Just Two Good Old Boys
We never mean any harm!
Just Two Good Old Boys
132 Blood and Circuits: Gaming in a World of Cyber Threats
That heart-stopping moment when a stranger messages you with eerily accurate personal details about your family and work history, threatening exposure unless you comply with their demands. It happened to one of us recently, highlighting the increasingly sophisticated nature of digital extortion attempts in today's connected world.
We dive deep into this growing threat, sharing firsthand experience with targeted extortion attempts that go far beyond generic spam. These scammers have evolved, gathering enough specific information to make their threats feel credible—naming family members, listing past employers, and somehow connecting to secure messaging platforms like Signal. We break down exactly what to do (and what NOT to do) when facing such situations, explaining why maintaining your composure and refusing to engage is crucial.
Beyond personal digital security, we examine the seismic shift in America's tech landscape with Trump's executive order requiring a $100,000 fee per H-1B visa worker. This policy effectively ends decades of wage suppression practices where companies hired foreign workers at significantly lower salaries than their American counterparts. With approximately 730,000 current H-1B holders in the US, this change could create hundreds of thousands of high-paying American jobs within a year.
Meanwhile, major infrastructure systems face alarming vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. Heathrow Airport's recent disruptions and Jaguar Land Rover's manufacturing shutdown (expected to cost over a billion euros) highlight the "Tootsie Pop" security model prevalent in industrial systems: hard outer defenses but soft, vulnerable interiors. As digital threats evolve on all fronts, both individuals and organizations must adopt more sophisticated approaches to security.
Whether you're concerned about personal digital safety or interested in the economic impacts of changing tech policies, this episode provides practical insights to navigate our increasingly complex digital landscape. Subscribe for more analysis at the intersection of technology, security, and public policy.
Communicate with us directly on x.com by joining the Good Old Boys community! https://x.com/i/communities/1887018898605641825
Check out Gene's other podcasts -
podcast.sirgene.com and unrelenting.show
Read Ben's blog and see product links at namedben.com
Can't donate?
Get EMP protection for your car using our code "sirgene"
Howdy Ben, how are? You today Doing good Gene yourself.
Speaker 2:Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright.
Speaker 1:Okay, matthew, oh man. Long way.
Speaker 2:I keep getting older. But those girls, they just stay the same age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm definitely getting older man. Travel is taking its toll on me. Yes, well, I I made some poor decisions. I don't know if we want to start with my travel, woe.
Speaker 2:But sure, why not? So I had to go to norfolk norfolk yes, to go and talk to the boss got it. So I had to go in and talk to the boss, got it.
Speaker 1:So I had to go to Norfolk for the first part of the week and then Tuesday I had to fly up to Hanover.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:And there is no flight from Norfolk to BWI, but there is one to Dulles and I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking. I was like I'll get there before rush hour. Except the flight was delayed. Bag took forever, rental car took forever. I'm leaving Dulles at 5 o'clock, so what should have been an hour drive turned into a three-hour drive and I'm just sitting there going. My God, it would have been faster for me to fly to Boston and then back to BWI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or take the train faster for me to fly to Boston and then back to BWI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or take the train. I want those connections right now for status reasons. Yeah. I did go to Bethesda on this trip too. Okay, I went to the Spy Museum there at the NSA. Always passed by it, I've always passed by it never been.
Speaker 2:What did you think?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a small little museum, but it's pretty interesting. I laughed and scoffed at their USS Liberty exhibit, though, because USS Liberty was absolutely a false flag, but this is still unknown.
Speaker 2:Oh, we don't know if it was a false flag. It could have been a major mistake that somebody made. The thing we do know is that the uss liberty was a spy ship, exactly, yeah, which generally you don't use spy ships for false flags. You use either civilian vessels or military vessels. So that's well. The question to me is it's a why? I think that would have been a good chance. It was a fuck up no, no, no the.
Speaker 1:The reason why I'm saying it's a false flag is because israel immediately blamed it on the egyptians. Yeah, and I'm pretty damn sure it was israel did it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's fine, but my point is simply that it wasn't. I don't think that ship was supposed to have been the false flag, not from the US standpoint. The false portion of the flag is that somebody, somewhere, set things up for this to be misconstrued. Yeah. Otherwise it's a mistaken flag, not a false flag.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I'm not saying it's categorically that it couldn't have been a false flag, I just think that it could have. I've watched a few debates on this topic and it definitely seems to me like there was plenty of room for error well, either way, I thought their exhibit was interesting, the way they phrased it.
Speaker 1:I thought being able to see a cray one in person was pretty cool you know lots of the technology, everything else yep so yeah, it was worth going. I I got a couple challenge coins given to me on this trip too.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice. Now you're into that, so that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yep, I'm going to need a bigger display.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, you could make a bulletproof vest out of them yeah right. Just walk around, covered in challenge coins. Challenge coins.
Speaker 1:Save my life, all right. So on serious topics, like I said, I was traveling this week, but I have caught up pretty good since we didn't do it Thursday. Today's Saturday. Yeah, where do you want to start?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, uh, the thing that I'm getting some serious schadenfreude from is the massive amount of smiles turned into frowns for libs that are losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their husbands, losing all kinds of things because they fucked around and then they found out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I sent you the statement that that chick that you know ruined her boyfriend's electrical business statement she put out.
Speaker 2:I did, I did, and so this is something John C Dvorak wrote about, and I still would very much say fuck around, find out. Yeah. You know, these people think they live in a consequence free bubble, when they actually live in a glass house.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's a glass house, but you know they've got lots of windows. How?
Speaker 2:many of these people, do you think, have more than one month's worth of savings, almost zero, exactly, glass house. Okay. Not living in the bunker.
Speaker 1:Okay, they're getting their just desserts, though, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are.
Speaker 1:Including Jimmy Kimmel Fuck him. Oh yeah. Oh my God. God, this is so terrible. First of all, it wasn't the fcc that did jack. Right was shit. What are the two broadcasters?
Speaker 2:well, it was disney owned abc, but really the affiliates.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah but I'm trying. I'm trying to remember the name of the affiliates that said that they were not. I don't remember, but I don't know that it even matters.
Speaker 2:There's no point in out of the affiliates that said that they were not, I don't remember, but I don't know that it even matters. There's no point in outing the affiliates. The point here is the affiliates are the ones who are paying for the programming.
Speaker 1:And they said Well, with what he said, it's pretty ridiculous and he shouldn't have said it and he shouldn't, he shouldn't have gone to double down on it.
Speaker 2:Here's how he could have totally said that, in my opinion. We to double down on it. Here's here's how he could have totally said that, in my opinion is have he not, for the last eight years, gone political? If he was still a comedian like he was in the man show, he could have said something like this to get a laugh. But that's not what happened here. What happened here is he's been very much a political commentator with jokes, but really doing political commentary, and then he just, you know, said something he knew his audience would laugh at and that would appreciate, because they agree with him on it, not because it's funny, but because it's like, yeah, let's just stick it to the conservatives, because they got what was coming to them One of their own killed one of their own. So fuck them, we don't care, right, folks? And then he what he didn't plan on is that the people that are paying for his show to be on the air don't all live in LA.
Speaker 1:Well, and one of them was Sinclair, by the way. I finally remember that. But you know Sinclair is mostly Southern and mostly conservative, right yeah? So I don't know, man, I don't know, it seems like a dumb mistake.
Speaker 2:Dumb mistake, but not really a mistake in so much as taking for granted that he was untouchable. Mm-hmm. I don't think he had concern about what he said. It's not like he made a mistake in saying something and had he realized he wouldn't have said it. It was that this isn't controversial in his mind, that this isn't controversial in his mind. This is something his actual in-studio audience completely agrees with. So, yes, good writtens. I honestly am hoping the entirety of those people get replaced sooner than later.
Speaker 1:Well, colbert's working on it next man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love to see colbert be done like this month and not a year from now, which you know. They said they're not going to renew them past this year well, but I think that's why he's trying to do this.
Speaker 1:he knows he's done and there you know his show's been canceled, so so he's sitting there just saying just end it, let me see something egregious and just end this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And then you contrast that to Bill Maher with, if you remember, on our last show.
Speaker 1:I mentioned Bill Maher's latest club, random.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, bill Maher's latest club random.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, that you know. On our last show I said I I am waiting to see what Bill Maher has to say, because he talked to Charlie. He may not have agreed with Charlie and everything, but he certainly saw that Charlie was a very nice guy. Yeah, and that's essentially what he said. Is that? This is? You know, he still believes in the same principles that he believed in 20 years ago as a liberal, but he doesn't know, you know, he's like he doesn't. The people that call themselves the Democrat Party today are not liberals in his mind, and I think many people that have walked from that side, including Elon Musk, including Tim Pool you know these are all self-identified liberals, not that many years ago. I think they're all saying the same thing right now, which is that, hey, man, my opinions of things haven't changed, but the definition of what the Democrat Party has.
Speaker 2:And musk reposted a tweet image that somebody sent basically showing three frames. First frame is a lefty kind of moving to the left, while a centrist leftist meaning a guy to the left, of center, but still not extreme was just kind of standing and looking at him. And then the next frame is that same frame in terms of the right and the center is guy, but he's now exactly in center and the left keeps pulling to the left. And the last frame is the leftist like three times further to the left and then saying you know where are you going? Fascist. To the guy that's been standing still in the same spot, who's now a right winger.
Speaker 1:So like if you keep pushing the left to the left everyone's a right winger. Did you see the one I just sent you?
Speaker 2:Well, if you sent it since we started the show, then no, let me look, you should look.
Speaker 1:So this was just posted on X not too long ago. I don't see anything from you, it's on Signal and it's a guy standing in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't see it on Signal dude. You sure it's on to me.
Speaker 1:I didn't press enter.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Alright, anyway, there's a guy standing in the center between the two sides yeah, and he's colored pink. Yeah, not blue, not red and he says I'm here to bridge the gap, let's talk. And the blue side shoots him and the red side says they shot him, yeah. And the blue side says your side needs to turn down the temperature. And now they're dark, dark red with glowing eyes.
Speaker 1:I mean we had reports of an armed man outside of the memorial event there in Arizona. Turns out he was a known person and a registered guest, but he was impersonating law enforcement and armed Jesus Wow. Yeah, like registered guests, but he was impersonating law enforcement and armed jesus.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, look it's. It's obvious that if the shootings continue, there will be an in-kind response well, I'm I'm surprised we haven't seen anything else happen.
