hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1652.txt

Episode: 1652
Title: HPR1652: GeekSpeak 2013-06-01
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1652/hpr1652.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 06:26:06

---

Its Tuesday 2nd of December 2014, this is HPR Episode 1652 entitled Geekspeak 2-0-1-3-0-6-0-1.
It is hosted by various Creative Commons works and is about 64 minutes long.
Feedback can be sent to or by leaving a comment on this episode.
The summary is showcasing the Central Coast Public Broadcasting Radio Show Slash Podcast Geekspeak.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Howdy folks, this is 51 and 50 for Hacker Public Radio and you're about to hear me just
say that again, but I forgot when I record the preamble for the podcast that I actually
wanted to start with a public service announcement for Hacker Public Radio.
The announcement is that if you're hearing this and there aren't a lot of new podcasts
by different hosts been dropped into the queue, then HPR is in an awful lot of trouble.
All you folks out there who keeps saying yourself, well, I'm going to do an HPR someday.
I've got to tell you later is now because if later isn't now, there may not be any later.
And I won't pretend that even though I've dropped a few shows in lately, I didn't do
anything the first eight months of this year.
I'm under no illusions that I'm the guy, keeping HPR going.
That guy's name would be Kevin O'Brien, but I gotta tell you folks, I've been dropping
some stuff in lately and I am just about out of ideas, well, this show, the one you're
about to hear is not really show I did, it's when I pulled in from the internet that
I thought you ought to hear to introduce you to a new podcast.
And the last couple ones I did were recorded back in May and I just sort of added them and
slapped them on the tail and threw them up here for Hacker Public Radio.
And the next idea I have is probably going to take me two or three weeks to finish and
if I'm going to have any responsibility involvement in the New Year show, I may not have time
to do that before the first of the year.
So I just want to warn you folks, I hope you're as tired of hearing my voice as I am of
talking and I hope that motivates you to jump in and contribute a Hacker Public Radio
episode of your own because if you don't, there's a very real possibility that you will
not have a chance to do so later.
So please, please hear me out and look in the calendar and if there aren't any more shows
after this one, then jump in and do something if you want to keep hearing HPR.
Thank you.
Howdy folks, this is 5150 for Hacker Public Radio.
As part of HPR's continuing effort to showcase Creative Commons works, we are proud to present
GeekSpeak.
GeekSpeak is produced as a radio show for community-based station KUSP and Monterey
California and REG Broadcast is a podcast available from Geekspeak.org.
It is a generally light-hearted and humorous technology news show with topics including
electronics, computing, robotics, and green tech.
Often guest speakers and offers from the technology world will come on for interviews.
The shows are just about an hour long.
These days the regular hosts are Bonnigene Primch, Lyle Troxel, Miles Elim, and Ben
Jaffy.
And I've been listening since the days when it was Lyle and Al Lookout.
You'd often hear them speak of thanking the puppet master for letting them continue
to use the name GeekSpeak.
For broadcasting for several years it was discovered that the term Geekspeak had been
registered as a service mark by David Lawrence for a podcast of his own.
You might remember Lawrence as the actor who played the character on Heroes with the
telekinetic ability to physically manipulate others against their will.
I had originally planned to showcase another episode, interestingly enough it was not
feature any of the regular hosts, but I found the subject matter to be very compelling.
It was from 2012, November the 24th, and titled Harry Fred, Digital Image Detective with
Robert Poli of the 7th Avenue Project.
Essentially Fred talked about the methods he used to determine whether a digital image
had been altered or not.
Ultimately I discarded that idea because the reason the normal hosts weren't on were because
none of them were available last that week.
It really wasn't Mr. Poli stepping in and hosting the show.
It was a rebroadcast of his show, The 7th Avenue Project, which generally deals a lot
with scientific topics, and I'm not sure of the licensing that he does of his show.
If you look in the show notes, there's links to the 7th Avenue Project, there's a link
to the rebroadcast show that I would have used, and there's a link to the David Lawrence
show, which I haven't had an opportunity to listen to, but I have an idea is entertaining
as well.
You can sort of think of this as a three-for-one deal if you go look at the show notes.
Geekspeak also has a long-standing tradition of using divos through being cool as intro
music and sometimes outro music, so only those episodes that employ a user-contributed
music instead are actually released as creative comments.
What you're about to hear from the 1st of June in 2013 is just such an episode.
It is Saturday.
June 1, 2013.
I'm broadcasting live from Santa Cruz on the Central Coast of California.
This is KWSP Public Radio 889 and KWSP.org.
It is time now for Geekspeak.
Welcome to Geekspeak, bridge of the gaps between Geeks and the rest of humanity.
I'm your host, Lyle Troxel, please keep in mind the music expressed during Geekspeak
are not necessarily those of KWSP today's theme songs by Michael Newman of Petstar Music.
In the second half of the show, we'll invite your participation in the phone numbers
1-800-655-5877.
I'm your host, Lyle Troxel, with me in the studio is Mr. Ben Jaffy, a Web Instructor
and World Traveler.
Bonnie, Jean, Premch, Broadcaster, Large, Mediator, and Printmaker.
And Homebody.
How's it going?
And another Homebody who hasn't been here for a while, but is now looking for work and
is on air doing so.
Is that why you're here?
Miles, Elam, welcome to Geekspeak.
Good morning.
Miles is a software engineer and political junkie and of course is on the air all the time,
but we seem to toggle lately and I haven't been on together I think this year.
So thanks for being here when I'm not and thanks for being here today.
So we're going to start out the news segment with Mr. Ben Jaffy, the biggest news I've
heard of this week at least.
Yeah, so water once flowed on Mars.
Now I mean, that doesn't kind of, it kind of doesn't seem like news if you've been
falling space news because we've been-
Guys, you guys!
When did there was water?
I mean like-
Guys, that's so cool.
No, I mean like we've had this headline over and over and over again, but that's the
way science works is, you know, they're like, hey, you know what, this might have happened.
And then, hey, you know what, we found evidence for this, hey, we found strong evidence for
this.
Well, we actually found very strong evidence for this and this is what this story is
about.
Our Mars rover, the Curiosity, which landed last year, I think it was.
And it's been rolling around and looking at things and zapping rocks actually, it even
has a Twitter feed, which we covered a while back about it's the Mars rover and a rock
we're having a Twitter exchange on Twitter and it got zapped and, you know, anyway.
So that's a rock, not a rock.
A rock, yes.
Why do I have images of Wally in my head of when he meets the Futuristic Robot absolutely?
So what's all this about pebbles?
