Summary
Chris survives a mind-draining work retreat, while Sam juggles pumpkin sourcing for a mysterious film and fields rabid newsletter replies.
We hear about Bad Bunny’s halftime show backlash, penis injections at the Olympics (sort of), and infrastructure fails both at home and in the US.
Plus, Sam spotlights bizarre Kickstarter projects, and Chris breaks down a massive Bitcoin giveaway blunder.
Links
Bad Bunny Halftime Show
Winter Olympics Ski Jump Scandal
Crypto Windfall
Kickstart or Dropkick – The Swift
Kickstart or Dropkick – Happiness is Fleeting
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and is probably not 100% accurate. It pays to listen to the podcast, but if you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:08]:
Welcome along to your weekly fix of randomness, technology, and life, and we’re getting very close to 600 episodes, which some people say is a big milestone here in New Zealand.
Chris [00:00:38]:
I’m sure they do. I’m sure they do. I was going to say, how was your week? But before I ask you that, I’m just going to tell you how mine was. Good. Do it.
Sam [00:00:45]:
Because I just— This is what people tune in for.
Chris [00:00:47]:
Yeah, no, I, um, I had a, um, I had an offsite with, uh, 3 other people. So we’ve all got our new roles, right? At this shop. And we don’t know what we’re doing and nobody knows what we’re doing. And we thought the owner was going to come to this offsite to tell us what our new roles were. But no, no, no, that’s for us to sort out. So, uh, that was cool.
Sam [00:01:07]:
Did you have any guidelines or was.
Chris [00:01:09]:
It— Oh no, it was pretty good. It was pretty good. But I’ll tell you a couple of things. First of all, so we had Rebecca come over from Gisborne and, um, uh, Mo came up from Christchurch.
Sam [00:01:20]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:01:21]:
And then me and Rachel live in Hamilton.
Sam [00:01:22]:
Our local.
Chris [00:01:23]:
Local. Yeah. So we were at Rachel’s house.
Sam [00:01:25]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:01:25]:
And, um, so it was good. It was good to catch up with them. I’ve, uh, met them before, so it was pretty good catching up with them and all that. But I live and work by myself, my own little hermit’s house here.
Sam [00:01:39]:
Like, I don’t talk to people.
Chris [00:01:41]:
I spend days without seeing anybody. You’re the only person comes around usually once a week. So I’m spending 3 days in these, um, these, in, in with these people. And 2 of them have got, um, ADHD, like take medication for ADHD. So It’s incredibly tiring when they keep going off on random tangents in every conversation on anything we’re trying to do.
Sam [00:02:04]:
So, hurting cats?
Chris [00:02:06]:
It was, well, it was my brain, hurting my brain or trying to, yeah. So that was the problem. My brain was, I don’t know if my brain was keeping up with it.
Sam [00:02:15]:
Okay.
Chris [00:02:15]:
So anyway, but I did want to say we went to the third day, we went to, we went to Hamilton Gardens. So we’re quite impressed with that. That was cool.
Sam [00:02:23]:
Just to have a look around?
Chris [00:02:24]:
Yeah, we, yeah, we went and paid for the garden seat bit.
Sam [00:02:27]:
Oh yeah, yeah, did that. Cuz the new one’s almost done, isn’t it?
Chris [00:02:30]:
Yeah, it’s, it’s still being worked on.
Sam [00:02:32]:
Oh, I’m not sure.
Chris [00:02:33]:
Yeah, one of them was closed that I thought was— oh, the Modernist Garden was closed. On it, cuz I was like, oh no, you’ll love the Modernist Garden. And she goes, oh, it’s closed.
Sam [00:02:42]:
That’s, that’s always the way, actually.
Chris [00:02:44]:
Um, so that was right. What, what— oh, then we went to Duck Island after that. Oh, and on Wednesday night, like halfway through, we, uh, we went to Banh Mi Cafe, which cracked me up. Have you ever been to Banh Mi Cafe?
