10: Who checks the lady boys?

Welcome, my friends, to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly conversation where two internet vets talk about technology, the internet, where it's headed, where we wish it was headed.

I'm Jason. And I'm Brian. You can find us on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

Welcome to episode 10 of Grumpy Old Geeks. This is the episode that we said would be our last if we didn't make any money. Well, we're still here. And we're not making any money.

And we'll still be here next week. Probably, maybe. I have to get on a plane, so who knows. True. So we are in the kitchen again because we have a guest. Again. We are joined today by Mr. Joey Rabier, my old friend and roommate from San Francisco, who lives down in Southern California now. Good old-fashioned Redondo Beach. Very nice. Welcome to the show.

Terrible, but we'll get there. So we met randomly at a dinner with Kevin Rose one night. Yep. The launch party, was it, for Revision 3, I believe? Was it? I can't remember what it was. I know Kent Nichols was there, and I was making fun of him because he was wearing one of those blogging hand-signed gesture shirts. Oh, geez. Those are terrible.

Yeah. So, but Kevin knew I was looking for a roommate because Kevin lived up the street, and I'd like routinely go get drunk at his house. And he's like, you need a roommate. And you were looking, so we ended up hooking up. Yep. And from there, I worked at Revision 3 and I've done many things since. I think now I'm technically a video editor, a sculptor, and a graphic designer, and a web designer. So I'm all over the map these days. You've got some four hats at least.

Yeah. Yeah. Many, many, many MacGyver hats. But you were, like, before Revision 3, where were you? Tech TV. That's right. Joey the Intern. I remember Tech TV. It was good stuff. It was great until G4 bought it, bastardized it, and fucked us all over.

Put Olivia Munn on the channel and made some money. Hmm. Tell us what you really think. I'm not old, but I'm grumpy and geeky, and I tell you what. Yeah, Olivia Munn. What up? Although, you know what? I was never a fan of her until I started watching Newsroom.

I'm a huge fan of that show. Newsroom? A lot of people shit on it. I love it. I didn't like the first episode. I thought the first episode was very Unsorkin-like and style. Yeah. But as it progressed, I mean, it was full-on Sorkin with no holds barred, and it was great. You knew it's what exactly he wanted to do with the West Wing, but couldn't.

Yeah. Because he was on a major network. I wish Studio 60 continued a little while longer. I enjoyed that as well. That's my favorite of the Sorkin projects so far. Sorkin is an amazing writer. Yeah. It's one of those things where, I mean, I like the, was it Studio 60? Was that it? Yeah, Studio 60 on the Sunset Trip.

Okay, yeah. That was a good show. Yeah. I was bummed when it went. Especially if you were in the industry. It was like, oh, this is the story of my life. Awesome. And with hot people. I call that Spinal Tap, except there's no hot people in that one. But that is the story of my life. Yeah. But yeah, great writer. So I'm sorry that, you know, Olivia Munn, yeah.

I don't mind her in it, actually. So, no, I love her. Like I said, I love her in Newsroom. I think that's the best thing she's ever done. Did you see her in Magic Mike, though? No, I did not. I only saw the important parts. Yeah, that's the important part. The two-second clip on the internet. Yeah. I actually, I actually sat through the entire movie.

So you only saw that one-minute clip of Black Swan 2, I assume, huh? No, I actually went and saw that whole piece of shit. Why? I don't know. Black Swan 2? No, Black Swan. Oh, there'll be a Black Swan 2. 2 as well, yeah. There will be a Black Swan 2, but it won't involve any major actresses.

No. Just porn actresses. It might just be ass to ass, yeah. I know it's pretty, but it's not going to suck itself. You want to go down that rabbit hole? Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. So, what have you been doing?

It's been a while since we saw each other. Yeah, I think I haven't seen you in person in about two years. You've been getting various updates through text messages, and so I'm a boycotter of Facebook and Twitter and all those things. Oh, you're one of those. Yeah, I know, I know. It's cost me many friends, which I actually feel kind of sad about.

I agree with you on the Twitter thing. The Facebook thing, I can't live without anymore. It really does. It is a necessity. It's almost as, yeah, you have to have it now. It's kind of weird. It's so irritating, though, because, I mean, I communicate through email, text messages, phone calls, and to be ostracized from my group of friends that I've had since high school because I'm no longer on Facebook.

Like, the last time I had dinner with them, they're like, you know what, if you're not on Facebook. Send the invite on Facebook. Meh. It's just ridiculous how much people are dependent upon Facebook these days, and I don't believe that's correct. What happened to a phone call? What happened to a reach out and literally touching someone instead of poking them?

Well, you can still reach out and poke someone. They've really downgraded the poke feature on Facebook. It's hard to find these days. I'm just going to stop right there. Too many jokes. Head hurts. So am I. Oh, man. So. Yeah, it's a weird thing.