What we found, what the Mars rover image is that there are these pebbles, which we call
clasps and the way pebbles move downstream and the way they stack up on the bottom of
a riverbed, that's basically the pattern we saw here.
And so we can infer that these pebbles actually used to be flowing in water.
And in addition to that, we were able to image them and they look very smooth, very close
to the kinds of pebbles that we see on the bottom of riverbeds here on Earth.
And then just from these different pieces of evidence and some imagery that we made, we
actually have been able to infer quite a bit.
For example, we are able to estimate that the flow velocities, how fast the water was
moving on Mars when it was, is about walking pace approximately.
It's kind of interesting to compare it to walking pace, though, because if you were on
Mars, you wouldn't be...
Not Mars walking pace.
Yeah, what's Mars walking pace?
Pretty similar.
But probably if it's slower if you're in a space suit, right?
Either that or you're in the process of dying gravity, so you might be actually faster.
Why don't they just say three miles an hour?
You're probably bouncing in more cautious, you know, if you look at the moon.
But anyway.
Also the water level was probably around ankle deep to waist deep.
How did I get that?
You know, by looking at the patterns, at the patterns of these pebbles and comparing
them to the dynamics of pebbles in situations that we already understand, like river deposits
on Earth.
What about high winds?
So yeah, that was also addressed in this, and they said that the pebbles are too big
to have been blown by high winds, so or by winds at all.
So it's a pretty interesting story.
Cool.
Also, I just want to say this name.
The robot apparently has this thing called the ChemCam remote sensing laser, and it was
able to fire it at different things and look at the, yeah, exactly.
It sounded just like that.
The episode that we covered, the Twitter account over the rock and the robot and Mars robot
was December, or sorry, August 25th, 2012.
I'm looking to it today.
Yeah.
Go look at that.
Great.
It was a fun discussion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you very much for that.
Everything.
Yeah.
Ben.
So let's do a Wi-Fi update now, Miles.
Some German researchers have pushed wireless communication to 40 gigabits per second.
And what am I getting at home?
And they did this test over 1 kilometer, which means that this could be an effective method
to get that last mile, which is normally handled by either a cable network, DSL or DSL
can't handle anywhere near that, and a fiber optic.
Right.
Right.
So Bonnie's question of what is she currently at home?
What do you got, cable or DSL?
DSL.
So what's DSL speed kind of, probably like three or six?
Oh.
So this is faster.
Three or six megabits.
That's right.
This is this is 40 gigabits.
Right.
So that's a magnitude plus a little bit.
Yeah.
That's crazy times four orders of magnitude.
Yeah.
That's like 10,000 times faster.
So more than.
So Wi-Fi into people's individual homes, rather than cable, as I was talking about?
I would imagine it's actually to be a central hub.
And then you just have a very short plug to the last point in the station.
Although, so the point would be that you could go to a community of let's say 15 homes
that are all really close to each other and they could actually all share Wi-Fi with traditional
Wi-Fi.
And then you put a spot here that has a major major major connection to the telco that's
downtown, right?
A mile away, let's say.
And so then that that would supersede the cable company completely.
Right.
Some local company like Ruzah could do this.
Oh, that would be lovely.
Yeah.
And speaking of typical Wi-Fi.
If you had that central hub and then you hooked up what one chip manufacturer has made
with the existing standard of 802.11 AC to new spec that people have been finding gigabit
per second speeds wirelessly, they've actually pushed it with that existing technology
to 1.7 gigabits per second.
Wait, the existing like don't change into the hardware kind of thing.
No, no, no, no, no, you still need a new chip.
OK.
But it's inside the spec of that brain.
It's just using more channels.
In this case, it's using four channels simultaneously.
Cool.
Wi-Fi getting a little bit better and so maybe supporting your neighborhood would be really
awesome.
Speaking of neighborhood, what's going on the neighborhood's lately?
Funny.
Oh, man, on the way here, I had the craziest Jones to go yard sailing.
I don't need a thing.
Thank you for being here.
Oh, yeah.
Hi.
But yeah, yard sailing, you guys.
It's yard sailing season.
And I had the thought on the way in, you know, what about use tech like you see stuff at
garage sales?
And I always wonder like, wow, should I pick that up?
And so I wanted to get your opinion on that, geeks.
Use tech.
Yeah.
That's always a difficult one.
I always want to buy power supplies.
You know, wall warts, little tiny, because I like having whatever voltage I need when
I hack a project.
Do you do a lot of hacking electronics?
Oh, honey, no.
OK.
So you don't need that.
But you do make art.
I mean, you can take a five volt power supply and hook up some LEDs to it and get, you know,
pre-think you like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So hacking stuff at that level, hardware level.
Yeah, I think it's cool.
You know, DSL modem at yard sale, I think you pass.
Yeah.
Must have got a power supply and LEDs.
You can mine for your own purposes.
I mean, the big, so what's the risk with used tech at the group?
It's just that there's a reason most of them to go out rid of it.
I think this is the biggest, biggest reason.
But also, you know, tech just, it expires in three years, you know, I mean, most, and if
you can do something inventive with that tech, if you haven't already done something similar,
chances are you just don't have the time to deal with it.
Yeah.
It's sad to say, but it's cheaper to buy something new a lot of times than even at a garage
sale.
Yeah.
It's really kind of crazy.
I mean, like, and then it'd be faster.
Take like home computer speakers, you know, the speakers you put next to your computer.
Yeah.
Those things are pretty much, they're bulletproof.
I mean, you barely break them, right?
If you can, and you can normally power them up and try them with your iPod when you're
at, you know, someone's yard sale, but when it comes down to it, I just seem to have
a lot of them because I get them and then I don't use them and then a newer sound system
comes along from a friend and, or I buy one because it has a certain feature.
And then I've got more of the only reasons of this thing or the only reason that it's
at the yard sales because one of the speakers is kind of poppy.
Right.
You won't necessarily know that until after.
I think, I think it's, unless you're going to be doing some hacking and reusing electronics,
which I highly recommend.
I mean, it's a great thing to do.
Anything battery-oper, like a kid's toy or something, you can rip that cover off and stick
your fingers on it and play with it while it's playing.
That's called circuit bending.
And that's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Things wash it first, dude.
People should still try to get rid of their old tech and great ways of doing that aside
from the tech recycling places that may pop up from time to time, is advertising it on
Craigslist or putting it up on pre-cycle because then you'll have people stop by and they'll
pick it.
You can just leave it on the side of the road.
Most of the time, people come by and they're like, yeah, I needed that for that project.
I needed that specific item for that project and casting a wider net that you would with
Lego Rocks.
Absolutely.
Also, when it comes to tech, if you're looking at really old tech, that's a lot more hackable
than the newer old tech.