Sam [00:02:58]:
Um, no.
Chris [00:02:59]:
Absolutely beautiful food. I’d never heard of garlic noodle noodles before. They do these garlic noodles. Oh, my new favorite. Anyway, crack me up because Mo is quite small, blonde. It’s got a couple of nose piercings. She wears headset, Sony headset around her head or around her neck all the time. Like she just does.
Chris [00:03:21]:
Quite small, blonde, looks young. And so the waiter comes over and says, oh, can I, uh, can I look at your ID? Because we got there and ordered cocktails. And she goes, oh, that’s awesome, because she’s like 32. Cracked me up. Um, so yeah, anyway, yeah, no, it was a pretty, pretty good week. Um, but oh, mind drained. Like, my brain is just drained.
Sam [00:03:47]:
It gets a bit like that Uh, yeah.
Chris [00:03:50]:
How was your week?
Sam [00:03:51]:
Busy. Same thing. I’ve just been staring at spreadsheets all week because that’s now my life. And, uh, every now and then I, well, no, every time I do it. So I do monthly stuff as well. Uh, I’m slowly tweaking it and making things better, which is good. But this week I got a guy that got hold of me and he’s like, hey, I’m based in Miramar in Wellington. I need pumpkins.
Sam [00:04:13]:
I need pumpkins for a movie. I need them now. I’m like, ah, okay. So in between being busy and just tired, he’s like, have you found some for me yet? I was like, hang on, how many do you need? What size are they? And do you have a reference photo for me? And I will ask my newsletter people and whoever. Okay, cool. Um, I need about 6. I need them like 400 to 700 mil in size. If not bigger, I can do bigger.
Sam [00:04:40]:
Um, here’s some reference photos and they’re like watermarked. I, they’re AI photos, but they’re watermarked from some platform thing I’ve never heard of in my life. I don’t know what it is. So I sent that out last night and they were hitting me up this yesterday afternoon. Have you heard back yet? We’re driving from Wellington to Auckland this weekend. We’re going to go straight back and I can do detours. I’m like, no, just calm down. And, uh, oh, also, blah, blah, blah.
Sam [00:05:07]:
I can pay handsomely. So I don’t know what this production is. I don’t know what handsomely means because now I’ve got rabid pumpkin growers. What does it mean? I’m here. How much do they want to pay? How many pumpkins do they need? I’ve got this many. Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t help. I’m in America.
Sam [00:05:26]:
Don’t reply to the email. It said at the start, this is for people in the North Island of New Zealand. If that’s not you, don’t worry about this.
Chris [00:05:34]:
Oh my God.
Sam [00:05:36]:
So when I get home later after this, I have to collate all these messages and photos, because people were sending me photos of all these pumpkins now. But I think there’s somebody that’s got 4 or 5 near Wellington, actually. But the thing is, you just don’t normally— I don’t normally hear from these people that are on my newsletter list. Nobody really tells you anything, but when you want a small pumpkin and there’s money involved, they’re all rather excited. And yeah, anyway, so this is because.
Chris [00:06:03]:
They can now tell their spouse that all that time and money they spend on the pumpkins is paying off in some small way.
Sam [00:06:11]:
There’s a woman and she said,, if they take my pumpkins, my husband will be happy because he hates looking at them. I was like, oh, that’s no good. So we will see. And if there’s a film or something coming out soon with pumpkins in it, yet again, I am the man that sourced them.
Chris [00:06:26]:
Yes. Yes. That sounds good. Um, hey, uh, just on, uh, a general conversation starter. What are your thoughts, if any, on the Bad Bunny?
Sam [00:06:39]:
Uh, I, you have to fill me in. I just know that he performed at the halftime show.
Chris [00:06:43]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:06:43]:
And I know that I’ve seen some behind the scenes stuff of the show. I know this is what you’re talking about, but man, those camera crew was good anyway.
Chris [00:06:53]:
And I saw clips. I haven’t seen the whole show. I saw clips of it and the camera guys were really cool. Like, like what they were doing. I didn’t see.