Speaker 1:Pleasantly surprised, but surprised. But I mean we have left this doubling down on the on calls for assassination and everything else. Yep, we had people calling for erica and their children to be killed which is just insanity. And she's doing what I thought she would do she's stepping in. She just got voted the new CEO of Turning Point USA.
Speaker 2:I don't like that. I'm against that. I've said that from the get-go. I think those children deserve better.
Speaker 1:That's the problem. It's too soon. Her statement came too soon. Yeah, it was a little too rote and scripted. Now I know that's the only way she got through it, right.
Speaker 2:but you know, hey, go grieve right, yeah, go grieve, go figure out what you're going to be doing with your kids. Now the other thing that I found out was actually charlie's worth is 300 million, god damn it. So all these people donating money to the poor grieving widow to make sure that she and her kids are okay. Yeah. I mean, if it makes you feel good, do it anyway. I'm all for that. But it's not that they're okay, they're going to be okay. Whatever?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah yeah and and it's. There's one I can't remember the guy's name, but it was one of the other sort of conservative rich dudes that talked about meeting with elon and charlie and a couple of other multi-millionaires, and that's when he realized that, okay, charlie is just, he's very good at being the guy next door, right, actually, he's right up there with those guys.
Speaker 1:Turning point usa gets an incredible amount of donations now, is that turning points value or Charlie's value, because that'd be a different thing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not a nonprofit Right and she now owns 100%. Are you sure about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have nonprofit chapters that they start in colleges, but the actual company that does all the management and facilitation that Charlie was quote unquote working for, that's for profit, okay, but it's again, this is not a negative. I'm not saying this to you know, say anything bad about him or his wife or anybody else. It's just I want to make sure that people don't feel like, oh my God, that poor woman, what's she going to do now that her husband's not out there debating on campuses? I think she'll be okay. Now the kids are going to be obviously missing a dad and that sucks. And this is exactly why I don't want the mom now to quote unquote take up the mantle and to go to work, because the kids deserve their mom. A parent yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah there's. They're stuck now with just one, and I would hate to see that one become not available. I don't think. I hope to God no one shoots her. I certainly don't think they will. But even just her being away and working is not preferential in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it depends on how much of a hands-on role she takes versus everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they could be doing this purely for image, but then she's still not really actively spending time doing work, so that's fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, all I can say is my heart goes out to them. I think people need to tone down the rhetoric on both sides. That's not what you were saying last week. I think that's not what you were saying last week. Well, it is. I'm taking Crowder's stance of defense.
Speaker 2:Crowder said fuck around, find out. That's what Crowder said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but defensive violence, only defend yourself, defend others, take up the offense, and I tend to agree with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you see Harris slams?
Speaker 2:trump over kimball suspension, uh harris yeah.
Speaker 1:So harris went through and saying jimmy came alive off the air defending kimmel, that it's an outrage and abuse of power, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who's? Harris, kamala Harris.
Speaker 2:What does she know? She's not really anything, is she?
Speaker 1:No, she's nothing, yeah well then who gives a shit? Hold on. And then, anyway, Musk found an old tweet of hers and brought it back up, and hilarity ensued. But never mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what did it say that sometimes you have to go and fire?
Speaker 1:people or what. Let me find it here. Look, let's be honest. The at real Donald Trump's Twitter account should be suspended.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, exactly they have no problem suspending a president, but oh God forbid somebody suspends a nighttime show talk show host.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where you have legitimate financial considerations yeah well, and all of them look.
Speaker 2:Aoc did a speech between an to an old empty room where basically even though charlie kirk was a naz, fascist, homophobic piece of shit, my heart really goes out to his wife and kids. Mm-hmm, yeah, it's like goddamn Better, just say nothing, you know, just keep your mouth shut. Yeah. Keep your mouth off of Charlie Kirk. To quote Will Smith Keep your damn mouth off, Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1:That was such a stage bullshit Of course it was yeah. All right, I got a couple. Anything else we want to say about Charlie.
Speaker 2:No, I guess not. I mean I just I. I am slightly not crazily, but slightly annoyed at the number of people utilizing this tragedy to benefit them personally. There's a lot of donation collecting going on right now for things that are not actually Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, when this comes to mind, a few other folks did you see?
Speaker 1:did you see brandon herrera's statement?
Speaker 2:no, what do you say?
Speaker 1:everybody should go watch the video on youtube. He just came out and said I'm not going to be canceling any live events. I'm going to be doubling down on them. We cannot let. I'm not going to be canceling any live events, I'm going to be doubling down on them. We cannot let them scare us away from this.
Speaker 2:We have to go and fight. Well, that's good, because both Tim pool and what's his face. Crowder. No, no, no the Jewish guy.
Speaker 1:No, Ben Shapiro isn't canceling any events.
Speaker 2:He is now. Okay, it just canceled them.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, he said he wasn't.
Speaker 2:I know he did say he wasn't. He announced that and he was like we're going to fight and a bit like three, four days later, press release goes out. All bench fears will be canceled, Refunds forthcoming, Wow. I mean it's like obviously.
Speaker 2:What he probably got told is you're gonna lose insurance if you go through with this well, and that's what tim said yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense, tim is. Tim is funny, though, because I mean not because he's getting harassed like this or and getting death threats and stuff, but like tim is so still naive, even though he's older than you are. No, he's not. I thought he was, isn't he like 38 now?
Speaker 2:dude, I'm 39 okay, he's a year younger than you and he's still naive like a 20 year old. He's like, yeah, we're gonna go do this. It, dude, you're saying shit before anybody on your staff has checked anything. You're just like talking about shit Like, okay, I made a decision, it's good to go. It's not how shit works in the real way, so you gotta hold off a little bit on announcements and then, because you're going to end up rolling them back and that's exactly what's happened here. So, yeah, I don't know, man, I I think I hope that anybody doing public events in the open will have drone coverage from an hour beforehand to an hour after, and then those drones should be monitored and you should have some snipers of your own to eliminate any potential threats immediately.
Speaker 2:I watched a video of Nick Fuentes getting harassed at his house, and I'm not a big fan of Nick Fuentes, you know. I think he's kind of a douche bag. I like the gay Mexican meme that's going around them, but also I don't think he ought to be killed and also I don't think he ought to be harassed. Leave the damn guy alone and it's just. You know, I don't care what side of the political instruction people are on this even though it's 99 liberal women, but still just. You need to stop harassing people for what they say. It is ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Well, you want to try and get, except you were calling for doxing and there's a big difference if you want to have youtube, kick him off youtube, I'm all for that.
Speaker 2:But if you want to show up in front of his house and ring his doorbell and then try and get him to do something that you can call the cops and accuse him, well, quite frankly, anyone who's doing that, you're risking your own life.
Speaker 2:Let's be clear yes, but also he's 26 years old. I don't want even a crazy pro-nazi dude having to end up having to deal with lawsuits for damages that he did to somebody in self-defense. Like self-defense still costs you an arm and a leg financially and a temporary loss of freedom, even if you're totally in the right. So I just I don't like that trend, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you want to get somebody fired? Get them fired, but don't show that trend, man. Yeah, if you want to get somebody fired, get them fired, but don't show up at their house. Agreed. Mm-hmm. So all of this does have an air of silver lining on it, because clearly the mood of the country is more in line, more in sync with the conservative side than this with the liberal side right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't agree. I think the left is just as radical as they. I think I think it's a clearer divide. I think that most people who don't pay attention are siding with the conservatives.
Speaker 2:That's what I meant by that.
Speaker 1:Okay, the two politically aware sides, the people who pay attention to the news, are more entrenched and further apart than ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, in terms of just the people that have been less politically inclined and I'm saying that mostly because I watch a lot of gaming content on YouTube, twitch People that have never mentioned politics, or, if they have, it's only been in the context of laughing at it all of a sudden now are super serious and talking about how, what the hell is going on with the left. What are these people thinking and saying? Because they just they're retarded, like the R word is coming out a lot from centrists.
Speaker 1:The problem is the centrists, like Dr Mark Siegel on Fox, I wasn't going to bring this up, but since we're continuing, he wrote an op-ed titled Charlie Kirk's shooting suspect shows the danger of lost kids in gaming culture. Yes, literally blaming gaming they did for this.
Speaker 2:I read that yeah, insane. Yeah, absolutely, yeah it's. We've had gaming culture, including shooting guns and games, for, oh, I don't know, my entire life pretty much I remember playing wolfenstein yeah, yeah, go shoot a nazi literally exactly so.
Speaker 2:And then you think about that. This is just. It is such a perverse long game that the socialists have been playing by to so many people who clearly are not nazis that it actually blurs the lines it. It may not be the cause of charlie getting called, but it sure as hell contributed to it. So I, yeah, I just I'm not a I'm not a obviously a supporter of anyone that's gonna be blaming video games, any more than somebody blames guns and gun culture. It's like, well, it's really this guy's parents that are responsible for the gun culture that he grew up with that got him to use a gun to commit this murder. It's like, no, yeah, that's, that's insanity all right.
Speaker 1:So next do you want to go to gaza, ukraine or h1b?
Speaker 2:h1b let's do a fun topic yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is actually a fucking win total win crazy 100 and the indians are apoplectic over it, like modi has really stood up to trump and like this is gonna have humanitarian repercussions and so on yeah, humanitarian please oh why? Because your diaspora is gonna have to come home, not only that, because the diaspora sends going to have to come home.
Speaker 2:Not only that, because the diaspora sends money home even when they work abroad. And that's really what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:So, for those that don't know, trump has signed an executive order requiring $100,000 per year Per employee, per H-1B recipient, to be paid to the government. So what that means is H-1B is supposed to be highly skilled workers that you can't find that skill here in the US. Well now, god damn it, that's going to be quite the thing, and it's funny because BBC is saying this is going. You know, workers from India are by far the most skilled visa in the program, just as more than 70 of those issues, so the india is the biggest one going to be hit. Oh, totally, totally. But here's the thing every h1b worker I've ever known a some of them are good, but there's always an american that's just as good yep, and they are wage slaves because they can't change jobs. They can't, they. They have to find someone to sponsor them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the us sends over 41.5 billion yeah, back to india yeah, it's insane and it's somebody that is both hired and gotten rid of h1bs for different companies in the. We all knew it was a scam, like we knew it was a scam 20 years ago when we were hiring H-1Bs and we did them like. I was part of the team that did the analysis financially. Here's what we need to do. Here's what it's going to save over the course of five years and here is the contract, the language that has to go in there for us to ensure that this is a profitable activity. Like everybody knew, they were going to perform worse than Americans. That's expected. Everybody knew all the issues, the problems and we even knew the fact that some of these people cannot afford to fly home for holidays.