Cool.
So if you're looking at stuff from the 80s or the 90s, that's, I mean, the components-
It's probably still working.
The components are big enough as well.
Plus, I have hip-stick red.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, the things are big enough, right?
They're like taking apart VCRs.
That's really fun.
Yeah.
But if you're taking apart one of the little teeny CD players, that's not as fun.
You don't get as much out of it.
If you take apart a solid state iPod, you can't really get anything out of that that you
can play around with.
Right.
It's really an audio jack.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can just take the audio jack.
Or bad battery.
Or bad battery.
Or dead battery.
What about, I mean, hard drives.
There's one.
Yeah.
Hard drives have magnets.
Hard drives are.
Yeah.
I actually got a backup hard drive from a friend of mine who got picked it up at a yard
sale.
No, it was in a state sale.
And I said, I don't really have a hard drive.
And he picked one up for me and he called it unreliable and it had for years.
It's mounted.
It reliably mounted.
Yeah.
Yard sales can actually pretty much recover using some Gibson Research's project product
called Spinrite, which is like an $80 app, but it will pretty much recover a hard drive
and make it work again.
It's pretty awesome.
To get the data off of it.
Yeah, but not actually actually repairs the drive, too.
Yeah.
Drives actually have self-repairing capabilities and they'll actually remove sectors from
availability.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the thing is older tech, like you're not going to want to pair a little IDE hard drive.
So as long as you know what that looks like, comparatively, you're fine.
I just said some things.
Yeah.
I do.
I do have to say regarding hard drives, they're one of the coolest things to take apart
because you can get two things out of it.
One, you said magnets, right?
So if you're doing any construction or if you're nailing things into the wall, you can actually
use a magnet as a stud finder.
Did you guys know this?
So instead of using a stud finder to look for the pieces of wood that are behind the wall
that you can nail into, instead of using and going and buying something like that or having
to tap on the wall and listen for when the sound changes, you can just move the magnet
up and down the wall until it kind of like feels like it sticks to something.
Those are the nails inside of the studs.
I taught Ben that.
You did not.
What's up?
That is not true.
You taught me a lot of things.
Take good for all the things.
Take good for all the things.
The other thing is the platter is an amazing mirror, except it has a hole in the middle.
But it's incredible mirror.
Yeah, it's true.
And there's glass ones and aluminum ones.
Anyway, in a minute we'll be getting in some geek news from Ben and actually some updates
from the previous episodes of Geekspeak where people had some content.
But first, I want to let you know that you listen to Geekspeak and in the air with me is
Miles Elam, Ben Jaffee, I'm Lyle Troxel and we also have Bonnie Jean Pramsch.
Yeah, and this is just one of many shows you can hear at KOSP including Weekend Edition
Sunday.
That's coming up tomorrow morning from 6 until 9 on 889 KOSP and KOSP.org.
KOSP is supported by home and small business tech providing IT data protection, storage
and maintenance for business and home computers for over 10 years.
More information at hasbtech.com and cannellin with venues for business meetings and retreats
and cabin cottages located in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the bay.
Ben accommodates parties from 30 to 300 more information at cannellin.com.
Another local show that we have is the 70 Avenue Project and the acclaimed writer Jim
Holt has helped explain some of the deepest problems of physics, math and philosophy
in the New Yorker magazine and other publications.
Now he tackles the biggest question of all in his latest book, Why Does The World Exist
in Exessential Mystery?
On this edition of the 7th Avenue Project, Jim Holt and host Robert Polly discusses
scientific, religious and philosophical attempts to crack the mystery of existence.
That's tomorrow at noon on KOSP or of course at KOSP.org.
You can subscribe to the podcast as you can Geekspeak as well, but we have our own site
with more content than you can possibly imagine at geekspeak.org.
Miles Geekbit.
Geekbit of course is something you have got to see to believe so we suggest that you
go to geekspeak.org to look this up.
In the past we've covered stories where people have imaged a single atom.
We even had a story where they were imaging a subatomic particle.
At this point it's been jumped up a notch and some researchers have imaged the atomic
bonds before and after a molecular reaction.
No they haven't.
Yes they have.
That's awesome.
With proof up online and if you want to see it for yourself go to geekspeak.org after
the show.
I want to read how they do that.
I can't even imagine it.
I'll probably go all over my head but Molly goes what goes on the things that you said.
It's probably happening all over your head right now.
Give it a map of that.
Then what's your geek bit for today?
I got a geek bit.
Yeah.
Ubuntu, we all know Ubuntu, the Linux distro or many of us do it.
I don't.
So operating system like Windows or OS 10 but free and open source and they so usually
when you're developing software you have a bug tracker.
So when things go wrong with the software you file a bug and then you go and fix it
and then you resolve the bug right and that just keeps things organized.
So do you guys know what Ubuntu's bug number one was?
The very first bug that was ever filed on Ubuntu.
I do but I won't spoil it.
No I don't know.
It's recently been closed.
It was just closed because of quote the changing realities of tablets, smartphones and wearable
computing.
The first bug for Ubuntu was quote Microsoft has a majority market
share.
That's the first bug.
That's the first bug.
And it has finally been closed.
Then that was a lovely little story.
It was short and sweet.
It was not the geek bit I was expecting.
You have something about flight maps.
Oh.
You don't need to look at the geekspeed this bug.
That was one of my stories.
That was one of your stories.
How do I see the bug?
Okay.
I'll just tell you really quickly about the flight maps.
Just these really beautiful maps of global flight paths.
I'm looking at them now and I can confirm that they aren't that beautiful.
They're beautiful.
In addition to that, there's a whole article that covers it from different people's perspective,
the perspective of the art, the looking of this image from the perspective of the art
critic, the environmentalist, the aviation consultant, the data visualization expert and
the philosopher.
And so they have little blurbs about what they see in this image.
It's kind of interesting.
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Hey, we got some updates from last week.
I was complaining and whining about how much I hate my carrier and that no one I know
likes their cell phone carrier.
So we got some feedback from that, which is awesome.
Melody suggested that we try boost mobile.
It's got unlimited for basic service and they're really great, she says.
And we also got some feedback from Darren who suggested Ting, Ting.com.
Now Ting is something I've heard of before.
It's a darling of the podcast advertisements.
They're on all over the podcast, right?
Yes.
Okay, that's how I heard of them too.
And so it feels a little strange that I'm not saying go to geekspeak.ting.com.
But unfortunately, I don't do that kind of thing.
We're just suggesting Ting because Darren called in saying that's pretty good.
You pay for what you use.
It uses the sprint network.
So that's kind of cool.
Get some feedback from that.