Sam [00:07:01]:
Yeah, exactly. So Trump supporters are losing the plot.
Chris [00:07:05]:
Is that the gist of it? Because I mean, Bad Bunny, do you know who that is? Like in general?
Sam [00:07:10]:
I only know that he was the caddy in Happy Gilmore 2 with Adam Sandler.
Chris [00:07:17]:
Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay.
Sam [00:07:19]:
Yeah. So he appeared in it and people were like, that’s Bad Bunny. He’s a musician and that’s it.
Chris [00:07:24]:
I know nothing else. And I’d never heard of him till this thing. No. You know, recently when they said he was, it was announced. I didn’t realize he’s the biggest selling thing on Spotify, 90 million downloads a month. Good on him. 90 mil. So it’s like, okay, like in my head, the way they were moaning about it, it was like some random island dude who, you know, from— I mean.
Sam [00:07:47]:
He’S not Kid Rock who had to come out with a big excuse of how everything was wrong.
Chris [00:07:55]:
Oh yeah, because he’s lip syncing so badly on— I did see the clip of that and lip syncing like he was moving his lips and there was no, no speaking and then he’d shut up. Samba. It was just terrible. But yeah, I was like, oh no, it’s the biggest artist. I knew he just won the Grammy. Um, so I didn’t even know that. Oh yeah, he won a Grammy last week, but obviously he was booked well before he won the Grammy. But if he’s the biggest thing, um, like, okay, well that makes perfect sense why the NFL booked him.
Chris [00:08:28]:
Yeah. Like, yeah. And I don’t know him, but I don’t listen to Spanish music as a rule and So yeah, okay. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.
Sam [00:08:37]:
Seems a bit crazy how they’ve been reacting. Yeah. And then one of them doesn’t like the grinding and the twerking on TV.
Chris [00:08:44]:
Well, well, yeah. Donald Trump said that’s disgusting, you know, can’t have that. I’ll tell you something random. I wrote it down here. It’s not really important. It’s in fact, it’s just dumb, but it just made me laugh so much that I got a an email from the International Tour Film Festival. I don’t know what the International Tour Film Festival is, but what just cracked me up was the opening line. It was a typo, I’m assuming, like they mistyped it.
Chris [00:09:16]:
Okay. It just says, ‘Dead friends.’ Little things, small things amuse small minds. I was just giggling away for a while.
Sam [00:09:28]:
That’s what— yeah, that’s right.
Chris [00:09:32]:
Did you hear about the penis injections for the Olympics?
Sam [00:09:35]:
Oh yeah, I’m all over that.
Chris [00:09:37]:
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, so because, um, Rebecca mentioned it. So she’d driven up from Gisborne that day. Yeah, or the day before, I rather. And we caught up that, that first morning and she goes blah blah blah about the, the penis injections. We all looked at each other going, what the hell is this girl on about? Like, obviously she was listening to radio on something on the car on the up or whatever, but yeah.
Sam [00:10:00]:
So it’s the Norwegian team, I think, uh, from memory at the Winter Olympics. Now, I think they’ve gone down the rabbit hole of just saying that headline. And that’s not exactly 100% true. They’ve spoken to the American team and they were like, no, I don’t think that’s happening as such. But there’s rules around the amount of clothing they’re allowed to wear. The clothing can’t be more than 4% of your body coverage. And I think the Norwegian team, I don’t know if it’s current or past, has sort of maybe elongated the crutch area and used some super stiff, uh, material. No, I think it’s the stitching to help keep that bulge.
Sam [00:10:51]:
And I think the rumors about this injection thing has sort of come up, and then the jokes about you know, Austin Powers when he’s at the airport and he’s like, that’s not my thing.
Chris [00:11:00]:
Anyway, that, yeah, because the more surface area that presumably the more lift you get when you’re doing these jumps and even a, you know, 20 centimeters in length of jump, uh, is huge in, in the Olympics.