Speaker 2:This is all a known quantity and companies did it to save money, period, end of story. There was no pretense even that. Oh well, we can't find enough of these people Bullshit. We had all the American people and this is back when I was doing information security work. We had tons of people in the US that we could have been hiring, but we didn't, because we could get Indians to work for $45,000 to $50,000 a year, yep, and we had to pay Americans $100,000 a year Yep.
Speaker 2:I mean, this was an area kind of like AI is now right. You can't hire somebody for AI for under 250K Like no one will just take a job for less than that. And it was the same kind of thing 20 years ago in InfoSec, where it was a hot field. We just got through Y2K and the salaries got up to into six figures, and so people were expecting that. Six figures, and so people were expecting that. And then this magic fountain of oh, this guy graduated with a master's degree in information technology security from the institute of bangladesh and we can get them for 46 000 a year, hell yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you realize you know what indian degrees aren't worth the paper they're written on no, they're not're not, because it's more about who you know, who you paid and who fucked who than it is about people that actually did really well in school. Now Japanese people you hire that have advanced degrees they are super geniuses. Indians not so much.
Speaker 1:So do you know how many the official current estimates of H-1B visa holders are in the US?
Speaker 2:About 14 million too many.
Speaker 1:No, it's not even a million.
Speaker 2:Is it that?
Speaker 1:long 730,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's. But I would guess it's actually a little more than that. I think that that number is probably underestimated.
Speaker 1:The other thing is Well, my point is even let's take that number that Google AI is giving me, Sure, but it caveats that there's no single official total, da-da-da-da-da. But estimate is this let's say it's over a million, doesn't matter. Let's say it's 500,000. Doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is you remove by this time next year those 500,000 positions. That's 500,000 Americans that are going to get those jobs. Yep, that's a huge uptick. That's money that isn't leaving the country.
Speaker 2:It will make my wage more valuable. Yeah, absolutely, it is. Essentially, it's going to make the H1B what it was originally supposed to be, which is, if a company truly is let's say, you're finding that you're trying to steal that engineer from NVIDIA, right, and you're not going to be paying them a hundred grand a year, you're going to be paying them 800,000 a year, and a hundred grand on top of that for the H1B fee is nothing. 800,000 a year and 100 grand on top of that for the H-1B fee is nothing. That's going to still be worth it to do for the right companies Facebook X, whoever.
Speaker 2:Right For a very, very skilled applicant. Very skilled, exactly. And you know for a fact Musk is still going to do this, even with $100,000 fee.
Speaker 1:Sure, for the right person, it makes sense. Yeah, for someone making 50 grand, it doesn't. It does not. Yeah, for someone making 50 grand, it doesn't, it does not. No, because if you can pay an American 130 grand to do it, that's cheaper. Yeah, absolutely. We are going to see a massive increase in real wages because of this. Yeah, it's a great move. I'm glad someone floated the idea by him and he's executing on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also it's been a very long time since you got a good deal on indians or any h1bs like that also disappeared over the course of the last 20 years to where your h1b is maybe 10 cheaper than somebody's comparable us wage. But companies are so used to using the H-1Bs and now you've got whole fleets of managers that themselves were H-1Bs 10, 15 years ago, have become US citizens and only hire people from their own countries now.
Speaker 1:One of the things I would say is I have never hired an H-1B. I've never worked at a company that would sponsor an H-1B. What we did, though, was hire contractors like HCL we do use them all the time, yeah. Yes, and those HCL workers were so poorly paid and HCL is an Indian company by the way Like Tata and WePro, and they were so underpaid.
Speaker 2:Tata and WePro.
Speaker 1:They were so underpaid and they could not change jobs, because unless your company specializes in bringing in H-1Bs, you don't do it. Yeah. And anyway, regardless, there's a ton of them out there. They're almost all going away. It's going to go from a million seven hundred some odd thousand down to a couple thousand a year yeah, as it should be yes, and I I've I've said that for many, many years, for over 20 years, that we need to stop abusing the h1b system.
Speaker 1:You think these indians that are here are are, whatever nationality, are here on the h1b program? Yeah are they going to leave willingly?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of them will test the waters legally through everything they can, meaning they will apply for exemptions, for appeals I think there's gonna be lawsuits saying, hey, change the program on us while we're already. I suspect in california there'll be a lot more that end up staying than in other states because California is not going to be doing anything to help the enforcement of that.
Speaker 1:I've seen that with Newsom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in the end, even if the trickleback is slow, just the prevention of any new H-1Bs happening. Plus, you've got to remember the H-1Bs naturally do expire and so there is a natural deprecation that's going to happen, whether you like it or not, if they're not issued, if they're not renewed. But also, I love the shit Trump is doing, but I don't trust Pam Bondi. I don't trust Pam Bondi. I don't trust Patel. I don't trust any of those fuckers that Trump brought in, frankly. Why? Because they haven't done a goddamn thing. I don't know if you watched any of the hearings with Kash Patel. I did.
Speaker 2:He's a jackass man. He's a jackass that has zero, damn good he didn't know, he did especially on the senate side I know he did poorly. What are you talking about? No, he, I disagree nailed the democrats. What are you talking about? That is not his place to nail democrats, as a witness coming in to testify. But what he's going to end up doing is getting more senators against Trump.
Speaker 2:That's what he accomplished, congratulations. He's going to have more Republicans actually nodding their heads in agreement with the Democrats going yeah, this administration's out of control. We need to start putting in legislation to limit them. Thanks, cash. Eh, we'll see.
Speaker 2:I thought it was a very poor performance, see, for a guy that hasn't achieved a goddamn thing since he got into office. There's nothing that he talked about before he was in office that he's actually accomplished in office For a guy that hasn't done jack shit. He let his mouth loose as though he was still a podcaster when he was being testifying in front of Senate. This is not a joke, and he was acting like it was. Al. I think one of two things is going to happen Either Cash gets fired or Cash is going to quit Because the repercussions will be on the administration. I guarantee you that all he's done so far is prolong the conversation about Trump's involvement with Epstein. This is not the play that the Trump administration wants. So, yeah, I think he clearly was a bad hire, much like his boss, who is a god-awful hire, who wants to put a limit on free speech, who has been lying to the american people about the epstein files which, by the way, breaking what breaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the prosecutor who reached the plea deal with Epstein just got a plea deal himself to testify.
Speaker 2:Good, I was afraid you were going to say just committed suicide with two to the back of the head.
Speaker 1:Nope, he just reached a deal to testify.
Speaker 2:Well, that's interesting, because that means, he knows something.
Speaker 1:Yes, it does. I wonder what, and me too yeah and there's.
Speaker 2:we will have to wait to see, but I guess. I guess there there's been a conspiracy theory that trump was a an informant for the fbi againststein and that's why he can't talk about it. To me that sounds like a bunch of bullshit. Even if he was providing information to the FBI, he sure as fuck could talk about it. I'm not buying that the current sitting president is going to be held on some court order from seven years ago to not talk about some topic. He, the guy, can literally, you know, declassify anything he wants. Yeah and uh, his response was what you guys are still talking about this after all.
Speaker 2:this time I will say?
Speaker 1:I will say that, yes, he can declassify anything that he wants, and if there's a CIA file, for example on epstein, it should be released yeah but what he can't do is violate a court order without fighting it out in the courts, and they are trying to do that right now well, he? Yes, yeah, generally speaking, although there are definitely exceptions but I would say is, to quote one of our founders the court has made their decision, now let them enforce it, right? So there's that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also a matter of national security that overrides courts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, yeah, anything else on Epstein or Cash or Bondi.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I don't know if you've been following. I think I forwarded you the info about Franklin Arms. Oh yeah. After a decade in courts, finally getting an enforceable positive ruling that explicitly says that two of their guns I'll just call them guns- that are capable of shooting multiple calibers. Right that that basically one of them shoots five, five, six and the other one was, I think, 45 long. Call that they are firearms not subject to the NFA and therefore are not short barreled rifles.
Speaker 1:Yes, and this goes for. This goes for anything that you can shoot, .410 or .44 long, called .22, with rat shot. Before you get going too far, hold on. Well, this is Guns and Gears' opinion.
Speaker 2:Okay, go ahead, and then I'll tell you what's going on.
Speaker 1:What's really interesting is, I think this could potentially even take out shotguns on short-barreled shotguns, because you can shoot multiple types of ammunition out of a short-barreled shotgun.
Speaker 2:So as of.
Speaker 2:That's not part of this ruling yet, as of 7 pm last night, the ATF released an open letter advising Franklin Arms that their products have been reclassified as firearms for the ATF and that they will be enforcing the National Firearms Act as prescribed because of a change of interpretation, mm hmm. So basically they won a 10 year old long court case battle which the ATF, conveniently under Pam Bondi's direction and Cash Patel's leadership, has been fighting tooth and nail and has now pulled a switcheroo and doubled back, forcing Franklin Arms to issue a letter to all buyers of their products for the last several days, advising them that refunds will be made promptly and all products have to be returned back to Franklin Arms.
Speaker 1:The court ruling, though, is very clear.
Speaker 2:So, if it is, if I, however, the Department of Justice, the trump department of justice under bondi and patel over the atf, are saying we don't give a shit, we don't care what the courts say well, we'll see what happens. I think I mean, that's the answer to everything that we're talking about. Literally is that we'll see what happens, because all of this is emotion. None of None of this has been, even though this we thought was decided in our favor for a change turns out nope, the ATF is going to ignore it.
Speaker 1:Quite frankly, this is going to end up going to the Supreme Court and it may be the dissolution of the NFA. So cool.
Speaker 2:If that's what ends up happening and I'm sure there's some QAnon-type group out there just trust the plan. This is all exactly what we want. Yeah, well, that's not what I want. I want to be able to order these things and not have to think about the fact that ATF changed their mind. So it's you know they were talking. Franklin Arms was even talking about licensing this to other manufacturers.