Another thing that we had last week is Ben, you and I chatted about metrics and such.
We did.
And Joshua, who is actually a teacher and says, I get to work in great human psychological lab,
my fourth grade classroom, seeking what we'll stick and what won't.
So here's what he is using right now.
He says millimeter or MM, you know, millimeter is the thickness of a dime, a centimeter is
the dimension of one of your fingernails.
Now everybody's fingernails are different.
So they all measure it to see how close it is.
But then you can always remember that that's about a centimeter.
And then they, he suggested a guitar, of course, is about the length of a meter, the long
dimension of it.
Yeah, long dimension of a guitar is about a meter.
That's cool.
And he's paced out a classroom.
They know well from the location they're in to another classroom, which is a kilometer
away, right?
Because you can walk that.
So anyway, Joshua is teaching fourth grade and suggesting basic measurement principles,
which of course will help the understanding of the metric system, which is far superior
to the British imperial system that we use in the United States, mostly, which the British
aren't using as much anymore.
Right.
Either.
Oh, really?
Hi, guys.
Super power.
I don't understand that.
British use miles, but then they use meters and things for things that are smaller.
It's weird.
Well, so Ben, since he did a little news story in the middle, I'm going to switch over
to miles here.
Yes.
Miles, what's going on in the entertainment industry?
What are they trying to do?
Get Congress to do.
It's a funny thing.
They've decided that it would be a good idea if Congress made it legal for the entertainment
industry to deploy root kits.
Great.
What's a root kit?
Several years ago, we covered a story about Sony and what they had done with their audio
CDs.
Some of them, if you put them into a computer, a Windows computer specifically, it would
automatically install a piece of software, and it would disable the ability for the drive
to be able to rip that audio, and then it was converted to MP3s.
But did so in such a way that it was at such a low level in the operating system that
antivirus couldn't detect it, and that's what a root kit is.
Something that hooks up to what's known as the kernel of the operating system, lower level
than just about anything.
From an app point of view, from an antivirus point of view, it's just seeing, oh, yeah,
you're copying this file, oh, yeah.
Basically, it modifies the operating system to hide itself, and it is being devious.
It's like, I'm not here, and if this root kit is installed in your computer, your computer
basically lies to you and says, everything's fine, even though things are definitely not
fine.
It's the worst of the kind of viruses that we use here.
It's basically spying on a person, because that root kit can do a variety of things
like call home, disable certain functionality on your computer, things like that.
It's basically poning a machine, that's what we talk about when we talk about somebody
else pointing control of your machine.
We've heard that word in a long time.
And so, Bonnie, you know what I'm going to root kit is now?
It's a thing that lets you pown.
Like a kitchen utility, right?
It's like a spatula bit a little different.
You pown with it instead.
Yeah.
Basically, it's suffering a computer that hides the fact that it's running and has complete
control of your computer.
So it can log everything you do, it can do whatever you do on your computer.
It's really bad, it's called a root kit, and it's the thing you want to protect yourself
from.
And every time we talk about vulnerabilities, what we're really talking about is, some
way people can get a root kit on your computer.
So it makes sense that the entertainment industry wants to do that, because they want
to know when you're pirating their stuff so they can come after you, is that one?
So are they suggesting that that's how we should fight copyright infringement or something?
Yes.
The idea is that installing these root kits in general should be considered a tort.
It's taking advantage of someone else's property and taking away from, and using it for
your own purposes.
So that's why they're lobbying Congress about this is to make what is normally in illegal
and unethical act legal.
Yeah, not so good.
Although still unethical.
I would agree, Bonnie, you said that the EFF is on this.
Yeah, I would say that we talked about, we had to show a couple of weeks ago with the EFF
is on.
Well, I'm trying to front you.
Frontier foundation.
Yeah, basically protect privacy rights in the electronics affair.
So if you're concerned about these kinds of issues, I highly suggest listening to that
former show.
All right, let's move on, I think, right?
You got that story?
We're good.
We want to fight Congress on doing that.
What we'll do is we'll try to research to see if there's any way to have you voice your
concern and suggestion.
Well, I was actually just thinking, think of the time we spent just explaining what the
issue is.
That's the problem.
We get people fired up about the fact that there's this thing going on that you don't
understand.
It's sensationalist language helps.
It does.
Yes.
Be concerned.
We just need to get on the local nightly news.
You're fine.
They want to explode your computer.
More at 11.
And let's do some space news now, sir.
Oh, I've already done some, but I'll do I've got one more that I'm pretty excited about.
So I've talked to you.
You have two more, sir.
I've already covered one of them.
You have the test observers or an asteroid update?
Oh, I'll see.
I'm on it.
I remember that one.
Yeah.
You know my story's better than I.
Let me go on.
Let me put you down there and we'll just go ahead.
Go ahead.
So yeah, I've talked about the Kepler space telescope quite a bit.
In the past, you can go ahead and Google it or search around the Geeks week website for
more information about it.
And basically, it's a satellite which looks at stars and looks to see looks over a long
period of time to see if anything passes in front of the stars like, oh, I don't know,
a planet, right?
So some star that's far away, we can actually infer whether there's a planet passing in front
of the star based on the way the light level dips and whether it does consistently and things
like that.
So that the Kepler telescope is actually my favorite satellite of all time.
I don't know why actually the Hubble, but the Kepler is close to I think it's cute
that you have a favorite.
Yeah.
Well, why not?
I've got a favorite moon to and you know, all those things.
I don't know why they just touch my heart.
But we actually have a new space telescope that we're going to be sending up.
It's called test TESS, which is the transiting exoplanet survey satellite right in your alley
there.
It sounds fun.
So basically, it's going to do the same thing.
It's going to look at different stars and try and figure out if things are passing in
front of it.
And therefore, infer whether we have exoplanets around those stars.
And the reason that this one is better, it's going to be launched in 2017, so it's a bit
out there.
It's a $200 million project as well.
You said last week you didn't cover stuff in the future.
That's a stuff in the future.
That's a good job, Ben.
Yeah, you looked up some stuff and yeah, that's cool.
And last week, you're complaining about yourself and I think you're awesome.
So I was trying not to listen, but you're saying how this is stuff that's all happened.
Yeah, while I was talking about like, you predicted something, I'm excited.
We think you're great, Ben.
No, the funding already happened.
That's cool.
Oh, that's the big thing.
They decided to pay for it.
It's real.
They decided to pay for it.
Absolutely.
But yeah, my problem was when I'm like, hey, there was a solar eclipse yesterday.
Did anyone see it?
You've just summed up last week's show.
Exactly.
Yeah, pretty much.
So anyway, the reason this one's better is that Kepler looks at 0.28% of the sky.
