2025.10.10: Dark Web Dept

I want to see my little boy.

Here we come.

I want to see my little boy.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gun up!

Good morning to you wherever you are because

it is morning somewhere!

For October 10th, 2025, my name is Bernie Burns sitting right over there.

Here she comes.

It's actually Burns.

How to ask you, everybody.

I do.

That's like the soundtrack of like kids at school.

You will like wait wait for the kid to come out of the school afterwards and you're like waiting to see.

Is he smiling?

Is he happy?

Did he have a good day?

I want to see my little boy.

The flip side of that is like dropping the kid off for school and watching him go in and waiting to see if he looks back before he goes in and he doesn't.

But that's a good thing.

It is a good thing.

It's like, you know, you have that, like, there's that bittersweet where it's like, it's a little bit sad, but it's also, you know, know, it's a good thing because he's like growing up and getting comfortable and, you know, he's happy that he's onto this step, but also like.

He's just, he's not so little as he was the day before.

Let me tell you something sitting over there, lady.

When I'm alone with these kids, all they do is ask constantly, where's mommy?

Where's mommy?

Where's mommy?

Where's mommy?

It's like, mommy is upstairs.

She's resting and having some time to herself.

Like, I'm going to go check.

Like, they don't trust me to report to them where you are.

They're like, I need to go see her.

She's up staring at a wall in silence, just taking it down a notch.

That's what you put up with.

The constant monitoring and attention and neediness.

Here's what I deal with.

I don't know why.

Kids just like to hurt their dad.

They jump on their dad.

You watched TV the other day.

It's what is that?

Is that like some like built-in like genetic thing?

Is this go back to like the era of caves?

Why do they jump straight on you, knees first every time?

Every single time.

They come in with their knees because the knees protect them, but they just come in

right, right at you with the knees.

You're fine.

Trust me, you're fine.

So we're dealing with something stupid.

I got to call this out.

You know, I love financial news.

I think the reason why I read financial news, Ashley, I figured it out.

Okay, go ahead.

I spent so much time processing financial news because I like it, but it also kind of upsets me, you know?

These huge forces

that I'm at the whim of.

I finally figured it out.

It's like you, when you read, or ladies in general, when they listen to true crime podcasts, okay.

No, no, I think I get it.

It's just like, um, this is like the financial sector of like, what would I have done in this situation?

Like, if I was with the head of a bank, exactly right, right.

Or something like that.

Or if I, if I had to like get my resources together and deal with all this shit.

The thing that's driving me crazy right now is

one of the metrics in the world that we pay attention to is the relative value of the British pound versus the American dollars, often called the USD.

And right now, the pound is down versus the dollar because

there's speculation and concern about the upcoming UK budget.

Which is when they announce, like they announce what, that's, they announce taxes, uh, they, like what the taxes are going to be, and also what they're going to be spent on, right?

Right.

For instance, the one that people might remember is that Liz Truss, who was prime minister for what, like

60 days.

Yeah, and it's not much.

I remember that, remember, this is the one someone bought a head of lettuce and they would take a picture of it every day to see which one lasted longer liz trust the prime minister or the head of lettuce and i'm pretty sure the lettuce won you know this came up again recently because

The prime minister of France stepped down after something like 30 days?

Less than a month, yes.

So the French prime minister, his name is Sebastian Le Corneux, has resigned after less than a month in office and like a day after announcing the new government.

So he announced like a new government and it promptly imploded and he resigned.

I assume that what happened is someone called him and said, hey, I just saw a bunch of tractors roll by.

The farmers are on their way.

Bring a manure.

Get out.

Get out now.

And so he just like hit a jack.

Somebody made the funny comment that we didn't even have time to buy the head of lettuce.

Yeah.

Referencing the other source thing.

And her thing, the reason she lasted such a short time as well was also budget related, wasn't it?

Not a mini budget.

Which was what, like a short-term spending plan or something.