Speaker 1:Franklin Arms said they will license this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, and well, it's all moot now. Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 2:And I really don't like that. This is happening under the current administration. I would have expected this to happen on the previous one. That this is happening under the current administration. I would have expected this to happen on the previous one. What in the hell is preventing Trump from providing a direction to Bondi, who then, in turn, provides it to Patel, saying thou shalt not enforce bullshit? Yeah, they're saying exactly the course that the ATF was under previous administrations and doing nothing to act in a pro-gun manner, which certainly, I think a vast majority of MAGA are pro-gun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think? Well, one would think, but Trump administration clearly doesn't think that. That'd be like the Democrats all of a sudden being anti-abortion. It's like well, you know, we have to look at this, but for now, let's just hold off and not do abortions. Really, that's not what your people voted you in for. So major disappointment on my part on that count, because this is not an independent entity. This is an entity that has a straight direct reporting line through trump and the people that trump brought in, and it's acting exactly in the same manner as it was acting under Biden or Obama or Clinton.
Speaker 1:So I'm still hopeful for some of the lawsuits on the NFA about the tax stamp stuff and everything else. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I, I'm hopeful that there be interesting to see what happens. I, I'm hopeful that there's going to be some changes, but we'll have to wait and see. Yep. On another note, two major cyber events happening right now. Have you been tracking?
Speaker 2:Not beyond the X headlines.
Speaker 1:All right, you been tracking not beyond the x headlines. All right, so we've got heathrow. That is going through what c-tac went through?
Speaker 1:uh, last year, ransomware getting on the baggage handling computers and the plcs that control, you know, the, the belts and everything else and causing massive disruptions. And what's funny is I'm actually I've consulted with SeaTac on their cyber event. I'm well aware of what happened there. I have to limit what I say about SeaTac because of that, but what I can say is every Heathrow seems to be a repeat of what happened to SeaTac from everything I see.
Speaker 1:So it's going to be interesting to see that the other major one we have have you looked at Jaguar? Have you seen what's happened to Jaguar and Land Rover? No, dude, they're going to be out over a month on their production lines. Really, yes, major, major attack Estimated to cost them more than 1 billion euros in revenue. So their manufacturing lines are in total stoppage right now, like Range Rover and Jaguar are not producing any vehicles right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean their marketing campaign pretty much put a stop to production of vehicles anyway.
Speaker 1:So Not on the Range Rover side. Jaguar yes.
Speaker 2:Jaguar definitely, I mean. They said their sales were down 72%.
Speaker 1:Right, but again In one year. But this is my domain, dude. This is ICS environments that are not protected. And I will tell you the most protected sector on ICS is US Electric. Yeah, us Electric, let's hope so. The most investment there? Yeah, the weakest is.
Speaker 2:ICS, that's for control systems.
Speaker 1:Yes, the weakest is arguably airports and line manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's not a good thing to hear.
Speaker 1:No, oil and gas is shockingly weak, like even the super majors. I've done work for Chevron. I've done work for ExxonMobil. Yep, yep, they don't have great programs. Yeah, what we have is this Tootsie Pop mentality in a lot of these industrial systems where you have a hard on the outside, soft and smooshy on the inside.
Speaker 1:As soon as you break that barrier at all, you're done. Yep, and like I was on the ISA 99 drafting committee, which became 62443. So I literally helped instantiate some of the ideas around zones, conduits and not micro-segmentation, because you can't in these environments, but risk-based segmentation and risk to your process and everything else. And all I can tell you is this is nothing but job security for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, totally this is nothing but job security for me and I'm very yeah, yeah, totally, but anyway no between heathrow and jaguar, like the. When I was talking to someone about heathrow, their immediate reaction was well, but we heard about c-tac. Why didn't they make any changes? Why didn't they do anything? And the answer is because there aren't enough people to make the change in any meaningful speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, good thing, there's going to be a whole lot of Indians looking for work soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they can go to the UK.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, I think it's super easy to get a US passport as an Indian. Why? Because they still have a lot of political what do they call them, not charters, basically agreements between India and the UK that make it much easier.
Speaker 1:Oh, you said US.
Speaker 2:I meant UK if I said US.
Speaker 1:Okay, so while we're talking about the UK, it happened today the UK and Portugal recognized Palestine as a state. Yep, yep Thoughts.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's not surprising, frankly, the UK originally recognized. After promising Israel to Herzl and the coalition of Jews that are commonly referred to as Zionists, they backtracked and said well, but we also need to have a land for the people that are living there right now, for the people that are living there right now. And that, effectively, is what became. What do you call it Jordan? So we had Transjordania and we had the Palestinian mandate. These were all administered territories that were conquered by the British from the Ottomans, and that was the split that they agreed to. Now, somewhere in the mix, the Egyptian portion of the coastline of Israel, gaza, started becoming its own thing, and I remember when this happened.
Speaker 1:This happened with Israel originally was Palestine under the British right. Yeah, it was the Palestine Mandate, soine mandate, so the the mandate before the zionist movement really kicked off after world war ii it really kicked off in 1862. The the it had no traction until after world war ii well, it, it, had it it.
Speaker 2:What happened after World War II was a mass sympathy for Jewish people, and so a lot of people that simply just would not give a shit and just didn't care one way or the other. Well, all of a sudden agreed that well, yes, yes, they probably should have their own land to escape to when they're getting prosecuted somewhere else.
Speaker 1:And you know what's ironic? This is exactly what is happening to the palestinians today, not really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let me. Let me explain why. Yeah, because the palestinians, much like the, the jews, after one or two, yeah, you had this massive population of refugees. Yeah, that no one wanted in their country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, you're. You're right about that. I can't argue with that. Here's the bit that you got to remember the part that is Gaza was not part of the Palestinian mandate the British administered. That was part of the Palestinian mandate that the British administered. That was part of Egypt since the Ottoman Empire. That was actually territory taken by Egypt from the Ottomans, and so Jordan was the half of the territory that was the mandate of Palestine. That was supposed to be for the Arabs, and Israel was the part that was supposed to be for the Jews. And Jordan is Arab. I mean, there's no two ways about. It is Arab. I mean, there's no two ways about it.
Speaker 2:It has had a, you know, typically Arab relations with Israel, but also a much more peaceful relation with Israel. Certainly, since the Six Days War, the normalization of relations with Jordan and with Egypt effectively created borders that really haven't changed since the 1960s. So you know, it's a power peg, no matter how you slice it. But I think the Gaza situation and you're absolutely right in that nobody wants them is because the country that should be forced to take them in if they're going to go anywhere Egypt Is Egypt, Because that is the last country that held that territory and lost that territory as part of its attack on israel well and is.
Speaker 1:Egypt could easily create a new settlement for them and, like they have, the land mass saudi arabia has more money and land. Well, the star doesn't have land, but has the de facto government of al-islam so let's and I want to talk about the israeli bombing of gaza as well and that, like 70 of the buildings are just destroyed. I think it's over 70 yeah, it's the, the israelis have.
Speaker 1:There's nothing there, there's no infrastructure, there's no possibility of rebuilding well, it will take time, but it's basically going to be everybody has to leave like, yeah, everybody has. It's not, it's not livable, it's not livable this is one of the most dense yeah population per my square mile in the world and there is no infrastructure. You don't have fresh water there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you do. I mean, there's tons of fresh water there. Israel supplies water, un supplies water.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I'm talking naturally occurring resources, oh naturally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's no desalination plants or anything You're not pumping.
Speaker 1:They've been destroyed.
Speaker 2:I don't think they ever existed, dude.
Speaker 1:They did, but that's. Are you sure about that? Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:Because Qatar built Qatar.
Speaker 1:Qatar, that figures, yes, and, by the way, for those who don't know, qatar and UAE over 90% of their water, and now, for instance, dubai, 98% of their water is desalinated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which makes sense.
Speaker 1:And I think the problem with US doing that is just cost Well in the environmental impact. What do you do with the slurry? What do they do? They dump it into the desert. Oh well, there you go, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, by the way, we have the salt and sea, we can dump it in there.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So here's a quick quiz for you, gene. What group of people are the?
Speaker 1:most inbred in the world Most inbred, I would say, defined as marriage between the highest incidence. No, I'm talking about ethnic populations, not specific families. Oh. That's a pretty inbred ethnic population in the world, based off of marriages between first cousins.
Speaker 2:I think it probably would be one of the Arab states, maybe Turkey, even, because that's not considered a. You know, it's not illegal out there.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Pakistan is number one with rates exceeding 60% marriages between first cousins, Cousins yeah, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is second with above 50%.
Speaker 2:Really, I wouldn't have thought that.
Speaker 1:Saudi Arabia comes in third at 40%.
Speaker 2:And that includes, like the common people, not just the royalty.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no. It only counts citizens, and that's the thing. So Kuwait, Qatar and UAE they all have. When we think of Dubai, we think of Dubai as this huge multi-million person city. Is this huge multi-million person city, but 90 some odd percent of their population, maybe 99 percent?
Speaker 2:of their population aren't citizens. Yeah, yeah, that's true, you're only counting the emirati there okay, all right, yeah, I guess that makes sense. I mean, the saoud, the saoud family, is like tens of thousands of people, yes, and they all marry each other.
Speaker 1:Yes, at least one of them.
Speaker 2:Well, good point. I know that they definitely like to import the Europeans there as well, and the Americans, and the Americans, yeah. Yeah, how about Oman Do you know any stats on them.
Speaker 1:No, it's not listed as the top ones.
Speaker 2:But it's interesting to me that.
Speaker 1:Pakistan is 60% 60% inbred Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1:And when you think that Pakistan and India used to be one country, yet their cultures are so divergent that India doesn't even make this list.
Speaker 2:Well, also remember, india was never one country before the British came.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yes. So there are very distinct groups there.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is why we had the Great Divide and everything else yes.
Speaker 2:I wonder why Afghanistan isn't't listed. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I couldn't imagine they're any different than pakistan I can just because of, I don't know, the bedouin culture of trading wives. Yeah. Right, so that culture. Women are often traded. Historically have been traded between groups For two camels yeah. Well and to keep the peace right.
Speaker 2:Right, I meant that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess that would probably disperse that psalm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think they also have a pretty small population. Yeah, that was always the big thing about how, look at, look at, look at how afghanistan, with a population of five people, defeated russia. Yeah, well if you know the real story, you know exactly why and exactly who defeated russia.
Speaker 1:But yeah what is going on with Israel and Yemen?