That's like a quarter of a percent of the entire night sky.
Really fun.
It's a really, really teeny amount of space, but there are 145,000 main sequence stars
that we're looking at.
So there are a lot of stars in the teeniest little portion of the night sky.
So it's pretty incredible, right?
Very humbling when you think about it.
But the test project will be serving the entire sky.
So that's 400 times more sky, you know, whatever, and yeah, and it's actually going to be
trying to also focus on planets that are about the size of the Earth and trying to actually
even get information about maybe their atmosphere or their habitability or whether there may be
likely be water on the planets and things like that.
Like there is on Mars.
Like there was on Mars.
Yes.
Okay.
Again, quick asteroid factoid.
Oh, yeah, quick asteroid factoid.
We found...
By the way, that's a very clever type of asteroid factoid.
So Phil played the bad astronomer who's actually the most amazing astronomer I know.
He has a blog and he posted about this.
I'll go ahead and post this up on the site.
But basically we found asteroid number, asteroid 285263 1998 QE2.
That's its name.
And it's going to be passing really close to Earth.
We've actually...
It turns out this asteroid has a teeny little moon.
Oh, cool.
It's an asteroid, but it has a moon.
Oh, that's no moon.
I bet you love that.
That's no moon.
So I mean, the asteroid is only 2.7 kilometers across.
It's like a mile and a half across.
And the moon is 600 meters across.
Just under a mile across.
So they're both really teeny and they're actually orbiting each other as opposed to one orbiting the other.
One thing though.
Well, technically we...
Everything orbits each other.
Yes, that's technically true.
And technically it's two kilometers for the large one and maybe two-thirds of a kilometer for the smaller one.
Or right now.
Two point seven kilometers and six hundred point six meters, or point six kilometers.
All right.
The listeners are paying very good attention.
Well, no.
After we've made this big diatribe about how the metric system is superior, then we start using miles again.
So it's twice as far as the gym is from Joshua's classroom.
Is that what you're saying?
Basically.
It's like a bajillion dime.
So it's like a lot of dime stacked on top each other.
But here's the asteroid factor.
I mean, I read about space news all the time, but I had no clue about this.
Apparently about 16% of the near-earth asteroids that we've seen that are bigger than 200 meters across.
So any of the sizeable near-earth asteroids, 16% of them have moons, have natural science.
Right.
Yeah.
I didn't realize that.
Really?
I thought that it was, you know, like, oh, hunk of rock, hunk of rock.
Well, it's just more like...
It is hunk of rock, hunk of rock.
It's more like that.
It's like gravel.
It's like a daddy hunk of rock and a little baby hunk of rock.
I mean, you're clear when objects have the same similar velocities to each other and they're close to each other.
They start orbiting each other.
That's just how it works.
And when two rocks in space really love each other.
Then they collide and make more rocks.
That's cool.
Thanks for the asteroid factor.
That's cool.
16% of the near-earth asteroids are orbiting each other.
I imagine that.
Also, most stars are binary star systems or trinary.
Cool.
That had nothing related to that.
That's kind of cool to it.
But I mean, just the same thing.
More fact towards as well.
Hey, Bonnie.
Yeah.
Yesterday or Thursday night, you went to something I didn't get to go to.
Yeah.
Alternate geeks.
The alternate reality geeks.
I call them that.
They don't call themselves that.
They call themselves the union of benevolent electrical workers.
Which is awesome.
They actually hosted geekspeak way back in February, which is why I call them the alternate reality geeks.
Those guys are cool.
Yeah.
So, I was hanging out with those guys last night.
Because, you know, I travel in different geeky crowds without...
Anyway.
So, one of the...
We take no offense.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate yourself.
I'm a switch.
So, they...
One of them was talking about the mechanical Turk.
And I went, how was it?
What?
Because my knowledge of the mechanical Turk is like a fake automaton from the 18th century...
That played chess?
It played chess.
Yeah.
It was this dude Kempel and he's like, I've made this thing.
And it's sort of...
The era of automatons, which were like things that mechanical that did amazing life like this.
Right.
And this was like a table that played chess with you.
Yeah, it was like a Turk.
It was like a Turk you can do.
And it's...
You know, it was sort of like point ominously at the place where it wanted its chess piece to go.
And it played against Napoleon Bonaparte.
It played against Benjamin Franklin.
It beat everybody.
It was a sensation.
Yeah.
It was the grumpy cat of this thing.
And it was quite an incredible machine.
In fact, the machine was actually called a human inside it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So apparently a really good chess player.
Puppet Master basically as well.
Yeah, basically.
Yeah.
So this idea of a thing which appears to be...
Which apps like a machine but is a human assisted is apparently the basis for Amazon Mechanical
Turk.
And I don't know how long this thing has been around.
I don't actually know how long...
I feel like we've covered it on Geekspeep before.
So it's probably pretty old.
But what does it do?
Well, basically you can make requests and offer an amount of money for...
for the request and then people all over the globe who have signed up to be requesters
or request receivers or whatever will bid or do the thing or I don't really know.
I've thought about using one of these types of services.
It's quite a few of them out there.
Yeah.
To ask for somebody to take Geekspeep and translate to text.
You got to listen to it and type it and offer.
And the thing you can do is you can bid on...
You can suggest here this is how much money I'm willing to pay and this is the service I need done.
And then people say I'll do that.
Yeah.
And so this is like a whole bidding thing.
And Mechanical Turk's website, which of course we'll link to from Geekspeep.org.
Very clearly says, do you want to work or do you want to hire somebody to work?
Yeah.
It's very clearly you can do either.
It says artificial, artificial intelligence.
That's kind of why.
Artificial, artificial intelligence, that's awesome.
But I thought it's me and the alternate reality Geeks, of course,
we're thinking of all kinds of ways to hack it and game it and make it do its bidding.
Taking advantage of people.
Yeah, and that's...
Well, using people to do sort of amazing things or subcontract it out and filter
everyone's happy by sort of monkey wrenching something.
I don't know.
I lost control of understanding the conversation.
This meeting was out of pub, wasn't it?
It was.
Yes.
They made it a place they call the creepy palace of the last Thursday of every month.
All right.
Very cool.
But so do you...
I mean, have you...
You haven't used Mechanical Turk.
You've thought about using Mechanical Turk.
I haven't used it.
You know, I'm Paul.
Yeah.
I don't spend a lot of money on Geekspeep.
We spend a lot of time on Geekspeep, but I haven't decided it.
It's not a fund.
But also who needs to have text translations of what we say.
It's not like...
Yeah.
Anyway.
But the audio is here and it's beautiful.
I think Geekspeep.org if you're curious.
