 Welcome to the first edition of Off Topic where we cover some news in a whole lot of opinion. Yeah, a lot of opinion. So this is our new thing we want to do on Tuesdays so we're going to have Vlog Thursdays and we're going to have our Off Topic Tuesdays where we can consolidate our rants on a few news items that happen each week. Don't look for Vlog Thursday to get any shorter though. We have so much to say. So much. It's true. Alright. We'll talk about the first thing because he may have an opinion on this. Apple being sued for purposely slowing down older model of phones. How's that phone going? You know what? Here's the thing. So I have to believe it because it's happening to me and I didn't realize what was going on but I was like man my phone just really seems to be slow. Now I admit I'm using a 6s. So I'm three phones behind I guess. So how about for example? Six plus, I'm sorry. So there was the 6, the 6s, the SE, the 7, oh gosh I'm way behind. Fair enough. So you're also way slowed down. Yes, but it did seem to be like all of a sudden, right? And I really noticed that I have car play in my car, right? So I plug it in and all of a sudden after like two updates ago I think it was like my phone would just be so slow as I'm trying to use car play like my hands free or anything like that. I want to send a text message or whatever. It would be so slow. And then I start noticing in other things and I tried a bunch of different you know change settings and turn different things off and it just didn't seem to make a difference and then I read an article. But did you join the class action lawsuit? Well I haven't been given the option yet because I think the class action suit is pretty new. Now I got to admit and this happened to me actually, well it happened to me a week ago and it happened again yesterday. I have the Nexus 6P and I just did a review of it, not the long goes I've been really happy with it. I'm so overlaw happy with it as a phone. I'm a heavy user of the phone because I take pictures and everything. And my 6P is shutting off randomly and it turns out it's a battery problem, battery going bad so I have to replace the battery in it which I'm going to replace it by getting another phone and then I'll replace the battery in it because Tom is not good at phone repairs but we'll do a funny video called Tom tries to fix his phone and it ends horribly. There's people out there that know how to fix it. I've watched the videos and they make it look easy and someone says Tom you make things look easy. I'm like yeah you know how many times I screwed it up before I did a video on it to make it look easy and I know it's the same thing that's going to happen to the phone. Tom only records like his 23rd or 24th attempt at doing something. So I do understand why they did it. I guess it makes from a technical standpoint sense. So what they did is... But you have the people, the option is my opinion. Yeah, so what they did if you haven't seen or heard is that they, with the last two updates they basically they slowed down the phone. They slowed down the phone. Their contention is that they made changes so that it wasn't taxing the battery so much that it you know it wasn't doing like multiple processes and this and that which you know what if that's your fix for a problem fine but you've got to let me know that you're doing that. You need to say hey this is our fix for it. You can choose to do that or your phone might shut off at any given time and then I can decide whether or not I want that or Apple has their battery replacement plan. I can choose to pay $70 and have you replace the battery for me. And we'll link to this over on Mac rumors where we pulled the article phone and became enraged about. Yeah, so much so. But at least I know why my phone's acting like crap. At least you know why the phone's bad. That's the important part. And let's be honest I wanted the new eight anyway. Yeah. What about the 10? It's like in a mode. It's a unicorn emoji machine. It's the only reason you should buy it because it's a unicorn emoji machine. Right. I dropped my phone too much. Okay. And that thing is like glass all around. It's expensive to fix. Yeah. Apple. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Says the guy who says he wants a Pixel 2. Exactly right. Well. All right. Now this one's kind of fun and this is Marvin's laughing because my comment all the time in the tech world is it goes from fun to felony really quick. I love that. That's so true. It's so true. It's so true. And there's an article over on Krebs and security. The Mirai IoT botnet co-authors plead guilty. Two men identified in January 2017 by Krebs and security as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware string, a remotely so-called internet of things, devices, and security cameras, routers, digital video recorders for use in large attacks assigned to knock websites off an entire network soft line, including multiple major attacks against this site. Yes. So Krebs directly cares a lot about this because he got his site taken down by the largest DDoS in history. It was an incredibly big. Yeah. They also took down Dine DNS, which knocked out part of the eastern seaboard here in the United States. I believe there was also a French ISP they decided they wanted to turn off. Now the backstory on how this started was they started a Minecraft server and how would you get more people on your Minecraft server? Get off other ones? Exactly. It's such a simple idea if we attack the other ones. You're just completely wrong. I mean, they started like, well, do this, but their little IoT botnet of hacking IoT and secure devices turned into, because you know what the S stands for in IoT, right? What the S stands for? Yeah. There is no S. Security. Yeah. So these devices are notoriously bad and in terms of security, that's just a common problem with them. When these guys took advantage of them, the thing