Sam [00:11:14]:
No, no, they’ve worked it out. They, someone worked it out. They said if it’s, uh, whatever the size is that they think it is, it’s an extra 5.2 meters.
Chris [00:11:22]:
Shit, that’s huge.
Sam [00:11:23]:
Of flight. So, um, it’s a bit crazy, but yeah, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like that pole vaulting guy, giant wang. We were talking about it at work because they, because I think I brought it up and everyone goes, what are you on about? And I was like, the guy with the giant wang.
Chris [00:11:41]:
And then they’re all giggling. Yeah. Oh, we’re just checking out the Olympics.
Sam [00:11:50]:
The Olympics. Damn it. Apart from that, I don’t know anything else about the Olympics. Uh, someone’s medal broke. I thought they stepped on it or fell on it or something.
Chris [00:12:00]:
Oh, I wonder if, um, all the Americans have to give their medals to Trump when they go back.
Sam [00:12:05]:
Oh, he’s probably going to get a special award for some reason.
Chris [00:12:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was talking to Dad the other day and he said that, um, he went last weekend to the beach with, you know, uh, his great-granddaughter and You know, um, my family. Yeah. And, um, he goes, yeah, it was real busy at the beach because they closed all the beaches in Wellington. People aren’t going to the beaches in Wellington. Did you hear about that?
Sam [00:12:28]:
Yeah, I’m in the industry, Chris.
Chris [00:12:29]:
Oh, of course you are. So I, I was like, oh, okay. So, um, Moore Point always was pretty crap, like it, it, it spewed. Um, and I, it used to be when I was a kid, more of an overflow. Yeah. Into the into the, um, Princess Bay, I think it was. But now it’s just pumping heaps of stuff in there, isn’t it? Yeah.
Sam [00:12:54]:
Yeah. So they have what they call longfall, shortfall.
Chris [00:12:57]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:12:57]:
And longfall, I think, is blocked. It’s a pipe that goes 1.8 kilometers out and it just gets, it got jammed up. I think it backflowed into the system or the plant and then they have to just dump it out. Sounds pretty bad. Um, haven’t heard anything apart from what’s in the news. Yeah, I’m sure there’ll be something else coming out in the industry, but, um, the crowd that runs it, they’ve done some stuff around the world. They’ve— this stuff’s happened all— every place they’ve run, this has happened.
Chris [00:13:28]:
Yeah. So anyway, on that point, I thought typical New Zealand fricking infrastructure. So crap. And then I came across this today. This is from The Hill newsletter, uh, newspaper. Um, and it is the 12th of February. Wastewater spill into the Potomac River that began last month now appears to be one of the largest in American history. Whoa.
Chris [00:13:54]:
How, how many gallons of wastewater has overflowed into this? So it was a collapsed site of, um, a sewer system known as the Potomac Interceptor collapsed along, um, this thing, and then it’s just been pouring into the river. How many million I’ve given it away.
Sam [00:14:13]:
I was going to do millions. Okay, 10.
Chris [00:14:16]:
Try 243 million. Nice. Gallons of— but, and it’s worse because it’s in a river. Like, if we’re talking in an ocean, like Cook Strait is pretty— there’s quite a tidal flow through there. You’ve got, you’ve got clearance. We’re talking into a river that goes through a city. I assume it’s down— I want to hope that I assume it’s downstream of the city because you’d hear a lot more about it. But yeah, I reckon it’s now topped, um, 300 million gallons.
Sam [00:14:46]:
Crazy. But I mean, that’s what happens here. All the water’s treated and goes back to the river. Yeah. Um, and we’re lucky because we’re near the end of it. So there’s, uh, no, 5, like more plants upstream.
Chris [00:14:58]:
Yeah. Except this has been pouring in there before it gets treated because yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:15:05]:
That’s the problem. That’s the problem. Um, and, and, you know, some of that stuff in Wellington, they got the photos of all the, um, All the stuff that goes in that you normally see at a screen. So there’s big machines that stop all the junk.