And...
You wouldn't just use them for like...
You could be my employee.
But like some people were using them to make art projects.
And research is also a big piece of this, right?
Let's say...
I've seen this being used quite a bit for things like investor wants to look at a firm.
And they say, hey, this is the type of firm it is.
And I want to look for any of the companies that are like this.
Go ahead and spend two days searching for this kind of information
and compile a dossier for me.
You know, a word document or something.
Google Doc.
And I'll pay you this much money.
So someone who likes to do research stuff would say, I'll do that one for, you know,
do bucks or whatever.
Yeah.
So it's a clever way of connecting people with their interest needs.
Yeah.
So there's that kind of one-on-one kind of thing that can happen.
And what the alternate reality Geeks were talking about was
paying like low amounts for some super simple task
and compiling all those super simple tasks to make some sort of big crowd-created
something or other.
All right.
Well, thank you very much, Bonnie, for that.
I might bring the alternate reality Geeks a new explain further.
Okay.
In just a moment, we're going to talk about telecom searches, bad security stuff,
and more security breach stuff with Miles and Ben.
We'll continue the show.
But right now, I need to tell you that you're listening to Geeks Speak.
I'm Lyle Troxel in the room with me is Miles,
Elon, Ben, Jaffee, and Bonnie, Jean Primch.
This is a show that is followed by Cartoc from 11-Till-Nune.
Tom and Ray Maliazi fix a mix automotive first aid with roadside philosophy,
relationship advice, and whatever else is on their minds.
Plus a lot of ho-ho-ho.
Join Click and Clack for Cartoc today,
immediately after Geeks Speak from 11-Till-Nune,
and Sunday from 9-10 on 88-9-KUSP and KUSP.org.
A KUSP is supported by Dr. Henry J. Ramirez-DDS in Santa Cruz,
specializing in handcrafted dentistry from start to finish using digital technology
for less radiation and offering one appointment crowns and veneers.
Information is at Ramirez-DDS.com.
You're listening to 88-9-KUSP and KUSP.org.
You can follow the station on Twitter or like us on Facebook.
And the UPS store also sponsors this program,
locations in Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito counties.
The UPS store, helping with customer and notary needs,
at one of 19 locally owned locations,
more at the UPS store.com.
Thank you, Bonnie.
This is Geeks Speak on KUSP 88-9 and KUSP.org.
All the programs that KUSP does, or a lot of the programs that KUSP does,
are available for download.
And of course, communication is such we welcome at KUSP.org.
And if you're interested in this show specifically,
you can go to Geeks Speak.org.
Archiving everything we talk about on the show and adding links and such.
As we do every week here on KUSP, miles what's going on with the telecom industry?
You just mentioned the media industry doing something little creepy.
But now what's going on?
Well, this one isn't so much creepy as in just very short-sighted.
What has happened is there was a company that had records like most companies do.
Of various people, social security numbers, financial information, stuff like that.
And some reporters were doing some Google searches.
And these items, for example, an application that was completed.
Something that should be confidential.
Was popping up in this Google search result.
Well, that's funny.
They look at the URL that was coming up and going,
I wonder what else we can find through links on here.
And so they used a common command line utility called WGET.
And WebGET basically is what it refers to.
It's basically to automatically get a URL into a text editor and you can use program.
Well, it's typing.
It's speaking exactly the same language that a web browser does.
It's communicating with the server exactly like a web browser does.
The only thing is that it doesn't put forth the pretty pictures.
It just saves the text without rendering it.
Okay.
And the company that had the website in question that had that stuff.
When the reporters made that knowledge available to them and said,
Hey, you know, you have this stuff that's out there.
And it's visible from a Google search.
And what you shouldn't be there.
Got very upset about it and told them, you know,
you're hacking us because you're using an automated tool like WGET.
Wait, to scrape their website and republish the set, the website?
No, they weren't republishing it.
They got the info and saw that it was there.
And they were notifying the company privately.
Hey, there's this stuff that's made available.
And we're going to talk about it.
So some company basically, some group noticed that this telco was publishing secret information.
They should not be publishing the website.
They downloaded it.
Then they notified the company saying, you know, you should probably change this.
And the company said, you're hackers.
Yes.
And they were hacking with the term, the completely confusing and scary product Google.
Well, that's when they noticed it.
And then they used WGET to automate the process to find more easily.
It's all about the company's not understanding what's actually happening.
So if I was outside of some company's headquarters,
and I found all of these confidential documents,
and I gathered them up and brought them to them,
send them to WikiLinks.
They'll keep you anonymous.
Right.
You want to get prosecuted for that.
Yeah.
Imagine it's like Good Samaritan gets...
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
Imagine there was some private information,
and it wasn't someone's yard,
and the wind is blowing it around.
And you're walking by, and you notice this.
And like one of the sheets blows out of the yard,
and you kind of look at it and go,
well, this is odd.
This isn't normal.
I wonder if those other sheets are.
And then somebody else will say,
hey, what are you doing around my yard?
Most people don't look inside my yard.
But it's more like they sent them to a newspaper,
and they printed them.
And then you picked up the newspaper and went,
oh my goodness, look, secrets.
And you know, you shouldn't have done this.
And they come and say, oh,
we'll get you for that.
Reading our website, how dare you.
Ben, do you have any other stories?
I do.
Just really briefly, security updates.
Drupal.org.got.confirmized.
Yes, I did.
Million people, right?
Yeah, a whole bunch of people.
And user names, email addresses,
country information,
and hashed, insulted passwords.
So I mean, I have this account on Drupal.
Are they notifying anybody?
They've notified everybody.
Okay, well, I didn't get notification from them now.
I'm really upset because I don't know.
I did a search before the show,
and I saw the story.
I'm like, I should probably find out if my account's been hacked.
Yeah, and no dice.
No, no, no emails from them.
Interesting.
But then again, maybe somebody hacked my account first
and changed the email, I don't know.
Maybe it's in your spam folder.
Maybe it's in my spam folder.
Drupal, of course, is a very popular content management system
blogging system.
Very much like WordPress.
Some people would argue it's better,
and some people argue it's not.
Yeah.
But it has its fans.
Drupal's used quite a bit.
I implemented at the university when I was there.
We implemented a lot of sites using Drupal.
Are you a Drupal fan?
Well, a fan.
I mean, do you like it?
Do you like it?
Do I like Drupal?
Yes, I find there's some really good benefits Drupal.
I have recommended Drupal.
And I will recommend Drupal in the future for a certain thing.
It's like a thing with mud.
You can make all sorts of wonderful shapes
and sandcastles and stuff like that.
Yeah, I don't want to eat Drupal.