is, because everyone plugging in their toasters and refrigerators on the internet, this is how the internet dies, not with something, you know, more significant it's toasters and refrigerators that destroy the internet. We've been fighting for net neutrality this whole time and it's going to be a toaster that brings it down. Is it toaster is taking a whole, yeah. Because somebody needs to be at work and see whether or not they need milk in the refrigerator. Yep. I guess that would be useful. But anyway. Yeah. So these guys did it. It drives me nuts. And this is, this is the anger part of the whole thing is the pundits on all the news because they just are so disconnected with understanding of technology and they're like, it's a North Korea attack. It's the Russians. It's some nation state actor with this much power. No, it's two kids. It's a couple kids out of Minecraft server, right? Well, people have a hard time grasping how the internet scales and how three kids can shut down a piece or like the internet is this big globally DARPA project and protected thing and it's so resilient. And oh my God, they just taken out by some kids who are Minecraft server. Yeah. Now, now, now to be fair to the pundits, one of the gentlemen does have a very foreign sounding name. So, yeah, I mean, I guess if you only, I don't, I guess if you only looked at his name instead of his partner, Josh White. I can see where you'd make the leap. Yeah. Well, the pundits were really upset before we identified these people that they were trying to attribute to everyone in the North Korea angle. That one drives me nuts in particular. Now, I understand Russian hackers because I can't say I understand them, but I'm going to say I understand how you have a Russian hacking community. You have you have a nation with people with computers that are like, hey, let's go break into these US people stuff. People reward it. It's not very illegal there at all. That's why so many of them are there. So I kind of get like there's a there's a hacker culture in Russia that supports it when you don't have computers and you're in North Korea. How do you create the smart hacker culture? Maybe I don't understand something about them. There was actually a better article I had found a while ago, and if I couldn't find it again, but it was how it was somewhat how hard the North Koreans are because all of our tools are technical now. So the old spy games like from the 60s work against North Koreans. But the new stuff like we tried hacking their email, they don't have email. Like we tried sending a phishing attack through an email and you can't hack what's not there. You can't hack what's not there. So by being offline, they're actually a puzzle because the usual methods of espionage just don't work. It's genius, really, when you think about it, really. So which also brings me to how do you keep attributing them to be the ones who did something? Because they have it's in a basement somewhere. There's a secret hacker in North Korea's basement. I don't know. They're the same guys building their rockets. Yeah, I see you guys building rockets. Now, I like this one, the Facebook snooze button. That, yeah, that's interesting. I so who doesn't have someone? Oh, well, sure. Someone who's actually given up on Facebook, which can definitely happen. There are times I want to. OK, let's do this with you. Facebook snooze button can mute annoying friends for 30 days. Which I've unfollowed most of Mari, but maybe I can go back to some of the people who instead of unfollowing. Now, I snooze people for multiple reasons, not just political ones. It's sport ball ones are very common. Like, oh, no, a sport ball season. I don't watch it. I don't have any problem with people watching it. But Facebook's algorithm for all its attributions of being intelligent. It does not know not to show me sports. I, yeah, yeah, are you just get people that just feel it necessary to post every thing about their daily life, every minute of the day. Yeah, I just don't care. I'm sorry, or people who are overly excited about their new children or mute them until they're three. Mute until child turns three should be. I want like contextual options like that. When their kid turns three and everything's not cute anymore. Then you can unmute. That actually is a genius idea. I want reg X expressions in Facebook so I can create formulas. That's what I really want, not just a snooze for 30 days. It's a snooze for a couple of years because this person's really excited or give us a snooze for three years, which I know he's not watching, but my friend Mike makes me laugh because he has made a life decision that his two children are not ever going to be posted on Facebook or any social media for that matter. He says it's not a choice he feels he can make for his children. I find that kind of interesting. He's very adamant about it. And he is so far. He just had another kid and his wife has shared pregnancy photos that she was pregnant, lets people know. But yeah, there's never been a photo of his children. Yeah, other than in her belly, apparently. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Well, you know, good for him. Thank you for saving us from all that. Yeah, so soon as one kind of cool idea. Also in Facebook news, Facebook will use facial recognition and tell you when people upload your picture. Now, Facebook's been in news like they're solving the problem they created. Yes, very true. Wheel out everyone, upload your photo in this incredible system. And now we have a solution for when you don't want your photo uploaded so that drunk photo someone took you at the bar that you didn't post yourself that someone go look what Tom's up to. Yeah. But does it let you, can you take it down though? That's the thing. That's the concept. Is that you'll be able to know when pictures that you're uploaded so you can be notified and potentially ask them to be removed. This is a little better than the nudes one where they wanted you to, Facebook wanted your nudes. I think that was like a couple of weeks back. Yeah, send us your nudes. Send us your nudes photos. