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Notes for season 3 episode 8, “Endgame“ 16:06 The Machine tracks the office supply truck containing printer cartridges and cocaine as being worth 12.8 million, but doesn’t really break that down. Printer ink can be pricey! 16:56 “Honestly Mr Reese, this looks like something you would do.” Carter’s hijack of the truck is basically a…

Notes for season 3 episode 7, “The Perfect Mark“ 03:04 We have the infosec nightmare of a hypnotherapist is delving for answers to people’s bank password-reset security questions. Mother’s full name, favourite colour, and so on. 05:57 I can’t identify the ice tea brand that Natalie is unpacking, but it comes in the stout Snapple-style…

Notes for season 3 episode 6, “More Praematura“ 01:09 A mysterious US-specific organisation is using SVoIP for a conference, and the Tor network for voting on resolutions. The Machine can hear the decoded SVoIP and precisely geo-locate all of the voters using Tor… which is a bit “you had one job” for both? So I…

Notes for season 3, episode 5, “Razgovor“ (The title is a reference to the movie “The Conversation”.) 02:12 Apparently HR has a map of camera dead-zones in New York for planning meetings. I believe the map comes up in a later season. 07:13 A reminder that a decade ago, Putin was being Putin. 09:30 In…

Notes for season 3 episode 4, “Reasonable Doubt“ 01:00 Apparently the vet scene was originally written with Reese and Shaw posing as a dog-owning couple, but it’s always far funnier to have Reese and Finch as co dog-owners. 08:20  Another reference to the NYPD/Microsoft “Domain Awareness” surveillance network. 08:57 The episode’s first appearance of the…

Notes for season 3 episode 3, “Lady Killer“ 01:29 The name of the fake credit reporting agency Finch gets the report from is “Equian” 03:29 “smartphone applications like Tinder and Angler”. Tinder was launched in September 2012, this episode would have been written mid-2013, so it had become TV shorthand for dating apps in under…

Notes for season 3 episode 2, “Nothing to Hide“ 04:00 Lifetrace appears to be a people-centric search engine. (Add thelifetrace.com to the Warners domain pool.) Finch treats data brokers with distain, which seems a little off. Comparisons to the operation of the Machine aside, every week Finch builds up full dossiers of not only the…

Notes for season 3 episode 1, “Liberty“ 09:00 If you’re wondering where you recognise Dr Carmichael, it’s probably Bruce Altman’s portrayal of Evil Corp exec Terry Colby on Mr Robot. 09:02 Is Root’s hospital alias “Robin” a reference to Finch’s bird naming scheme, or a Batman reference suggesting Root as a future Team Machine member.…

Notes for season 2, episode 22, “God Mode“ 04:10 The next time we see Shaw’s machine reticle, after being told about the AI, it has changed from blue to yellow. (Implying that anyone with a blue gov reticle doesn’t know about the Machine, or that the machine no longer considers Shaw a government agent?) 04:39…

Notes for season 2 episode 21, “Zero Day“ 01:33 Reece has a Uniden Bearcat scanner (probably a UBC125XLT) for listening to police radio. 04:00 According to the OSC Decima report, the RFID chip implanted in Alicia Corwin, prior to 2012, had a 256kb capacity. While this seems like a tiny amount of space compared to…