I'm going to eat mud.
I might play with it.
I'm currently hosting a kind of big website using Drupal.
Okay.
And so, now, keep in mind that this vulnerability
is not about the software itself that you would install
and run Drupal.
It has nothing to do if you're running Drupal someplace.
That's important.
It has nothing to do with you unless you're using their service
that they have for advertising delivery.
There's other services that you connect to your account.
And then it's questionable whether there's some kind of
vulnerability from a back door, you know, from a sideline thing.
Because when you make a Drupal account,
you can actually hook it up to your Drupal.org account.
And that's what's been hacked is the Drupal.org account.
As long as we're on Drupal, I feel like I just want to come clean
about my ignorance so that way people can learn from my own issue.
Which is that I was working on a project
and everyone was using Drupal.
And I didn't put in enough time to understand Drupal.
And so I ended up really hating it and really hating my life.
Whereas WordPress is a little bit simpler.
But at the same time, you can do a lot more with Drupal
if you understand it, right?
So that's the reason I hate Drupal.
It's a really horrible reason.
It'll make you take your life.
It'll make you take your life.
That's a pretty bad reason to do that.
Yeah.
So don't be like me.
Actually, you know, read up all those.
You know, one of the things I like to talk about
when we cover in tech is Drupal is based on PHP.
And you can run it off of my SQL or Postgres
and probably some other traditional SQL databases as well.
But that's the technology behind it.
And it's got a lot of extensions and a lot of modules
and a lot of themes.
So from that perspective, the community at large
has so much support that's extremely easy to produce
quick, pretty good websites.
So yeah, it's used all the time.
The company I work for now.
We used Drupal for our primary websites.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is Drupal programming better?
No.
Quicker.
Easier.
More seductive.
Yeah.
The only updates I've got from Drupal
is from the websites that I manage saying,
please update your system.
No spam.
No.
What's so much that they got hacked?
That was the issue, though.
This is...
There was a security issue.
And data may have been removed from their server
to someone that they don't know.
What's the issue for you, Miles?
Well, it does tell nicely with the new story
that you have, Lyle, about passwords.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I can talk about that.
Okay, well, I'll go ahead and do my little story
about cracking strong passwords.
Recently, hacker news covered this story,
and I actually also listened on...
We saw it on security now.
The discussion about it.
And basically, there was this project
to find out how easy it was to hack relatively...
to figure out to crack,
really, relatively complicated passwords.
So they got a group of people together
that are hackers, and they do this for a living.
And they got just standard kind of machines.
Some of them actually had some machines
of multiple graphics cards in them as well,
to get a processing power.
And basically, using passwords
that contained only numbers,
12 to the long hackers managed to brute force,
that means just randomly guess
312 passwords in three minutes.
And were they all password 1, 2, 3, 4?
Well, they were digits, just in general digits.
So basically, they made a large list of, you know, issues,
of types of passwords.
So basically, length doesn't necessarily...
Well, okay, there's a few different parts of this story
that are kind of interesting to me.
One is that if you grab a database from a website,
let's say somebody breaks into Drupal.org
and takes a million use of these passwords,
the passwords theoretically will be encrypted,
be hashed is what we call it.
And the question is, can you figure out the password?
Because if you can, most likely,
some of those passwords are being used
for the same people's email addresses somewhere else,
like their bank accounts.
So you get a lot of power out of that.
So as you start cracking through
by just guessing dictionary words,
and then you take all the known English dictionary words
and you try it and you get some.
And then you try it again.
There are ones that still remembers the first time.
Oh my gosh.
I'm gushing.
I hit, I was gesturing through my hand
and hit a button on the right hand side of my touch-to-touch screen.
So if you're guessing these passwords,
you use the dictionary, then you use the dictionary
with every possible combination afforded to numbers after that.
So you're guessing a lot of passwords.
And eventually what you'll do is you'll actually discover
more and more passwords.
And with that, you'll get an index of workable passwords
for that site.
Then you can do analysis on the passwords
for the patterns that seem to be probable for that website.
Then you crack some more based off of that knowledge.
And once you get that data set,
you hone your algorithm again.
So you're basically using the data set of the workable passwords
for the website to infer more likely workable passwords.
Because people that go to the same types of site
think and enter passwords the same way, oddly enough.
And we're talking about, you know,
millions of thousands of passwords as the baseline.
So anyway, that's the story about hacking passwords.
And the thing that I kind of came from this,
after listening to this is, well, first off,
hopefully site administrators are not just using a simple program
an MD5 without a salt.
And I won't get into the details of that.
But that's what they were using.
Yeah, and basically it's a simpler type of,
you can do other things to make it more secure.
But the other thing to say is that we really need to be happy.
In a society that we are currently in,
you as an individual need to have a password
that is more complicated than you can know.
I really like my password.
And there's for everything.
Oh, no, don't tell me.
I don't want to hear it.
So for years, we've said backup your data.
And the one thing that we've been very clear about
is that you really need to set that up as an automatic process
that it just happens because you'll forget to backup your data.
Who here has their current data backed up?
Yeah.
Miles has.
Okay, Miles on top of it.
I'm about two weeks late.
Yeah.
You don't know how to make.
You've got a problem.
So I like finding just whistled.
I don't have data.
So please back up your data, right?
That's one thing I'm saying.
But the next thing I'm saying is you've got to find a password manager.
You can't really just have some trick that you do
to make websites work like Ben had an algorithm for a while.
The systems are smarter than us.
That human brain just can't do what the computers can do.
And therefore, you having a secret has to be a really big secret.
A secret so large and confusing that you can't understand it.
But at the same time.
Do you remember it?
At the same time.
If you're an outlier, then people aren't going to target you as much.
I mean, you know, the odd people, like for example,
there aren't a lot of viruses for the Mac because for a really long time,
there just weren't many Macs around.
So why would you?
And design principles.
Yeah.
Well, design principles too.
But largely just because there weren't many Macs around.
Or aren't many Linux boxes around.
So that's why most of the viruses, that's one of the big reasons
why most of the viruses are for Windows.
So if you're building passwords that are really long,
but rememberable because of an algorithm or something like that,
that's a much better thing to do than what everyone else is doing.
I agree.
Until everyone else is doing it.
You're doing it better than the Johnson's means the Johnson's get hit first.
But I exactly just say that the algorithms will get better.
And your ability to memorize long random numbers will not,
or long random strings will not.
So at some point in our future, you will have to have a password manager.
Like have to have something that helps you with these password problems.
Or we switch to another type of system which we are basically doing as a society.
And so what I suggest is if you care about your privacy and security online,
get a password manager now and start training yourself to use it all the time,
like you should be doing for your backups.