Speaker 2:So that's interesting. I am not an expert on Yemen whatsoever, so I'm completely relying on what I watch on YouTube for that. But it seems like Yemen has really taken up the shield of Islam and is being very non-diplomatic in just, you know, completely calling for the elimination of Israel and Jews in general. I mean, they don't. This is the thing that Americans don't really see much, because the way that it's presented here is a little different. It's like they don't like Israel. The country, no, all these Muslim countries are going off the Koran. The Koran doesn't say you must destroy the country of Israel. It says you must kill all the Jews Until the rock cries out.
Speaker 2:That's right. There's a Jew hiding behind me, oh, worshiper of Muhammad. And then the trees will say the same thing, except for the one. I can't remember the name of the tree, but that tree, that tree is the Jewish tree and it will hide the Jews and it will not cry out there's a Jew behind me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I found interesting about this reading the Guardian on it. Mm-hmm. You know, the Yemeni response was this was a brutal, unjustified attack targeting innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and their words. And Israel's response is we targeted quote-unquote military targets, mm-hmm. So I mean? My understanding is they took out some journalists.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't call that a military target, personally well it is if they're sitting next to military targets. Look, if a journalist is interviewing hitler and you're targeting hitler, you're going to take out a journalist I I don't like those arguments.
Speaker 1:That sounds sounds very Charlie Kirk-esque to me. Oh.
Speaker 2:Charlie Kirk-esque, it's true, though, because we don't. We in America do not regard the civilians around military targets as anything other than collateral damage. We're the model for the west. Yeah, anyway, israel's ramping shit up. Yeah, well, they look internally. Israel's months ago said that they're gonna fully take over gaza. Like everybody knows this. This is not some new thing that should be discovered, like it was obvious from a while ago that gaza is done. There will not be a gaza. Now you can argue whether that's a good thing, a bad thing or whatever, but but israel, after that attack over a year ago, now israel had had its enough is enough, fuck around, find out moment, and it got a lot of the more liberal groups in Israeli politics to actually say agree with the more conservative group and say, yeah, this has to end. So again, you know, like the Tuckerlson hit piece on israel with the like oh they're, they're targeting christians in gaza. There, there are like 12 christians in gaza, and if those christians are sitting in buildings, that are military targets then when you say are you mean?
Speaker 1:clearly you're talking about you and the other Jews' military.
Speaker 2:They're designated military targets. I don't know by who or why.
Speaker 1:You're missing my point, because it's Israel doing it, dude, and you just said ours.
Speaker 2:No, no, I said, if they are A-R-E, not O-U-R, okay, if they are military targets.
Speaker 1:CSB.
Speaker 2:Check the time code whatever, I know what I said, I did. You've been there a lot closer to israel than I have. I've never been there I've never been to israel, you've been closer though qatar and uae yes, damn near close, right there, exactly Okay.
Speaker 1:So it's a Also been close to NSA headquarters. That means nothing Exactly.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, it does, and everybody knows it. So there's. A.
Speaker 1:It was just a cover for my GPS location?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, exactly. So my only point is that if anyone is surprised that when you attack a large percentage of a country's population and remember, relative to size of population, the number of people that died, the number of people that, after being kidnapped, were not returned or returned dead, that total number of dead people would be like 9-11 times 8.
Speaker 1:No, that would be 9-11 times 8 per population density. Let's be very clear about what we're saying there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Per population density. Yeah, per capita yeah, yeah, per capita, exactly. So it should not be a surprise to anyone that the response that we're seeing is the response that we were going to see. I think that there were some people that thought, oh, israel's going to bomb a couple of places, all the hostages will be returned and things can go back to more or less normal and Gaza is going to be on their way to becoming independent. Go back to more or less normal and Gaza's going to be on their way to becoming independent. Yeah, obviously it wasn't going to happen. So what other topics you got, ben?
Speaker 1:Alrighty, so the next topic I want to talk about is also in the vein of cybersecurity, and then we can get back into some political stuff.
Speaker 1:All right, because on this trip I had some interesting things happen to me. We've all seen spam of generic hey, I know your browser history this, that and the other. Right, oh, it's hilarious. Well, I got a message on Signal which, by the way, everyone should change their settings that if you don't know a person, someone that they can't contact you. But anyway, since signal went to people not having to know your phone number, it kind of gets interesting. So I received a message basically saying we've got compromise on you and wouldn't it be a shame if we told these people, to which they listed my mom, my dad by name, my wife and my stepdaughter?
Speaker 1:as well as listing some of the jobs I have had recently, as well as listing some of the jobs I have recently. Yeah, so I am lucky enough to be in a position that there's nothing that bad out there on me, right, like, even if you had something that you, obviously somebody who knows me has been hacked. Yeah, because that's how this works. So my advice to anyone on this is block immediately, don't respond. And even if you've done something bad, well, dude, that's on you. You've got to own it, whatever if it comes out. But I was looking this up the FBI statistics on these extortion campaigns that get launched, even when there is actual compromised material, the amount that gets released is like 15%. And when you think about it and you go through this thought process, I am not worried because, again, there's nothing out there on me that would be that embarrassing, right? Even if someone happened to get a hold of a nude photo of me somehow.
Speaker 2:Oh, please, you should be proud of it.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Oh, you know what? Your stepdad, I don't, she's 22. Sorry, I didn't send it to you, oh.
Speaker 2:God, please don't publicize that. No, no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly what will I do?
Speaker 2:But that's my point right.
Speaker 1:So, I'm just anyway the ability to step back. Take a moment.
Speaker 2:Does your mother know you support Trump?
Speaker 1:Exactly, but anyway, okay, okay, a little bit of embarrassment.
Speaker 2:Point is take a breath, think about what the real thing is, and there's nothing that would be embarrassing that your mom would see that I haven't already talked to her about.
Speaker 1:Right, but don't. My point is don't delete anything. Keep things for forensic evidence block. Don't communicate, because as soon as you communicate and go, oh no.
Speaker 1:Don't communicate, because as soon as you communicate and go, oh no, don't do that, they've got you right, and the entire game is to get you to pay, don't pay and if you want to go like I, haven't even opened a claim with the fbi or anything. They also sent me a message from a proton email address, but clearly they had done their homework. Like that was the freaky part of this. They had done enough homework on me to know enough details.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh yeah, so anyway, I've set up google alerts on myself and everything okay, okay verified my own account integrities I don't think you need to have hacked somebody to get the info that you mentioned, because it's already available on the web.
Speaker 1:No but true. But tying that to my Signal account is not that easy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree with that.
Speaker 1:That's where I think someone else's phone that had me as a contact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Signal contact Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, and this is why we have the no reporters loud group, so that no reporters can sneak in there yeah, well, anyway, it uh just a psa quick thing like this happened while I was on my trip and I was like because again.
Speaker 1:It's annoying it's annoying and there is that moment of oh wait, what? Oh wait? Nah, you have to just make sure that hey don't do stupid shit that can get you fired Because I haven't done anything. That would be an ethics violation for my company. So, okay, tell my company, send them. Whatever you have on me, please Go ahead right, send them whatever you have on me.
Speaker 1:Please go ahead. Yeah, and just don't respond is the best advice I can give people. Yeah, because when you think about it, even if they have all the contact information for everyone they listed not just associated names why would they send that? It's work for them and if you're not engaging and you are clearly not going to pay them, they're not going to go through and do that work, not unless you're high enough profile that they can quote, unquote, make an example out of you.
Speaker 2:And then they're never going to do that, because it it. Look, if somebody threatens you and you don't capitulate, for them to then follow through on their threat exposes them more than doing nothing.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And it increases the likelihood of them getting caught. Yeah, exactly, and they're not going to do something that nets them zero money and exposes them further. Potentially, that would be a stupid thing for them to do, and while they are somewhat stupid, they're not that stupid.
Speaker 1:Well, and attribution is bullshit. I would say this six ways to Sunday.
Speaker 2:So you're saying it wasn't the Russians?
Speaker 1:No, this six ways to sunday wiki. You're saying it wasn't the russians. No, I I would say that the majority of this come and with all these indians going back to india, we'll probably see an increase in this. Yeah, the majority of this sort of stuff comes out of india and china yeah yeah, and india has a whole industry built around that, a multi-million dollar industry multi-billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're probably right, probably the reason why is because their success rate is fairly low, but what they do is they troll linkedin. They try and find things like mine that make a decent amount of money and that's a lot of boomers currently don't know how to respond to stuff like this, and so if they get you know if they have a low enough wage person going through and doing this research and then putting this together. Also, the English was poor, so that's another.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good tell that way. I remember a few years ago I got a panic call from my ex-wife asking for advice on what to do if someone's hacked her account. I said, well, well, what are you talking about? And she explained to me and she basically got what you're describing and I was just laughing verbally on the phone and she's like don't laugh at this, this is serious. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what you should do, but you have to tell me what you think you did that they could expose. Because now I'm curious. Yeah, it's like what were you doing that you're so afraid that someone's gonna find out?
Speaker 1:because I want to know well, and again, it was generic enough and everything else, you know. Yeah, like I'll, I'll read the message. Hello there. I was initially going to ask you what do you want us to do about all this? But you made, because I had blocked their initial text you made me try, you. You made me regret trying to do that. I don't care if you block me or not, it's your choice. Anyway, I'll just go ahead and go ahead for the option of sending it to some people that you love instead of you seeing it.
Speaker 1:First, mrs Patricia blah blah, blah, right, right, you know, listing out the names and then listing out three firms that I've worked at. Oh, and not to mention your step kid Right, and the naming her. Yeah, you know. Maybe then you'll think of attending to me Again. So this was a series of three messages. First, one I blocked. Then it came from another Signal account, blocked that one, and then there was an email from a Proton address and the second message and the email were the same one, but that happened. I blocked it. I've ignored it. There's been no fallout or follow-up since.
Speaker 2:No, of course not. No, that language definitely sounds like it's in India. Because they have certain differences in their English usage that clearly indicate a non-US and likely Indian speaker.
Speaker 1:Right, and the first message said oh, I found a phone and there's information on you on that. No, you didn't. You got into somebody's account, you got into whatever you found, probably my name and now you're trying to bluff your way into something. Yeah, you know, and there's. There's been some great tools. I forget the open source one that is all about linking people started with an m. It's been around since the early 2000s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically scrape social media accounts yeah exactly someone's name and you find out the links and everything else and you know. The other thing is, if anyone's dumb enough to have facebook lock it down now, can I control what other people put on about me on facebook? No, like, my wife has a facebook account and I'm listed as you allowed her to have a Facebook account.
Speaker 2:My God Ben.