Chris [00:15:17]:
I remember swimming in the— we should change the subject. I was swimming at a beach in Spain and I was like wondering why there’s nobody else swimming out here.
Sam [00:15:26]:
Oh no.
Chris [00:15:27]:
And then this jobby floats past and I’m like, oh, I’m getting out of here. I’m just like, head back in. It’s like, oh, there you go. So yeah, all the locals know when the wind turns this thing or the tide turns this way. Don’t go. To the beach there. I’m like, oh God, that’s the Mediterranean.
Sam [00:15:43]:
There was a post in the Hamilton subreddit, I think it’s called The Tron is the subreddit name, and somebody goes, hey, I think I’ve come across a bunker near the side of the river. I don’t want to tell anyone where it is, but does anybody know like why there’s this bunker? And I don’t know actually where it is, but somebody chimed in and says, I hate to burst your bubble, but, uh, I think it’s one of the original septic tanks. So before there was a wastewater treatment plant here, we had 14 septic tanks, big ones. And I think this is one of them that some rando person’s been hanging out in. And I found that out because I went to a conference last year and presented a thing, and that was one of the things I said. Yeah, yeah.
Chris [00:16:22]:
Random.
Sam [00:16:22]:
It’s going to be a long fix, I think, for that Wellington site. But, like you said, it always had problems, and they always talked about it with certain things, or bad weather, or whatever.
Chris [00:16:32]:
They were talking about it when I was a kid, like when I was a teenager. So it’s a long time that it’s been a problem.
Sam [00:16:38]:
I just thought of something as you were a kid, because I can’t remember if I said this on the podcast or not. So, uh, apologies, but there’s a podcast called Oopsie NZ and it’s made— Lewis, who runs the podcasting summit thing in New Zealand, he created it and there’s only 5 episodes and it’s really cool. And I’ve listened to all of it and it’s a documentary series about New Zealand ventures that didn’t quite go to plan. And it’s 5 tales of bold ideas, intrepid experiments, naked ambition, and mostly good intentions. And he produces it and everything. It’s really good. And he’s done the flag referendum, the Trekker. Do you know what that is? No.
Sam [00:17:16]:
It’s the only New Zealand built car and it looks like a weird knockoff four-wheeler thing. Oh yeah. And you, if you saw one, I think you’d know what it was. And they didn’t make too many of them, but they were like for farmers. It was a cheap farm vehicle. Then he did one on possums, which is quite interesting. And then he did one about the Blackcocks, which is the badminton New Zealand. And basically what’s going wrong.
Chris [00:17:39]:
There? Um, because it’s— what could go wrong with that?
Sam [00:17:41]:
Well, it’s not the name. It’s just, it’s one of the most popular sports in the world and we’re not capitalizing on it. And we really should be, but it does have potential problems because when they film it, it looks like it’s quite a slow sport, but they’re hitting, they can hit it up to 500 kilometers an hour.
Chris [00:17:57]:
Yeah. I played badminton a bit.
Sam [00:17:58]:
Yeah. And the thing is it’s quite cheap and easy to get into. Yeah. So it’s anyway. But then he was talking about something.
Chris [00:18:05]:
That I’ve never heard of in my life.
Sam [00:18:07]:
And I was like, why do I think you were involved in this somehow? Okay. All right. Seskui, 1990.
Chris [00:18:16]:
Oh, Seskui. I had a Seskui. So we went to the Seskui, um, um, uh, celebrations. Like there was a big, uh, fair for like 4 or 5 months. And my girlfriend at the time bought me the Seskui, which is like a, It was a possum motif thing.
Sam [00:18:33]:
It was like a rodent. Yeah, it was called Pesky the Siski.
Chris [00:18:37]:
Yeah. And, um, and it was put onto my pack. And so when I traveled through Europe, the Siski sat on the back of my pack and, uh, it got stolen at an airport. One, yeah, like it was on there, like there was no way it could get removed. Somebody pulled it off. Well, so, so really, really, really rough with their bags.