And it was so poorly received that she was out.

And I think that's the lowest I've seen the pound against the dollar ever.

I would imagine it's the lowest in your lifetime.

Yeah, it dropped to

a high degree of confidence.

I don't think we ever actually saw the like

dollar, $1.3 cents was a pound.

We didn't actually see that effectively.

That's like one trade.

But yeah, but that's like as far down as it dropped.

That's still insane.

So here's the thing.

So now, because we're coming into another budget, there's people are concerned about that.

So the pound is dropping versus the dollar.

The dollar is the American dollar where there is currently no government, right?

They're more concerned about the people in the U.S.

The government is shut down at the moment.

Investors are so concerned about the British pound versus...

The place where the government has collapsed.

I haven't really kept up with American current events, but last time I checked, based on the trajectory, I'm pretty sure right now Americans are hunting each other in the street for sport at this moment.

That is the next step.

That is speculation, but it was the logical progression of where we were.

And now somehow, somehow the currency in the UK is somehow more volatile than that currency.

How is that possible?

How is that possible?

We're doing it, everybody, in the UK.

We're doing it.

Whatever we're doing, we're doing it worse somehow.

Give me a fucking break.

Can you imagine?

Well, look, this is a follow-on of a lot of like things in the UK that are like shaky, that are not working out like they should um for example uh recently we've talked about this before on the show that uh the uk implemented this uh this privacy and age verification thing before we move into that really quickly can i throw out a couple other two metrics yeah bitcoin all-time high uh this last week 126 000 per bitcoin and gold over $4,000 an ounce.

That's, oh my God, I thought it was a lot when it passed like 3,000.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's true.

It's kind of crazy how much gold has gone up in the last few years although i guess here's the question then is are they like going up or is everything else just like dropping is like is all the british people are all the british people moving into gold and into bitcoin you know in addition to i guess the u.s dollar everybody yeah everybody's fleeing from fiat currencies which is something that people have talked about for a very long time but yeah you i mean you hit the nail on the head are all these things going up or is the basis by which they're measured going down because that would be the same effect right right and so uh time will tell time will tell with all this stuff.

Yeah.

Once again, not financial news.

Yeah.

But UK, they implemented this, give us all of your information and data and personal ID.

Right.

The age verification.

And there have been

already a couple of things happening that are like, we told you this is exactly what would happen if you implemented this.

One is Discord is one of the companies that started doing the age verification and having people submit their government IDs as part of this whole like prove that you're an adult measure.

And now Discord has been hacked and the IDs submitted to them are like being sold online.

Like, I mean, I don't know,

I assume it's like dark web stuff that I like, I don't think you can go to just like IDs.com and buy like one of one identifications, please.

So I have to assume that if it's like, I don't understand how it's being sold, that it's got to be dark web.

I will take one identity, please.

Yeah, add to cart.

Yeah, I can't help but think, too, if we're talking about the dark web, the dark web is like a honeypot at this point, right?

Like if people go to the dark, like I'm starting to read about the dark web in my normal digital consumer products, like my VPN monitors the dark web for me.

It's like, can you monitor the dark web?

I think my bank does that too.

They're like, we'll monitor the dark web and let you know if your information pops up.

And I'm like, you can do that?

The bank is doing that.

That feels like my bank is so antiquated.

Like I have to call them to make a wire transaction.

They're going to need you to send them a fact.

I don't know if I have a confidence in them monitoring the dark web.

They lock me out of my own ATM transactions all the goddamn time.

Right.

Because they're like concerned about it.

They're like, Are you doing what you should?

They don't know who I am.

I'm supposed to have some belief that they're monitoring the dark web on my behalf.

No way.

The flip side, right, of this whole like age verification thing, too, is that a lot of people in the UK are now using VPNs.

Like, right of

VPN usage spiked, but there's also like a lot of like shady VPNs out there, and people are also getting their data stolen via the VPNs.