Speaker 1:It predates me. But, anyway, I don't personally have a Facebook account. No Well, there is a Facebook account out there that I haven't logged into in well over a decade, but I got Facebook back in the day when I was running for student government at A&M, back when you were a college student.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:But anyway, deep breaths, don't panic. What is the worst they could have on you? And just know that the worst case scenario is you're going to have to own what you've done and as long as you live your life like you're okay with that, then you're probably good dude yeah, look, everybody masturbates.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's just not that big a deal so unless there's pictures of you fucking a donkey yeah, yeah, I mean, if you're masturbating to a donkey, they can't tell, so it's not a big deal. It's not jesus, it's not really like. The worst thing you could do is your your laptop camera was turned on through a hack and recorded you yeah, and this is where shutters are.
Speaker 1:A physical shutter is important people.
Speaker 2:They can't do chat if you're physically shut down, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Always check your shutters before you whip it out. Gentlemen, yeah, and then I just checked mine and it is close the implication of what I just whipped mine anyway, I I just this happened to me and it's one of those things it's like wow, this is the most sophisticated one I have seen yet that that sounds fairly.
Speaker 2:Usually they're very generic. Yeah, the most sophisticated one I have seen yet that that sounds fairly. Usually they're very generic yeah, the the other.
Speaker 1:When I was working at dragos, the industrial social security firm, within a couple weeks of me being there because I had as many connections to the c-suite as I did there I got a message text from a number saying hey, this is rob lee, the ceo. I need you to do this, oh right, that was the next most sophisticated one, yeah right, and of course it's like well, I have rob's actual number saved in my phone, so I know this isn't him, yeah, and but yeah. So again, we've all experienced.
Speaker 2:This is rob pleased to send me this message.
Speaker 1:Pleased to send me a gift card for this company that we are meeting with.
Speaker 2:Yes, I left my wallet at office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but my point is we've all seen the real generic ones, but ones that obviously have more context, like the two examples I've given.
Speaker 2:And I hate to say it, but it's only going to get worse, because the ai tools that are available for everybody are also available for the bad guys well, and you and here's the thing I poo-poo ai all the time.
Speaker 1:Sorry, csb, but data analysis of this type, like linking in relationships, trivia, that, yeah, that that is a legitimate, very.
Speaker 2:There's one of my friends, a guy that I've run I've ran more than one of his companies over the years. His current one of his current businesses has an AI suite that you type in a name of a person and the company name basically info that you got from business card and it scours everything, starting with linkedin but down to you know shit that that they might have said or done when they were in college, and then puts together a profile. It creates like here's a three, a three sentence greeting or introduction you should use to approach them that ties into one of their interests. This is the name of their spouse and or significant other and their kids, ages, birthdays, everything. I mean it's basically like a doxing automation system, but it's meant obviously for business purposes and trying to sell people shit, not something nefarious and just like getting money from them, but it's the exact same tool that could be used for both.
Speaker 1:By the way, the tool that I was thinking of, yeah. That's the open source tool that's been around for a long time is Multigo, and it's been around for forever for doing invasive. It's basically a spearfishing tool. Yeah, yeah, you know you. You can find out a lot of information about people with that, so if anyone wants to go check it out, it can be useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, multi and this stuff is interesting because when I get a message from an unknown number to something, I usually don't ignore it I start fucking with the person oh, I have done that so many times.
Speaker 1:Like I, I had some, so some of the pig butchering stuff and things like that, like I screw with them, bad and you know, and talk about their fathers and mothers and, yeah, their bastard childhoods and I just tell them to go to a location and I'm going to be happy to meet up with them.
Speaker 2:There's nothing like getting visual proof, confirmation of the person that's trying to fuck with you back without them realizing it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's assuming it's a US-based person.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course. But here's the thing a us based person, but of course of course, but. But here's the thing. I don't know, if you watch mark roper's video that he did on on these indian call center scam places, they actually hire temporary employees in the us as gophers to. You know, like, leave your uh, leave a cashier's check or, you know, cash cards or whatever the hell medium at this address, right so? And the person's thinking, aha, I'll just go tell the police.
Speaker 2:Well, meanwhile, as soon as they you pull away after leaving something there, they've got a runner that is the inverse of your uber guy that runs there, snatches the thing from that property and then mails it, usually to some address they've been told to mail it to. So it's a it. It is foreign, but with the help of domestic people who often don't realize that they're actually breaking the law and what they're doing. People who often don't realize that they're actually breaking the law in what they're doing. You know, these are people that were scammed into doing a temporary high paying not even a high, but just, you know, more than minimum wage job that involves having your own car but very little actual work Because you're basically a bag man for the bad guys.
Speaker 1:Right, and you don't even know. You don't even know it because you're getting paid hourly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it is nefarious, and that's why I love these YouTube channels of guys that specifically go after the criminals out there in India and they will, you know, hack them back.
Speaker 1:They'll start telling them about their relatives and their personal information yeah, I will say, offensive response is not a legal thing, so be careful on doing that.
Speaker 2:But it depends. I mean, it's like it's not a blanket thing, it's uh, when you're dealing with law prevents you from doing that.
Speaker 1:Doing what? If you're doing open source intelligence research, fine. But when you use the term hacking back, that to someone like me is a very different thing. Like if you try and gain access to some of their accounts or something like that. You can be prosecuted for that. So limit yourself. That's why I talked about the tool. M maltigo is basically I was inferring doing something similar to that, but this is pulling open source information and mapping relationships. That is not illegal. That is something that fucking advertisers do to us every day, so that's fine. But you use the term hacking back and you try to take control of someone's account. That's a very different thing that has legal implications.
Speaker 1:Which neither one of us is qualified to talk about, so just leave it there, yeah, but anyway, I thought the audience would enjoy hearing it. Definitely hack them back. What? No legal advice is given on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Never, never medical, never legal, exactly All right, russia, or the senate, sure russia.
Speaker 1:okay, nato defense minister is calling to shoot down russian war planes that violate territory okay, I'm what happened with estonia yeah, I'm totally on board with that.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with that well, my question is estonia.
Speaker 1:Fuck man, why didn't you just do it?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. Why didn't they do it? Because Estonia has an army of 12 people. Fair enough Do you know how tiny that country is. Right, but Literally a city-state.
Speaker 1:My point is okay, but why are we calling for this instead of just doing it? Because they want the US to do it Right.
Speaker 2:And I don't want the US to do it. Fuck that. Well, they want the US to do it, though, because, in their eyes, that's the whole point of being in NATO. Is they get to go tell Big Bad Daddy or, you know, good Daddy or whatever, hey, wes that somebody's bullying us. We need you to fix it what do you think of the? But I support territorial integrity.
Speaker 1:I think every country had to shoot down planes of every other country they don't like what do you think of the the stuff coming out, that it looks now more and more like what happened in poland was. So the story I'm hearing is that ukraine refurbished and repaired some downed russian drones and that those were under ukrainian control and poland knew about it I have not heard that control and poland knew about it.
Speaker 2:I have not heard that, but it's possible. But I think it's equally likely that that somebody in russia fucked up too, or gps jamming and spoofing, yeah, yeah, I mean like I think there's just as many likely scenarios that that on the surface would have Russia doing something bad, just not intentionally. But also I think, if there's a drone flying over your border, who the hell?
Speaker 1:wouldn't shoot it down. Well, and Poland claims they shot down two of them. Well, there you go, Good good, but they claim they shot down two out of several hundred. Oh well, that's a lot. So why?
Speaker 2:I don't know that Russia ever flies several hundred drones at the same time.
Speaker 1:Well, so there was a major attack on Ukraine at the same time, and my hypothesis is somewhere in between. My hypothesis is there was a legitimate Russian drone fleet that was flying probably a little close to the polish border. Yeah, and these two drones, for whatever reason whether it was gps jamming against them or glasnost jamming, really, but you get the point or they were actually the refurbished ukrainians we just talked about yeah, we're allowed to fly in, to be shut down as quote unquote evidence yeah, that could totally be the case.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is not something you start a war for. But I also have no problem with any country shooting down any vehicles, including manned ones, but that's cross the border but one of the things I should say here is russia, don't fucking violate, fucking other people's airspace. Yeah, and I don't think that at the high level that they ever would. So it's either fuck up, or a low-level decision was made poorly or, like you said, the signal is jammed, or they're actually Ukrainian-operated drones.
Speaker 1:Or or or, or, or, or or well, and let's not forget that ukraine and several other states in the area have russian aircraft yeah, absolutely so, unless there's a pilot that's recovered and we can validate that he's russian you can't really like this and he can't have disappeared from russia a ago.
Speaker 1:Right, this is the problem with attribution people. This is the problem with attribution. You can make it, and this goes for physical and cyber, and that's why, when people say, oh, we know that China and Iran are doing da-da-da-da-da, no, you fucking don't, dude. I've read WikiLeaks, vault 7. We can make shit, look however we want, and my entire point, from my professional standpoint, is I don't care who it is, I don't care if it's my own government, I don't care. I just want to defend the system. Yeah, I build to defend the system. I don't care who the threat actors are. Yeah, don't. I care their tactic, their tactics, techniques and procedures. I don't care about their personal identities or their ethnicities.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely not their ethnicities. I do somewhat care who they're working for, but I don't care about their ethnicities, because knowing who's paying for it helps determine how best to protect against it.
Speaker 1:Right, but my point is you can't determine that, so focus on the techniques, tactics and procedures. Well, you can't determine that, so focus on the tactics and procedures.
Speaker 2:Well, you can, if you hack them back, Ben, oh no you can't, because it could be a.
Speaker 1:CIA computer in Langley that you're gaining access to.
Speaker 2:That's usually what it is. How did you know that that is pretty much the standard default computer that everybody seems to hack into, is pretty much the standard default computer that everybody seems to hack into. So one other thing about Russia is they just have a new directive I don't know, it may have been a law, maybe it was a directive, but it was based on a court ruling that effectively said that satanic organizations and pedophile promotion groups are now considered terrorist organizations in the Russian law, which allows the Russian government to seize their assets. And my question is why is the US always trying to fight groups that are going after the pedophiles? And that's something that I don't know that we're ever going to get an answer to. Yeah, what do you think about that, ben?
Speaker 1:well, we had a little technical issue, but I don't know why the us opposes countries that are trying to attack pedophilia.
