the actual answer for those who care about science and research and actually not killing the astronauts. There's that. Russian space is amazing. They did it by sheer willpower. And watch CosmoDrome if you haven't seen it. It's an amazing documentary. I mean, amazed at the Russian space program. Also horrified at it at the same time. Like you guys did it at such a cost. Yeah. So here's the real answer. There were a lot of meanings that ended with this. Yes. Ha ha. Yes. So anyways, this is what we'll end this on. In the early space flight, both Russians and Americans used pencils in space. Unfortunately, pencil lead is a made of graphite, a highly conductive material. Snapped graphite lead leads to particles in zero gravity are a huge problem. A hugely problem. Oh, you are hugely problematic. Bad wording. Anyways, as they get sucked in the air ventilation, electronic equipment are easily causing shorts or fires in a pure oxygen environment in a capsule. After a fire in Apollo 1, which killed astronauts on board, NASA required a writing instrument that wasn't a fire hazard. Fisher spent over a million dollars of his own money creating a pressurized ballpoint pen, which NASA bought for 295 each. The Russian space program also switched over from pencils shortly after. The rest of it is 40 years later, snide morons on the internet still snigger about it. Because snide morons on the internet never know what they're talking about. Yeah. So, there's the behind the scenes story on there for those that care about science and things like that. And someone sent me a message and it wouldn't... Yeah. It couldn't see the bottom of it. It couldn't see the bottom of it. So, yeah. We'll leave you with that. Thank you for hanging out with us. You know, if you want to tweet off topic articles or something that you want me and Marvin to laugh about, we're actually thinking about covering some of the security stuff next week. We in hand have a conversation about some of the stupidity that goes on. And it directly relates to multiplicative stupidity. Because... Something stupid people can't say. Yeah. Something stupid people can't say. Time clickerly say it. Multiplicative. And it's... Well, the oatmeal has the definition of multiplicative stupidity. Oh, is it like one of their infographics? Yeah. Yeah. They will put up... We'll leave you with this. Yeah. It's called an idiocy, but it's... I said stupidity. The oatmeal's immutable law of multiplicative idiocy. And this is really what happens. This is... If you've worked... He worked in academia, so he's really well aware of this. All of it. And we want to cover more of this stuff. Because actually, this especially applies in so much of technology. If you take two half wits and put them together, you have a full wit, right? Wait. No. No. You have two half wits. You end up with a quarter wit. Yes. So, a bunch of people in the room does not make the meeting better. It's the multiplicative idiocy of if you have a lot of people with bad ideas, the meeting goes downhill faster. It is not additive. Yes. It's not additive. It's not... Remember your fractions? So, two half wits equal a quarter wit. This is... Because they're being multiplied together, not added. That's right. Yes. They're stupidity. They're idiocy, like, multiplies. It really begins... It becomes exponential, really. And I'm sure this is what led into this Hawaii thing at the beginning. Oh, yeah. So now we've brought it full circle. Oh, yeah. There was multiplicative idiocy of what do we just... What do you only need to one? Yeah. Let's keep making it less menus with no confirmation. Well, let's see. We only need to play one pair of spell verifications. No. No. I don't know. Just keep it simple, man. Keep it simple, man. If we make it too complicated, mistakes will happen. Right. All right. See you guys. If I don't do a video for them, we'll see you Thursday for a vlog Thursday. Yes. But I may have another video for tomorrow. And if you have off-topic ideas, send them to us. Tweet them to us. Put them in the doobly-doo below. Thanks. Yeah. Oh, like, subscribe, too. Yeah. Clickity-click. And send us a smart toilet. If someone wants to send us a smart toilet. Or if you've sat on one, let us know. Yeah, we want to know all about it. Or we don't. I don't know. Well, I do. See ya.