So like right now,

identification in the UK is just a nightmare.

Yeah, there was just something recently where people had their bank accounts drained and the UK government is telling people to stop using VPNs because people were just running all of their traffic through like a free VPN they found online because of the rule that the government put in place and people trying to circumvent it.

And now they're saying, look what happened when you try to go around our rules.

Now you get your bank account drained and everything else.

I will say this, completely anecdotal evidence, but my VPN is getting to be less and less reliable for being able to allow me to make the normal internet transactions I make while my VPN is turned on.

My first troubleshooting step for everything now is to turn off my VPN.

Right.

You have to see if, is that the problem?

It's not the catch-all everyone thinking, oh, I got a VPN.

I'm like incognito mode.

It's quickly becoming not that way.

Hold on, let me press the do crimes button.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Now we're clear for crimes, everybody.

You know what I'm trying to envision here?

One identification, please.

Can you imagine working at like a normal office or like a bank or something like that?

Like in a cubicle farm.

And then there's the guys who work in the dark web department.

Like we monitor the dark web.

I assume that they're right next door to the IT guy that's wearing like the tie-dye shirt and like the cargo shorts.

Because you know, it like that guy walks through the bank office and he's the only guy in the entire building who's not wearing like the suit and tie

sandals.

Yeah, and you know that that guy single-handedly runs the entire company.

Right.

That outfit is a power move.

The dark web guys think they're so cool, I bet.

They're all in like a trench coat with sunglasses, like sitting at their cubicles.

That's like the IT department, the UPS guy shows up with like a brick of cocaine.

Like he's got to take your photo with it to make sure he's got it.

We have to make sure it was delivered properly.

We're doing dark web work in here.

Don't worry about us, everybody.

They're just like, don't bother them.

Trust me, this company cannot run without them.

They can do whatever they want.

Yeah, we have some printer paper here, and then we have a shipment of black tar heroin.

It's like, oh, let me walk you down to that department.

I know, that's in 3B.

They can sign for that.

Yeah, but that sucks getting your identity stolen because it's like,

here's the thing.

Just

don't give out.

My advice, don't give your information out to this.

Like, I run a website.

I'm not going to ask anybody for their identification.

We don't have to.

We don't fall under those rules.

But if we did, it would be like, hey, just provide a credit card and buy like a little $1 thing and that's your fee.

And if you don't want to pay it, we get it.

That's fine.

But I'm not going to take and store people's identification.

I do not want to do it.

That's a big problem for like us, too.

That's like, that is a responsibility.

We do not

want to, well, we would, if we had to do it, you know, and it came down to it, we would just contract with a service and then just wait for the fucking shoe to drop where that service fucks up and everything gets leaked.

You know what I mean?

It's just, it's horrible, you know, these rules that are in place without any kind of structure to enforce them.

Well, here's an idea, Bernie.

Here's an idea.

Maybe we can consider all of this as just like government data backup, because there was just a huge issue in South Korea where they lost something like 800 terabytes of like government data and they're not going to be able to get it back.

Because the backup.

That's a lot of data.

It's a lot of data.

Government data isn't like video files.

They don't take up a lot of room.

That's a lot of text files.

It's a lot of information.

Jesus.

And so there's a big data center fire that destroyed it the backup for it because of course if you have 800 terabytes of government data you're going to back it up yeah was in the same room are you serious i'm serious it was in it was in the same room so it was also the backup was also destroyed in the fire so there's 800 terabytes of information they're not going to be able to get back unless they go and hack discord i guess man i feel like When I was coming up through IT and computer science, we talked about fire all the time.

This is like the mid-90s when the internet was really starting to take off, But we always talked about fire suppression and halon systems and redundant locations and stuff like that.

I just feel like it was a holdover from, you know, a hundred years ago when fires would level cities.

Right.

Like, just ask Chicago, is fire dangerous?

Oh, Chicago, by the way, is looks like they could be in the World Series.