Speaker 2:I think they or Satanism in general. I mean, to me it's always interesting because while, on the one hand, there's this contingent of people who want us to say the US is nota Christian country, but clearly, based on the number of Christian practitioners in the US, it's one of the highest in the world of any country, if not the highest, I think it is number one. But who? The US? The US is what? The most Christian country in the world?
Speaker 1:No, not by percentage or population, not by percentage. By the number total number of people that are yeah, if you're saying actual numbers, then yes yeah, by actual numbers yeah, percentage of population no um, yeah, yeah but by a total yeah, because I would say that italy is going to be higher by by percent.
Speaker 2:Well, that's only if you can consider catholics, christ, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would even say Brazil.
Speaker 2:It's meant to be a joke, but okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I thought Russia would be higher. Russia is like eighth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Windows 11, the reason why there's a little bit of a blip there, and apologies, windows 11 is a piece of shit. We all know that I hate Windows 11. It is like I should have rebooted before.
Speaker 2:Have you tried Linux Ben? Fuck you, I can't get the Motu working on it.
Speaker 1:And I'm convinced that if anyone in the world has ever gotten a Motu AVB, ultralight AVB, working on any variant of Linux, for the love of God, please contact me. I would love to know how to do it. Because, my little desktop mini PC. It's great. It's got decent specs, it's plenty good. But I swear to God, this son of a bitch crashes at least once a week, yeah, probably.
Speaker 1:It's like you didn't reboot me this week. I'm going to just die now, like we were talking. I wasn't doing anything else on the computer, hadn't done anything and it's just like done.
Speaker 2:And here I am talking on the Mac that hasn't been rebooted in six months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the Mac OS sucks.
Speaker 2:Well, you say that, but it really doesn't the.
Speaker 1:Mac OS is more stable than windows, but its user interface is garbage.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's not. How dare you, how dare you make fun of park xerox it the mac os.
Speaker 1:switching between windows, especially on multiple monitors, is just annoying as hell. Not having the bar be replicated across all monitors, it's only on one fucking monitor. The Mac OS does not have a great UI dude.
Speaker 2:I have my bar on one monitor, on the PC too.
Speaker 1:Why would you do that? I like it that way. Why would you do that? I like it that way. Okay, well, I have it replicated across all of my monitors so that anywhere I want to application switch, I can without having to move my mouse all the way across all my monitors.
Speaker 2:I guess that makes sense If you're somebody that uses the mouse. I tend to type. I mean okay.
Speaker 1:Anyway, all right yeah.
Speaker 2:So Windows 11 sucks and it's funny, but it's like they keep threatening to turn off windows 10 or whatever but at this point something like 87 of all gamers still use windows 10 because it's more stable windows 10 is way more stable, and that that's the part that pisses me off about this entire thing Do we know anything about Windows 12 yet?
Speaker 1:I personally don't. I haven't screwed with it.
Speaker 2:You talked about the next version after 11 of having Xbox integration. Like your, xbox will basically be built in as part of Windows now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, man, I am trying to. The only Windows computer I have is literally to do this podcast. Right, Ironic, Seriously. Everything else is Linux for me. Yeah, Everything Except the Mac you use. Yeah, Well, that's my but I use For my corporate machine. I choose the Mac over the Windows PC. I have both, but I don't ever use the Windows PC. Yeah, the like everything. I don't have a Windows server running on the network. It's all Linux. It's all Linux or BSD, yeah.
Speaker 2:Are you still running something on BSD? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah, my firewall is free BSD. Yeah Right, are you still running something?
Speaker 1:on BSD. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, my firewall is, oh sure, sure Is, is a free BSD, yeah that makes sense. Yeah, Dude packet filter is fucking awesome. And you combine that with Sarah Cotta rules and snort and everything else and you've got a fourth gen firewall.
Speaker 2:So all so shit, I'll do it, yep, yep. So I had an unfortunate gaming thing happen recently.
Speaker 1:If we're done with the other topic. Okay, I've got two more topics I want to cover okay so we'll get back to it.
Speaker 2:So I was. I've been playing this game called gray zone that I mentioned, I think, previously which is a mil sim.
Speaker 2:It's a sim because it's more realistic than games like call of duty or or, uh, battlefield. You know, if you get hurt, it shows you a a full body model showing you where the damage is, type of damage, and you have to use the appropriate measures. You want to put a tourniquet on, then you want to bandage it up, then you may need to put a splint on if it's to hit the bone and and then you're degraded even after doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah and you got to replace blood, so you got to carry blood with you when you're running around the field and it's it's quite possible that you end up in a coma if you get injured, in which case you have five minutes to where other players can administer you medical assistance and get you out of a coma by doing so. Otherwise you end up dead, dead anyway. So in this mil sim there are 184 missions total so far at least, that it will send you on, and I had arrived at the final mission, which is, of course, the hardest one in the game, and that mission entails going through three different locations, killing 10 people at each location and picking up a heavy weight that is meant to not allow you to run with it. So you have to walk and the location of this weight is usually in, like the commander's office or something to where you're going to have to.
Speaker 2:Really, you know high chance that you'll get killed while you're getting there. So I started doing this mission and I miraculously managed to pull off doing the first one by myself, solo, and it's really a squad shooter. It's meant to be played with people, but you know, I don't. I have no friends, so I was playing it by myself. I'm kidding there, I usually play it with people, but I couldn't wait for them, so I just said fuck it. And I managed to do this and I'm thinking, oh, this is awesome. I managed to do the first of the three stages by myself.
Speaker 2:So I'm waddling over with this heavy weight to the safe zone and all of a sudden I get a network error message in the game trying to reconnect. I'm like, oh, what the hell? Reconnect, reconnect, click the button, nothing happens. I look over my shoulder at my, my fiber router and there's only one light on it, and it's not the connection light, it's the power light. I'm like what the hell? So I log into the thing. It gives me an error message. Oh, here's the error message you want to provide to at&t when you call them. I'm like this is not what I want you're in austin.
Speaker 1:Why aren't you on Google Fiber?
Speaker 2:I'm because Google good reasons for that, my friend. Because Google Fiber, as part of their TOS, looks at all your packets and analyzes them for content. At&t does not do this.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple things there. You've got some ways around that and this is where you could VPN everythingn everything well, and I mean you can go a long way just by doing, because so much is over tls these days just using encrypted dns. So really, what they're looking at there is your dns records, especially if you're using their dns well they, they look at more than that.
Speaker 2:there was a whole series of videos on this topic back when they first started doing Google Fiber. But and look, there's reasons to do Google Fiber too. It's just the cost is absurdly cheap. But I went with AT&T for two reasons. One was I didn't like the Google TOS. The other one was it's Austin and everyone has Google Fiber. It's Austin and everyone has Google Fiber, and so they're placing way more traffic on the Google Fiber side of the network than they are on the AT&T side of the network. So I always have my full speeds and friends that are on Google Fiber routinely have their speeds below their advertised speeds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again, this is one of those PSA moments moments and I'll let you continue with your story. But everyone should be using a router. They own a firewall, they own wireless that they own and you should be making sure that all, because all asps mine your dns queries and things like that for advertising content. Yeah, go in. Use encrypted d DNS to a provider that you have selected. If anyone's interested, message me. I can help you out with this. But have your DNS encrypted, because most communications these days are encrypted in some form or fashion.
Speaker 2:So that gets you 98% of the way there without having to do a VPN is my entire point, and that's a good point, because really they're not getting the content except content, except, of course, the stuff they already are on the other end of the encryption.
Speaker 1:on but oh sure.
Speaker 2:But if you're using gmail, then yeah, it doesn't matter like none of it matters exactly, but I will say it is tempting because I can get five gigs for about what I'm paying for one gig. Right now with Google I can get five gigs. At&t is one gig. A price is almost exactly the same. Okay, there is that anyway.
Speaker 2:So my connection dropped by the time I managed to get my my router back online you log into the game and I'm standing there at the, the main base, with nothing, so I lost all my shit, obviously failed the mission and I was not a happy camper at that point, because this was not an easy mission to do. But thankfully, after a couple more unsuccessful tries the next day, I managed to do it over again and then did the whole thing successfully. Well, good for you. All's good, and I think this is actually a game Ben would enjoy, because it is a sim, not a fast zippy click, fest, fest.
Speaker 2:Gene just keeps trying to get me to play games again I just think that you've talked about games you used to play and I'm like well, this is like an adult version of that I played the army game when it came out did you america's army? Yes, yeah, that was a great game. I love that game you could.
Speaker 1:It was ahead of its time. A lot of people got really frustrated. Yeah, totally, and not enough missions yes, that's true too.
Speaker 2:They were repetitive and you started realizing where everybody sniped from and you could snipe them back right, but it was they. You know snow traces effects when you walk. They had very realistic. You remember the like if you had an explosion near you, you couldn't hear a damn thing for like five minutes after that. That was great. I love that. So it was a. It was a good.
Speaker 1:Well, and your vision would blur around the periphery and everything else.
Speaker 2:And this game has a lot of the same type of effects in it as well. You know, if somebody dings your helmet you get tinnitus and your vision is all like screwed up and, frankly, any time you're low on blood you're kind of you're not steady, your head's kind of weaving a little bit, your vision goes in and out of blurtum. A lot of times I'm shooting the guy in the middle of the three guys if I've lost some blood. So they did a very good job with it. The game's still not done, but the guys I play with are all military ex-mil combat guys and they love this thing. Yeah, All right.
Speaker 2:Gene. And the final bit that I told you about I might as well mention here is in this game the weapons are all actual brand-name weapons like I shoot a Daniel Defense M4, which I couldn't afford in real life to save my ass and they are all made of components and you can literally strip your m4 down to bare components or assemble it from scratch using purchase components in the game and they're all the same things, even to the point of having prices for your components in the game that I checked on optics, optics planet, and the price is literally the correct price. Yeah, and that's like I love shit like that in games, when they model reality to the degree where you literally can go off reality to decide things for the game, like that's a chef's kiss right there, okay cool.
Speaker 1:What else you got.
Speaker 2:It's an alpha and it's expensive which is a perfect reason to buy it. While it's cheap, this is going to be a hundred100 game by the time it's. Oh fuck, it's on sale. You might as well consider it to be on sale right now.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh. Okay, so two more stories, but we'll probably rush through them because we're running late. But so, Luigi Mangione.
Speaker 2:The guy that killed the United Health Gang.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ceo, yeah, the. So, first of all, we've got people just fucking worshipping this guy still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his lawyers are pulling some shit, mm-hmm. His lawyers are pulling some shit.