Sam [00:18:54]:
So this episode was about the event.
Chris [00:18:57]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:18:57]:
And a guy from Australia came over and pitched it and they wanted to do it. They were doing it at the exact same time as the arts festival and all of this stuff. They decided not to print a program. You could just turn up and something was happening. They lost millions of dollars. The council didn’t know what was going on, but they only, it only lasted 2 weeks. Oh, it was 2 weeks. It was supposed to be 8 weeks, I think, or 6 to 8 weeks.
Sam [00:19:19]:
And they just canned it. And, um, I was like, I’ve never heard of this before in my life.
Chris [00:19:25]:
Yep. Yep. No, I went along to that. That was cool. Yeah.
Sam [00:19:28]:
Yeah. Like it sounded, it sounded interesting, but, um, check out that podcast.
Chris [00:19:32]:
Yeah. So it was the sesquicentennial anniversary of New Zealand, 150 years or whatever it was.
Sam [00:19:40]:
Yeah, exactly. I just hadn’t heard of that before.
Chris [00:19:44]:
So, okay. That’s cool.
Sam [00:19:45]:
I can give you some kickstart or drop kicks. Okay. I’ve got the Swift. So it is a high performance biomimetic drone or an ornithopter and it flies using pure flapping wings like a real bird.
Chris [00:20:04]:
So instead of propellers, like the flying things off, um, Dune. Yeah.
Sam [00:20:10]:
Okay. It’s a small, yeah, well, it’s a little radio controlled thing. It can go 31 kilometers an hour, apparently dual control, crash proof.
Chris [00:20:18]:
Kilometers an hour. Is that pretty quick for drones? I mean, I know the FPVs go like ridiculous.
Sam [00:20:24]:
Yeah, I think it’s just average. You can even fly it indoors slowly because it just flaps around. So that’s pretty cool. There it is flapping around in someone’s house. Oh, it looks like chaos.
Chris [00:20:35]:
Looks like a bat.
Sam [00:20:36]:
Yeah, it does actually. And you can fly it anywhere apparently because, you know, why wouldn’t you want to? I don’t know if— I wonder if.
Chris [00:20:43]:
It’S how more or less susceptible to winds it is than normal ones? You know, like if there’s strong winds, is this less or more?
Sam [00:20:52]:
I mean, if I’d watched this and actually researched it, I might be able to tell you. Yeah. But it does look like it’s better inside or with no, no wind is what I’m going to say.
Chris [00:21:04]:
Okay. So they’ve, they’ve created this thing. What’s the price per unit?
Sam [00:21:08]:
The price per unit is only $100. Oh, no, super early bird, uh, $155 New Zealand dollars. Okay, that’s pretty cheap.
Chris [00:21:17]:
So it’s about the same size as a normal drone, and does it have a camera in it and shit like.
Sam [00:21:22]:
That, or you just— you’re asking me lots of questions I can’t answer.
Chris [00:21:25]:
Um, okay, all right, I’m trying to— I’m trying to get a handle on the price. Okay, and, um, how long has it been up for?
Sam [00:21:32]:
I’m trying to find it. Oh, here it is. It’s got 28 days to go. So a Kickstarter, they can run it. I looked this up and now I forgot. They can push it all the way out to something like 60 days, but they recommend doing 30-odd. So 28 days to go. They wanted, yeah, they wanted $49,000 New Zealand dollars.
Sam [00:21:54]:
Uh, once you convert it from Euro. Yeah.
Chris [00:21:56]:
Oh, it’s Euro, is it? Okay.
Sam [00:21:57]:
But anyway, it’s $49,000 New Zealand. How much have they raised? $250,000. Only $95,000. Huh.
Chris [00:22:06]:
So, but it’s early days.
Sam [00:22:07]:
They’ve reached their goal.
Chris [00:22:08]:
They’ll get to, they’ll get to my 200. Yeah.