They're still in play at the moment.

It's Dodgers have advanced.

And the Cubs.

Yeah, the Cubs.

And the Toronto Blue Jays have advanced.

The Blue Jays?

The Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays beat the New York Yankees, Yankees, who beat the Red Sox.

So the Blue Jays are in there.

They're going to have to face off against the winner of the Divisional Series in the American League.

The

Dodgers last night, spoiler, if you don't know what happened to last night's game, you probably saw it live.

I saw it at three in the morning.

The Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Philharmonics, and now they have advanced.

They're called the Philharmonics?

No, they're the Phillies.

I don't know what it's short for.

I guess they're the Philadelphia Philadelphians.

Maybe

full team name is Philly Cheesesteak.

Yeah, exactly.

The Philadelphia Philadelphia cheesesteaks.

That's what they are.

Anyway, I mean, you know what's funny?

There's actually something with the Phillies that's interesting about where we are today in like the way that news works and things stick around.

We were talking about how memes used to last for years.

I think we talked about this on the Patreon show.

Yeah, where it's like, you know, you had for a while like the like I can't has cheeseburger or something like that.

That was like a multi-year meme.

Or like Chuck Norris like was a meme forever, for five years.

For a decade?

Yeah, for years at least.

And now stuff lasts for 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

Remember at one point I said to you, hey, this lady who stole the baseball in the Philadelphia outfield, like she was traveling to see the Marlins and she was wearing a very specific outfit and had really unique hair.

And she was, everyone was so mad at this lady for stealing a baseball or shouting down this dad and his kid and taking the baseball back.

I said, you should consider that for a Halloween costume because that'd be really funny.

Nobody would even remember what that was.

No one would have any idea.

They would think I was just dressing up as like a baseball player.

That was like three weeks ago, right?

And it was all anyone cared about for like a day and a half, and now nobody cares about it at all.

Our attention spans have really been destroyed.

I don't think even people would remember it.

I don't think people could even me describing it now could remember what she looked like.

Vaguely, I can remember what she looked like.

It is weird, though.

Like, there are some things where people will latch onto something and it and then move on to something else.

And there's some times where people will latch onto something and affect change.

And you never know which one it's going to be in advance, right?

Like, I mean, nothing is sticking these days.

Like, what sticks around for more than a month?

Well, I mean, even big, major stuff, it just doesn't stick around.

Well, I mean, you get some like reversals and things like that.

Like, for example,

so

we're putting together like our home media server, right?

And we came into this at, I guess, possibly the worst time we could have done so because

we stepped into like a technology thing that we had no idea about until afterwards and it was too late which is so we bought um for our home media server a synology nas do we call it a nas i call it a nast

this is how new to this we are for some reason we're so far behind the curve on network storage i have all these little hard drives solid state hard drives that i use and i have duplicates and i use like robocopy to sync them all up with each other and it's like why am i doing this i'll just get a raid i should i'm way behind the curve on this so we bought the synology nas yeah and so we've been we've been uh filling that up and but because of that, right, we, we had to get Synology drives because they have a thing where they won't unlock all the features of the hard drives or some kind of support if you're using a third-party drive like Seagate, which is what we were initially, I think, looking at.

And so we ended up with Synology hard drives.

And go figure the Synology drives are more expensive than the just off-the-shelf ones from Seagate or something like that.

What?

Yeah.

But there was the, we came into it after that, which was apparently a change that had happened like

the day before we found out what Synology was, I guess.

And

there's been so much consumer pushback from their audience base that they're actually walking that back now.

So we came at exactly the wrong time, but cost us like 60 extra bucks because of it.

But it's a good thing, you know, the consumers pushed back and now they're rolling back this really unpopular policy as a result.

So that's a good thing.

Yeah, there does seem to be a trend of this where people are are responding, companies are responding to massive customer pushback.

We saw it with Jimmy Kimmel.