I mean, Facebook is almost, it's hard to get by socially without it now. So it's all, I love finding people that just say, no, I'm not going to do it. And then it's always like, but I've never seen my friends. Whoa is Joe. Whoa is Joe.

Oh, my God. This is going someplace I never thought we would go. Of course it is. Yeah, you put beer and me who gives zero fucks in a room and things happen. I do like that none fucks given meme that's been going around. That is a good one. Yeah. Especially the one with the pigeon just under the truck.

That's my favorite no fucks given one, I think. I haven't seen, I'll have to link that in the show notes because I haven't seen that one myself. Okay. So it's, it's been a whopping week. There has to be some more things that you guys want to talk about with Kickstarter. Oh, straight into that. Hey, bring it on, man.

Okay. I believe you have a story that I, I'm not even aware of. So please. Yeah. A company called Cryptex did a Kickstarter campaign about two years ago. Their campaign goal was, I think, $12,000 and they raised about $198,000.

And they haven't been heard or seen from or any updates to any of the Kickstarter. So vaporware is completely back. Absolutely. With a vengeance. And even though there's a paper trail, Kickstarter, I believe, isn't doing anything to track them down. What's the penalty for not coming through on a Kickstarter?

Not delivering. Yeah. There's no penalty. There's no penalty. Yeah. I thought they started enforcing some things. How? Once the money's released, how do you get it back? Yeah. Oh, shit. I'm starting a Kickstarter right now. I'm going to start a Kickstarter lawyer industry.

We get a bunch of lawyers together to go back and chase this money down and hire some At the end of the day, Kickstarter got their money because they get a percentage of whatever funds billed in it. Yeah. They get that percentage when they release the funds. And what happens after that? No protection, no rights. No protection, no rights. Yeah.

Yeah. Even more things not to like about Kickstarter. Oh. So when do you start the Grumpy Old Geeks Kickstarter? Tomorrow, apparently. We can just get the money and fuck off. Yeah. I'm going to call it the Grumpy Old Geeks Vacation Fund. Yes.

Because you got to go to Hawaii. I ain't gone nowhere. Well, if we, you know, I say we set a $2 million limit and then we just go off to fucking Thailand. We can buy Thailand. Hookers and cocaine for everyone. Yay! Who checks to see if they're ladyboys first?

Oh. We could probably hire someone. Not yet. I'll hire a ladyboy to find his own kind. All right. How about that? Sniff that one out. Tell me. Yeah. It's kosher. That's actually fascinating because I never even thought about that aspect of it, which is what happens when you get the money and you just don't get the product.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been railing purely on the celebrity aspect of it, basically taking it over and making it a promotional engine. Ah, the Zach Raff mean. Yes. Yeah. Well, it started with, for me, it started with Amanda Palmer, who drove me batshit insane.

What was that? The Veronica Bars one? No. The musician. Oh. And she decided it's the future of the music industry because she managed to make a lot of money. Wow. I go back and listen to the earlier episodes and I go, fuck it, my eyeballs exploded talking about it.

Oh, you pulled a last arc, huh? Yeah. But, I mean, you're talking about a fail on the level of what Kickstarter was supposed to be for, which is cool new products and whatnot. And, yeah, there's no protection. I never even thought about that aspect of it.

Well. Another big fail. Well, how do you fix it? I mean, do you change the terms of agreement? I mean, how do you actually enforce? Yeah. How do you, well, how do you fund a startup? Yeah. I mean, we're talking about funding startups and gazillionaires have been doing this for years because they can afford to. Now we're asking people who can't really afford the 400 bucks that they throw into something to lose it.

Well, I mean, most of the Kickstarter campaigns, you don't even get a percentage of the take for funding them. I mean, you're basically a baby angel investor. Yeah. And as an angel, you would actually get, you know, a percentage of the final. With this, you get the product and maybe a t-shirt. But as an angel investor in the old school world, you expected you may not make any investment.

You might just lose that money. True. Sacrificial. Standard people that are going to Kickstarter do not expect to just lose money and not get anything. So it's a real education in how business works and how, like, we try to micromanage everything now and it becomes all these smaller things where it just doesn't make sense.

And people don't get that. Does Kickstarter take Bitcoin? Don't think so. I don't think so. The moment they do, the moment they do, it's dead. What happened with Bitcoin? It crashed for a while. Does it come back? It keeps up and downing. Yeah. And I think Amazon actually just said they were going to start.

I don't. If Amazon comes on board with it, that's going to be huge. Well, did you guys read the environmental impact of mining Bitcoins and how it's like an ecological disaster if they actually get to the point where they do make all the Bitcoins? Why would they make an actual coin? The whole point is that this is a digital currency.