Sam [00:22:12]:
I reckon it’s more of like a toy.
Chris [00:22:14]:
I don’t like, I think it is. And the only reason I went higher on that is because I think Europeans would like to do something different as opposed to what Americans always do. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I, I just have the feel, feeling that Europeans will be much more into a bat thing than the Americans would be.
Sam [00:22:34]:
I might be wrong. Maybe. And I’m not scrambling to try and find the link that I didn’t post in the thing. I’ll just trust this website that’s got random information. So there’s a company called Asterix Jump Hour, I think, or Asterix at least. Oh, Asterix Watches. That’s what it’s called. And it’s a watch.
Sam [00:22:54]:
It’s a normal watch with a hand. Yeah, and, um, analog— that’s the word. Brain’s fried. And I think it’s designed by an artist who, um, has worked for Mad Magazine and a few other things. Oh, nice. And the, um, watch is a zombie and he’s holding a balloon, but his hand— his whole arms come off and his arm moves around with a.
Chris [00:23:22]:
Balloon. I’m just looking at the photo. It looks great. Oh, that is Gold. I like that.
Sam [00:23:27]:
So they wanted $5,000. Oh, 13 days to go. How much would you want to pay for one of these? It’s a nice looking watch.
Chris [00:23:34]:
You’re paying $100 easy enough.
Sam [00:23:37]:
$396 New Zealand dollars. Yeah.
Chris [00:23:39]:
Um, they are thinking $100 US, so yeah, $100, which is $160. So it’s double what I would have put.
Sam [00:23:45]:
They are limited to 999 pieces. They are numbered. You get 2 years warranty.
Chris [00:23:51]:
Yeah, you’re getting into Trump watch, um, thing in that zone. But yeah, all right, um, so they.
Sam [00:23:59]:
Want $5,000 to make this become available.
Chris [00:24:03]:
Well, there’s only— they only need to.
Sam [00:24:08]:
Sell, um, about, um, 100. 100 or something.
Chris [00:24:10]:
Yeah, 100 or something. So yeah, I, I reckon they’ve got 100 with only 12 days left to go. So yeah, I reckon they’re at Probably $10,000.
Sam [00:24:19]:
They are at $39,000. Okay. So nothing crazy this week. We do have previous Kickstarters that have made some of us angry.
Chris [00:24:27]:
You know, it’s been like a million dollars out.
Sam [00:24:30]:
Or it’s two magnets and a piece of tape. Yes. I wonder what those guys were up to.
Chris [00:24:35]:
Oh my gosh. Um, did you hear about the crypto windfall that happened this week?
Sam [00:24:41]:
Was that something to do with Bitcoin? Yes, I saw a headline, but I really didn’t know what was going on.
Chris [00:24:47]:
So this, um, a South Korean crypto firm, yeah, called Bitthumb. Oh, Bitthumb, but it doesn’t have two Ts, it’s just Bitthumb. Bitthumb, yeah. Bitthumb has— does say it’s recovered almost all of the Bitcoins it gave away. So what it had planned to do, yeah, was it planned to distribute small cash rewards of 2,000 Korean won, which is $1.40 American to each, each user. New Zealand, it’s part of— yeah, it’s part of a promotional, uh, event.
Sam [00:25:22]:
Okay.
Chris [00:25:22]:
Instead, oh no, the winners— oh, do they get a whole book? Received at least 2,000 Bitcoins each. Whoa, 2,000 Bitcoins each! I just— so they gave away more than $40 billion worth Bitcoin.
Sam [00:25:37]:
I didn’t think there was that many.
Chris [00:25:39]:
Bitcoin just floating around. I don’t know how it works because they’re.
Sam [00:25:45]:
Not real.