Speaker 1:So two of the top charges for terrorism has been thrown out by the judge, which is bullshit, because what he did was for terroristic reasons. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. And then now his lawyers are calling the death penalty calls, in this case, unconstitutional and railing Ian Spondy. It's incoherent to me, like their rationale makes no sense. You know they're saying it's politically motivated, that the reason why the Justice Department is singing the death penalty is because of politics.
Speaker 2:no, it's because he murdered someone wouldn't it be the state's justice department rather than the federal? No, no, no that's.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that he is currently facing federal and state charges. Okay, but and they're trying to get. They're trying to get the federal charges thrown out under under fuck it double jeopardy yeah, that makes sense to me well, but usually states will drop their charges, so the feds can prosecute, but new york being twats, yeah or not. So you know who whose charges should be thrown out, the state or the feds?
Speaker 2:that's neither here I don't see how it's a federal crime unless you have some other mitigating circumstance here, like racketeering or something.
Speaker 1:I believe he crossed state lines.
Speaker 2:Everybody crosses state lines.
Speaker 1:But he crossed state lines to commit this crime.
Speaker 2:We don't know that that may be an allegation. Yeah, it may be. Yeah, it's from New Jersey, but again, I think this is up to the state to decide. That may be an allegation. Yeah, it may be. Yeah, yeah, it's from New Jersey, but again, I think this is up to the state to decide. I don't think that the federal government so I get as much as this guy clearly is guilty and I don't see how he weasels out of that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if he's clearly guilty.
Speaker 2:Well, he wasn't caught shooting the guy.
Speaker 1:We have video of a guy that looks vaguely like him. I, if I were on a jury, I would not consider that conclusive proof I would say that he's, uh the one that shot him he has not okay there you go done guilty. He doesn't have to deny it. The state has to prove that he did it the state does. The evidence that we have seen so far still the case has not been tried yet. I want to see the trial, but the state has not proved their case yet. To me, Right, yeah, but regardless.
Speaker 1:I mean we've gotten to the place of his lawyers are filing motions to dismiss the murder cases entirely because of politicization and poisoning of the well of jurors they should, that's their job, they should, totally right. But it you know, I'm right this reminds me of the oj simpson case yeah, and I was gonna bring that up in the relative.
Speaker 2:this because if you remember the Saturday Night Live skit, well, maybe you were too young.
Speaker 1:No, I watched the OJ Simpson case Remember I was homeschooled at this time and basically all the news coverage of the OJ Simpson case I was sitting there watching as part of that.
Speaker 2:Well, what I'm going to reference is in relation to that. There was a skit on Saturday night live where well, I would be too young for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, the black dude on there at the time is a black comedian guy, not Eddie Murphy. The next one after him it would have been Chris rock. Chris rock did a thing about OJ where he said look, they, they, you know brothers did it. But I understand, like you know, look, his wife was cheating on him with this Jewish lawyer guy and or not, lawyer, entertainment lawyer or something whatever he was, and or not lawyer, entertainment lawyer or something whatever he was, and so like. Even if you don't dismiss the fact that he did it, even if you buy into the fact that oj did it like, I understand why he would, and that's kind of how I feel about this man guy as well is, I don't condone what he did, but I do understand why he did it. Okay, I don't you don't understand why he did it.
Speaker 2:No, the insurance company refused to pay his bills. Okay, so it was a death sentence. I don't think it was a death sentence. Well, he thought it was a death sentence. I don't think it was a death sentence. Well, he thought it was a death sentence.
Speaker 1:I don't know Again, I don't think we have clear motives.
Speaker 2:Well, if we don't even know, if he was the one that did it, I'm presuming he's guilty.
Speaker 1:That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do, gene.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, it's a presumption of innocence in this country well, for if you're, if you're a judge, that's what you're supposed to do judge, jury and the public well, I'm neither of those I'm. I'm just a guy watching from the sidelines, I'm just a guy talking on the internet, and I would say he's clearly guilty. But I understand why he shot the son of a bitch. How's that? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, regardless that continues, People are lionizing him. I don't think they should. What's?
Speaker 2:the latest with the blonde dude out of New York that helped somebody and then got thrown in jail for it.
Speaker 1:Daniel Peck. He's in jail.
Speaker 2:He's still in jail, motherfucker. That's bullshit, man Total bullshit.
Speaker 1:We live in a very fucked up society dude.
Speaker 2:I mean we're not as bad as the UK, but we're pretty close.
Speaker 1:The only reason why we're not as bad as the UK is because we have guns. That is absolutely true and, by the way we might get, we can finish the podcast on a positive note. The Senate failed to advance the bill to fund the government. Good, that's a good. So we are looking at a very high likelihood of a government shutdown and Schumer and Jeffries are scrambling, sending the president a letter requesting a meeting before this deadline. The Dems overplayed their hand on this because the Republicans are totally willing to shut it down, because most of the Republican voter base goes shut down. Yes, please, I'll have another. Hmm.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I guess apparently we're not up to speed on Daniel Penny. What do you mean? Well, so he had a deadlock jury and he was acquitted of the other charges and in the end the prosecution dropped the charge. They were deadlocked on and he was acquitted on the other charges.
Speaker 1:So when did he get out?
Speaker 2:So he got out the beginning of this year, but we're way behind. And following his acquittal, Penny's life changed significantly. He landed a job at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Anderson Horowitz, the one that Adam always mentions.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, and he in September 2025, so just this month he made a public appearance as a model in a charity fashion show in New York City, walking the runway in a kilt. Okay, cool, Glad he got out. Yeah, so. Didn't ruin his life. Yeah, so apparently it all worked out.
Speaker 1:Just for you know, a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Just for a couple of years, but it all worked out. Yeah, he's way younger than I thought too. Yeah, he's in his 20s he was 24 when that happened, yep, so he's way younger than I thought too. Yeah, he was 24 when that happened, yep, so, yeah, definitely a silly kid, to me at least it's you. Look at the conditioning that people have to ignore and not interact with violent behavior, at least in some parts of the country.
Speaker 1:Well, and some people.
Speaker 2:And some people had.
Speaker 1:I seen what he saw. I would have done the same damn thing.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I wonder if I would have, because I do tend to just kind of mind my own business.
Speaker 1:But had it been in Texas, I would have you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, you could have shot him in Texas legally. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I will tell you this for sure, though, when the white chick was getting stabbed.
Speaker 1:I would not have put up with that oh well, fuck dude, I don't even, I'm not even get a hold that she's.
Speaker 2:Ukrainian against her.
Speaker 1:The fact that people fucking stood around and did not render aid. Yeah, Did not render aid. And once they apparently noticed that she's sitting there bleeding out, one dude's standing there on his phone fucking recording it instead of calling 911. Yep, that man needs to be charged with what is it manslaughter? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Except I, actually. So here's the thing I believe in good Samaritan laws, but what a good Samaritan law really needs to be is you have a duty to render aid. If, in rendering that aid, you do something that damages them further and you don't, you end up causing additional harm while you're trying to help them, like somebody's got a broken neck and you move them and you know causes more issues. No harm, no foul on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you better fucking try and help them and the libertarian part of me says you can't compel people to help somebody else. That's just wrong. I think you can guilt them, you can uh morally justify that they should help, but I don't think you can legislatively for somebody Because as you know, the speech of John Galt I shall live my life for no man, and that includes some stranger that's getting harassed. It's always it has to be an individual choice. You're right.
Speaker 1:It should not be the force of law, but let me say this as a Christian and as a man A Christian man Go ahead. No two separate statements. If you're a Christian or you are male, you have a duty to protect those around you. If you see something happening, to protect those around you. If you see something happening, whether it's seeing someone about to lob something at a speaker at an event Tackle that person, take them out, stop it. Don't allow it to happen. If you can stop it, risk your own life.
Speaker 2:Be a man, I would use a different word. I don't think it's a duty.
Speaker 1:I would say it's an expectation, Synonyms.
Speaker 2:but okay, a little weaker. A little weaker. I would say that, like if you don't do it and it's a duty, you failed the duty. If you don't do it and it's an expectation, you simply didn't meet expectations. So you proved yourself to be a lesser man. But if you fail the duty, you proved yourself to be dishonorable. So I would go for a slightly less. You know, like I don't think chivalry is a mandate.
Speaker 2:I think chivalry is something that existed for a reason and it was always recognized as a positive thing when, when you were performing chivalrous deeds, but you don't really know what's going on in the person's mind at the moment and you know what you might be doing is jumping in front of a bullet that would have taken out a mass murderer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, all I can say you don't know the full story.
Speaker 2:Or the other thing is like well, you protect all women. No, I know better than that. I know that most arguments that lead to violence in men are caused by women.
Speaker 1:If you see the white girl getting stabbed on the train by the black you're gonna wonder if you didn't say your pimp, absolutely no you immediately tackle the black man, take the knife away from him and subdue him, and then render aid to her. Yeah, yeah, I mean if somebody's stabbing somebody there's not a good If, in the course of trying to subdue him peacefully, you end up killing him. Fine, then go render aid fine, then go render aid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I think you have to use a judgment at the time. If I see somebody having an argument and then the bitch does something that deserves a stabbing and then get stabbed, I'm gonna go. Well, she had that coming, jesus gene. Well, it's true. It's true, man, but if somebody's quietly sitting there doing nothing and then all of a sudden gets stabbed, yeah, clearly there's a problem and you, if you can render a aid in that whether it's uh, assistance for the wounds or whether it's beating the crap out of the other guy then you should do that. But you have to take in as much data as you can before you go to violence. I've seen too many examples of people making assumptions and going to violence only to later find out that they're fighting for the wrong team. Not every woman's a victim. Not every woman's a victim, you know. Not every guy is a pimp well on that note, gene.
Speaker 1:Well, I tried, I tried to end on the Senate. I tried.
Speaker 2:All right, fair enough, we can wrap it up. I think we've had a good discussion this show. We covered a bunch of topics, we've hit all the bink card notes and hopefully next time your computer is going to last an entire episode. I would love for that to happen. Remind me, did you reboot? Okay, I'll remind you now, ben, remember to reboot before the next show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, gene I'm doing that because you literally did that exact same thing to me when I told you to remind me before. So there you go. I'm a big vindictive son of a bitch.
Speaker 1:You should know that by now just a little bit, just a little bit all right, guys, we'll catch you on the next one later.