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I like this idea, but I would want, I mean, what is the process now if I want a photo on somebody else's profile taken down? You mostly wouldn't know what happened. That's the debt where they're issued. Right, but like if I stumble upon it. Oh, you can mark it for review and review. Yeah. So I have to like, but I have to ask Facebook like take this down. Yeah. You have to ask Facebook to take it down. So there's a method by which you can get rid of it. I'm sure that takes time though and if I have a job interview tomorrow. You know, I mean. You're like. Not that I have a job interview tomorrow. But if he did. But if I did. It would be a thing. So it doesn't even think, I don't know, this is a problem Facebook created and it's going to be, it's scary right now because a lot of people I hear, I have a lot of techie friends, especially security friends who are like, I don't use Facebook. I'm like, what Facebook uses you just so you know. Yeah. And part of, I am, I like Facebook because I'm controlling the narrative. So I'm not going to say it's the useless thing. I'm like that with any of these social media tools. I want people to be aware of them. I feel as though you're controlling the narrative but there is times when narrative becomes out of your control because PS, people do post that. One of my other friends when they got married they had a rule called a no social media wedding. They actually had no, they wanted everyone not to take a single photo with their cameras. That was a request before there. They talked about, and they just knew they couldn't do it without people being irrational about it. They wanted to collect the phones and get them back to you at the end of the wedding or just ask you to leave them in the car. Yeah. And people, too many people want their phones at any wedding because I mean weddings sometimes are kind of, I do this at a wedding. Yeah. I'm actually not taking pictures. I'm like, sorry. Sorry if I was doing it at your wedding. Well that's because we've entered that generation of people at the wedding. We're not the young people at the wedding anymore. We're not. We're the old people. I don't know. Yeah. Our next iteration is like we're going to be, we're further from the bar. What if I do this at a funeral? Oh, now see, that is uncalled for. Well I guess it depends, I don't know. But our next step is to be the ones like trading glasses and stuff at the table. It's like, oh try mine, mine are better prescription. We're getting there. We'll trade glasses. We're getting there. Now what I do like about the Facebook thing is if they use a profile picture, so if somebody's like trying to pretend to be you. Yes. That's actually something they're getting better at because I get a whole lot of that. It turns out a whole lot of pretty women don't really want to say hi to me on Facebook. What? I know. They all seem to want to say hi to me. I know. Yeah. If you have a money in fact, really they needed it. Well you know, they're a bit there in med school. Med school. They need help with it, so I help them out. Yeah, I think Facebook's trying to, the two billion people on there are trying to do this. It's really interesting too because Facebook has so much data right now and they have all these things that we uploaded. I mean, the FBI database has nothing on the amount of data. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah, so there's some bigger implementations and I'm not saying tech is bad and I understand the perspective of my security friends, but I'm also, like I said, I post on Internet of Control the narrative, but on the other side of it is the whole, the facial recognition database is just insanely big. Being able to recognize anyone will Facebook lease that government data? Will they lease it to the government? Will they be used to that and put on any crime? I don't know. I don't know what we're going with it, but it's really interesting and it's, you know, worth thinking before it's kind of takes over. What do you think about, one of the other things I read in here was that for using it like to recover like a password and stuff to use their facial recognition for that. Yeah, I thought that was interesting to use too. I thought that was too. So you can use the facial recognition on there and that was pretty cool too. I'm still not convinced on that though. I mean, even though I know it's supposed to be so much more secure using facial recognition to unlock like the new iPhones and stuff. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not completely sold on that. Yeah, it doesn't work for twins. Yeah, exactly, right? Well, I mean, I don't have a twin, but I mean, I apparently have a doppelganger somewhere around cause people are constantly like, Hey, I saw you at Meyer and I'm like, you didn't, you did not see me there. Yep. So we're careening to the end of this little segment. We just grabbed a few news articles, shared our opinions with you. What else would you like to see on here? Or what would you like us to rant about? And if you say nothing at all, don't worry, we're still doing it next Tuesday. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll just probably have more articles. Louis Christmas, so I was limited on what we had in here. But we will share this last thing because I love Reddit. That's where I spend a decent amount of time. And this is from the Boot 2 Big Blog. And uh... Which is great. So I'll start here. Roses or reds, onions have layers. Minnesota town, reelects dog as mayor. Have fun guys. See you next week. Like and subscribe, tell you what you want to hear. That's great. I love the picture they used. I know. He's just like, mm. Yeah, don't. I want to find out who's the mayor.