Chris [00:25:46]:
That’s right. But anyway, um, so they’ve managed to— they’ve apologized for it and they’ve, uh, said they’ve recovered 99.7% of the 620,000 Bitcoins with around $44 billion at current prices. It had restricted, uh, trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the whoopsie on Friday. Yeah. Um, but see, this is where I think my innate cynicism and skepticism would have diddled me out of millions of dollars, because if I got an email from these people, even if I had stuff with them, and they said, oh, you’ve got 2,000 bitcoins, I’d be going, ah, spam folder, like, you know, delete. Um, it sounds like 0.3% of the people who got it went, right, I’m.
Sam [00:26:41]:
Cashing that in.
Chris [00:26:41]:
And they solved it straight away, which is the smart thing to do. And maybe I’ll be less spam cynical about things that look too good to be true in future. But yeah, what I did like to— I do like this quote because it just cracks me up. We would like to make it clear that this incident is unrelated to external hacking or security breaches. There are No problems with our security system or customer asset management, they said in a statement. No, we’re merely incompetent. I don’t know how you spin this well.
Sam [00:27:22]:
Yeah, but it must happen a lot because I’ve just finished the podcast series from Explosive Lies, Coining It, season 2. The same podcast, season 3, was the one with the fake bomb detectors. Oh yeah. But coining it was a guy in Blackpool that was poor in health, smoked and drank, and dabbled in Bitcoin. And he went on an Australian exchange and realized there was a glitch. So he would buy a little bit of Bitcoin, sell it, and then he could get it back straight away for free. And he ended up getting thousands of Bitcoin. And then he told 2 or 3 other people about this glitch.
Chris [00:27:56]:
You see, when you find a glitch, you don’t tell anyone. That’s, that’s what you do not tell anyone.
Sam [00:28:02]:
That’s what the cop said. But this guy was lonely, I think, and he was buying everyone cars and drinks and whatever you wanted. And he got a financial advisor on who said he did not know where the— he thought it was all legit apparently. And then they were on a plane to Dubai and they get a phone call and the Australian owner of this exchange rings up and goes, hey, we know you’ve got our Bitcoin, we want to pay it back. And the, the main guy was like, nah, you talk to this guy, my financial guy. And anyway, they came to an agreement and they said, look, you give us back as much Bitcoin as you can, um, but we’ll let you keep whatever and we won’t go to the police and you won’t tell anyone about it. Okay, so he still had like thousands of dollars of Bitcoin. To get the money, he had a guy in Dubai.
Sam [00:28:44]:
That’s why they were going to Dubai. And as soon as they turned up, the guy gave him like $20 grand cash. Here’s some gold bars, here’s all the jewelry, here’s some women, here’s all your stuff. So when he came back, he did not stop. He just kept going. Doing. And then when they finally got charged— spoiler— he goes, I don’t care, I’m dying. And then he died.
Sam [00:29:02]:
He was terminally ill. Um, but they.
Chris [00:29:05]:
Were good on him. Yeah, that’s a great story. I want to— other than the spoiler, I want to watch it.
Sam [00:29:11]:
That’s pretty interesting. Like, that’s really— and, and I think the detective basically said if he just kept it on the down low, I don’t think anyone would ever have found this. And when the detective was ringing all these exchanges It was the very last one because he goes, oh, this one’s in Australia. And the guy, he goes, have you had a breach? Are you missing Bitcoin? And the guy goes, oh, actually we are. And, um, cause he couldn’t tie it together. It sounds like he sort of just heard about some guy, something Bitcoin.
Chris [00:29:37]:
Yeah. You just don’t tell anybody.
Sam [00:29:39]:
Jeez, man. Anyway, that brings us to the end of the podcast, but we want you to tell people about it. Send them to tcasp.com, tcasp.com. Uh, they can find out more about us. Listen to all the back catalogue, special Field Days episodes, hear you laugh and me annoy a scammer.
Chris [00:29:58]:
Yeah. What more do you want? It’s, it’s just glorious.
Sam [00:30:01]:
It’s all glorious. Okay. Until next time, I’m Sam. I’m Chris.
Chris [00:30:06]:
See ya. Bye.
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