We're kind of seeing it with Xbox a little bit.

And then this Synology thing is very specific to us, but yeah, we bought in this window where we didn't know the difference.

We thought you had to buy the Synology hard drives to put in the Synology NAS, but apparently it was a recent change, but just before we showed up to the party, and people have been fighting this, and Synology rolled back the policy.

So now you can buy a cheaper drive for it, which will benefit us in the future.

Thanks for, you know, catching us in the 30-day window where we had to spend 60 extra bucks on this.

You know, I got to say, too, I'm going to put a little bit of blame on our old friend Gavin for that, too.

Okay, go ahead.

Because the reason why I bought Synology, listen, we, we like to make fun of influencers, right?

We, we do, because they do stupid shit all the time.

But you can't deny the fact that influencers are influential.

They really actually are.

Most of my purchasing decisions and product, endorsements that I go out and buy things for come from influencers.

They come from social media.

They really do.

Right.

Well, because it's the, it's the idea that you see someone, a lot of times these things are very visual.

So you see someone using a thing and it makes their life better, right?

Because editing is invisible, right?

The putting together and the crafting of this video and this story.

You don't see that.

You just see the end result, the experience.

And because you're seeing it, you believe it.

Yeah.

Right.

It's a very believable thing.

And so, yeah, influencers are wildly successful at

those influential decisions, I think, because it feels like not a friend, but it feels like you're seeing someone actually experiencing the benefits.

It's also why, too, there's so much pushback when an influencer pushes something or like does a rug pull or something like that.

You know, if somebody, like, if somebody was hawking investment on TV and you called an 800 number and invested in a product, be like, you invested in something you saw on TV?

What are you a fucking idiot?

But it's like when an influencer does that kind of thing, does a rug pull, it's a big deal, right?

Because it is a very, I think,

it's an environment we should protect.

Let's just put it that way.

But I saw Gavin, he had this like petabyte raid that he has for all of his slow-mo footage.

He has so much space.

And it was a partnership thing with Synology where they'd done it.

And he showed off all these hard drives.

He had to pull it out in this gigantic rack.

He has to like put it on his back in order to lift it.

And it was all Synology hard drives.

Cause of course, if they provided it, they were going to use their own drives.

So I was like, listen, if those are the drives Gavin uses, that's enough for me.

And I bought the Synology drives.

I didn't think twice about it when we went to go do it.

And now I come to find out that this was a change they had made recently.

And now they've rolled it back.

Well, if we ever decide to like back up our server in some other room that's not also the server in case of, I don't know, fire,

then we will know that we can get different kind of hard drives.

Now we know we can get a different kind of hard drives and save 60 bucks.

And then they'll die like 20 years from now.

And we'll be like, we should have saved the fuck, spent the 60 bucks 20 years ago or something like that.

You just never know.

You never know.

You never know.

The crazy thing is, too, is we have some guests coming over to visit us from the U.S.

pretty soon and i do want some more hard drives and it's used to be when people would cover from the us it's like can you bring us reese's pieces you know or american cheese or something like that or tortillas and uh now we're more getting to the point of like with hard drives and things where we're going the other way with them because of tariffs and things or because things have gotten so so expensive in the us so quickly yeah yeah which you know every country has its own customs and tariffs it's not unique to the us but it's a change that's happened in the last year It's only been a year.

Yeah, nine months.

You know, it's only been a recent change.

So now, relatively, that's shifting a lot.

It's like the pound and the dollar, right?

The hard drive index is shifting.

We're moving to a hard drive-based economy.

Yeah, right, right.

So we're going to measure everything.

Right.

So

we might be muling hard drives back for other people back in the U.S.

instead.

Well, I want to say a big thank you to today's mules, Bo Butner and Hunter.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com morningsomewhere and roosterteeth.com.

All right, well, that does it for us today.

This week, ending October 10th, 2025, we will be back to talk to you on Monday.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.