If you're not doing your backups, then switching to a password manager
might be a problem because you might just lose all your passwords.
Like if you're not using it regularly and managing it and maintaining it,
the software might get older, you might forget the root password,
which would really be a problem because you can't recover it.
So Miles, are you going to say there's something more to this?
Yes.
This is talking about from the end user point of view what they can do.
We also need to call out the system administrators that are setting up these sites.
Yeah.
Because I'm sorry you should know better.
Yeah.
MD5, just, I'm not going to talk about how that algorithm works.
It's just that you can test all the different passwords that are like six letters long
of an MD5 in a few minutes these days.
If you're using MD5 to, even with a salt, especially the salt is known,
you can do that.
The whole, I mean, you got to make sure the passwords are longer than for, you know, 12 characters.
You've got to do that for use.
Well, no, no, no.
MD5 is basically useless now.
Well, yeah.
It was used.
It was used.
You should not have been using MD5, but 10 years ago.
Here's the problem as an end user, though, you don't even know what they're doing on the back.
And you have no idea.
Like, I was bragging last week to Ben that I just used really long sentences
because, you know, a 30 word sentence is really hard.
And Ben goes, and Ben goes, yeah, but what if, what if the administrators just truncate
in the first 15 characters and that's all they're using?
Yeah.
And I was like, oh, most segments will say, actually, your password needs to be more than six characters.
And it can't be more than 15.
Right.
And it needs to include at least one uppercase and one character.
And like those arbitrary restrictions basically just cut down on the potential number of passwords
and make it easier for people to potentially guess yours.
So password manager is an application that helps you with this.
It basically makes us a safe vault where you put your passwords and you save them in there.
And you can use your, you can use OS 10.
It's got a password management system built in.
You have to keychains.
You have to have the password for the keychain really really long,
which means your login machine password potentially has to be really long.
You can actually decouple those.
I won't get into that.
But I also suggest last pass and one password.
I currently use one password.
These are systems that plug into your browser.
And when you get prompted to a site that it has a memory of,
it will actually auto fill it for you.
But you do have to unlock it all the time with a long password.
So I use that.
When I make an account, I get like a 20 character random ASCII thing.
I don't think I could type in with my iPhone.
You know, like I couldn't do it because the characters are so long and complicated.
So basically it kind of restricts my access.
It's less convenient.
But at least I know people aren't doing anything bad in my accounts.
And I do have to say I've been talking about what you shouldn't use.
Or you shouldn't use MB5.
You shouldn't use SHA1.
Sysadmins.
E-Crypt.
S-Crypt.
Okay.
E-Crypt and S-Crypt.
Thank you, Miles.
You should be using.
Miles, do you, you did have a security, another security thing you want to mention?
I did have some legislation that's coming up.
Okay, please.
And that is coming in through Texas.
We've talked about email privacy in the past about how there really isn't that much protection
for it.
And our humans put force by various government agencies and the like saying, hey, if it's been
on there for more than 15 days, we get to look at it without a warrant, that type of thing.
Well, in Texas, it's about to be signed by the governor and was actually unanimously passed
by the Texas legislature saying that email does require a warrant, no matter how long it's
been sitting on the server.
Good.
I'm glad to hear that.
That's awesome.
In Texas, huh?
In Texas.
So basically, they extended your personal privacy space to the web server that hold, or to the
server that hosts your email.
Regardless of whether it's been opened or if it's sat in the inbox.
It's great.
So another reason to use I'm out.
Yeah, I have to say it's really nice here.
Some positive security.
I know.
Especially because this is like the freak bunny out with security news shows show.
Are you feeling a little stressed?
Yeah, a little.
But only in Texas, not here in California.
I wouldn't worry about it.
I'm looking at your bank account online right now.
And you're fine.
You're fine.
No one's getting you.
Oh, wait.
All right.
We are about to close the show.
Got one more quickie, Ben.
I know you don't.
Yes.
I do.
It's really quick.
It's just so when you go to the airports, they have the metal detectors.
And then they have the backscatter X-ray machines, which kind of look like metal detectors.
But you stand and you put your arms up.
Sure.
And then they have the weird one that like goes around you.
Yes.
A round one.
So the backscatter ones.
The second one I mentioned were giving the operators these sets.
The operators, these semi-nudy kind of images of you so that way they could see what kind of items you might have on you.
And the TSA just announced that they have finally, they met their deadline for modifying the scanner.
So it shows an anonymized figure instead of an actual picture of you.
So that's good news.
So the roles of fat will be hidden.
I mean, what does that mean?
Yeah, exactly.
What if I have an appendage that looks like a gun?
Is that go away?
You'll probably just get a pat down.
Okay.
That's weird appendage.
So yeah, anyway, that's basically it.
I do have to say it's kind of amazing how quickly they got these scanners out there.
And how long it's taken them to modify the scanners.
Interesting.
I don't know.
That's really reverse.
They're removing the X-ray scanners, but the millimeter wave scanners are still in use.
There are.
Yeah, the round ones that go around you.
Yeah, those are still in use.
All right.
Thank you.
Bonnie, a little close of information about Geekspeak?
Yeah.
Well, listen, guys, if you're a small business owner who's been priced out of TV and radio advertising,
consider sponsorship on KUSP.
It's an efficient way to get your message to consumers or to other businesses in a clutter-free
environment, if you call the show, clutter-free.
Learn more at ksp.org slash sponsorship.
It's a fine thing to do.
Here's some examples.
KUSP is supported by the Santa Cruz County Symphony with the Santa Cruz White Album Ensemble featuring
Strawberry Fields Forever, a night of live Beatles music this evening at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.
Tickets and more information at SantaCruiseSymphony.org and Cruisioworks.
Rentable workspaces located in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz featuring private offices
and an organic cafe.
Your information is at cruisio.com slash cruisioworks or 459-6301.
Celebrating 40 years together.
Am I taking some of your fun away?
Celebrating 40 years together.
This is 88-9 KUSP Santa Cruz streaming and podcasting at kusp.org.
Thank you, Bonnie.
Of course, you can find out everything we do at keekspeak.org.
And Geekspeak is a registered service mark of David Lawrence who is used with permission.
The Geeks today were Ben, Jaffy, Miles, Elam, Bonnie, Jean, Primsh and myself, Lyle, Troxel.
Please feel free to follow us up on Twitter and Facebook and Google plus and all that
and learn more about the show that we talked about today at keekspeak.org.
Thanks for being here.
We'll see you next week and do.
Please stay tuned for Car Talk here on KUSP.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club
and is part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website
or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
the contribution, share a light, 3.0 license.