A virtual currency, yes. Why would you make a physical currency? I'm not talking about the physical. I'm talking about the... No, we're talking about Bitcoins. I know. But the CPU power that it takes to mine Bitcoins. Oh. The power involved. You went geeky on us. That's what I'm saying. Somebody did a fucking environmental impact study to say, if you have all these people mining these Bitcoins, just the power consumption alone is through the roof.

I'll dig it up and put it in the show notes. Environmental numbers get weird, though, because, I mean, it's like, you could have... What's the environmental numbers on normal money, which basically doesn't exist anymore, too? Sure, the shit doesn't in my bank account. I mean, 99... All of our banks are just transferring around bits, not real money.

Yeah, it's hard to find. Yeah, just ones and zeros. That's it. But when you dig into environmental numbers, it gets wacky, though, because it's like, it turns out that owning a dog is less environmentally friendly than owning an SUV, so... Right. In terms of, like, the great carbon footprint stuff.

Yeah. I was getting really into that for a while, because, you know, when Radiohead was doing their crazy touring thing about being, like, you know, carbon, like, no footprint touring, and I was... I worked with a couple bands that feel kind of the same way, and I was trying to look into it, and it's like, there's no way. The prices on things are astronomical that you wouldn't even imagine.

It costs more to print the tickets through printers than it would be for me to drive in L.A. to a show. So, am I going to get pissed off about e-ticketing, or am I going to get pissed off about lack of public transportation, or... Oh, God. We're just going to bitch fest about Ticketmaster for the rest of this episode.

Okay. Okay, we're Pearl Jam, back in 1990. How'd that work out for them? Not very well. Okay. Okay. There's hate where my liver sits. I got cigarettes to pull to bits. I don't think too much that's bad for myself.

I got a bottle for a good company. A great drinker and his love could be. Well, of all the stupid things I've been told. How? I took my car now. We didn't actually say what we were going to say when we came back.

No, we didn't. Well, we said a lot of things during the break that we can't say. Well, there's one thing we can say. You fucking funded Zach Braff's Kickstarter? Yeah. You just did your epic rants about it, and you were aware of the fact that we crapped all over celebrity people getting on the bandwagon.

Indeed. You funded Zach Braff. I did. I gave him $60, because I wanted to have- What do you get for that? You get- Virtual handjob? I wish. It's been a while. No, for that, I think you got, what was it, a track listing of, you get the copy of the soundtrack, copy of a t-shirt, copy of the script, and- In a shitty movie.

But see, I liked Garden State. I really identified with it strongly, especially given the fact that I started as talent and then went into more of the technical side. So I really identified strongly with Garden State, especially him going back home, everything was different, and my Facebook situation right now.

It really hit a nerve. So you were disturbed about the fact that you actually gave somebody whose bank account is overflowing with cash money to make a movie. Right, isn't that worth this, what, $20 million? This is good. His asking was $2 million for the goal.

He wanted two, and he made $2.5. Uh-huh. And 0.3% is mine, I guess. I don't know. Oh, 0.3% of what? You're not going to get any returns on investment. There's no ROI for you. But he'll get a soundtrack and a t-shirt. Yay! And he may never make the movie, like we discussed before.

I know. It could be movie vaporware. No, it came out today that he's at Con now. Yeah. Can's, Con's. Con. Con is how the cool people say it. Okay, well, I'm not cool. Some other company came up with the bridge funding, so it's probably going to happen.

Which means the company that came up with the bridge funding, they're the ones that are going to make the money. They're going to get the money. I'm going to get a shitty movie that I paid $60 for. And a soundtrack and a t-shirt. Yay! Huzzah! Yeah, this is the fallacy of Kickstarter. But well done on you.

I hope you enjoy your movie. I hope I don't hate it. You can bring the DVD over, or we'll do a screening and laugh at you. Huzzah! Did you guys see the Amy's Baking Company blow up this week? Oh, yes. I did not see it, so recap it for me. Well, uh, uh, uh, I, shit.

Okay, so, yeah, here we go. It's his company? Basically, yeah. There's an online baking company. It's a restaurant, basically. Yeah, it's a restaurant. And, uh, they were on, uh... Gordon Ramsay's show. Gordon Ramsay's show. I watch no reality TV, so that's where it gets complicated. What's that like? Nice.

Really? What's it like not being on Facebook? You and I have something in common. Nice. Huzzah! Um, yeah, I basically don't watch reality TV, so I'm aware of what, what, uh, that all is. The Kitchen Nightmares? Is that, I believe his name? I think it's something like that, yeah. Something like that. So, it was a restaurant that was on the show, and he was just, like, fed up with them, and like, I can't do this, and fail.

And, uh, people, of course, they had a Facebook page, and people went apeshit on it, and they decided to take it into their own hands to try to defend themselves. Oh, no. That always works. They played their own PR? Yeah, they did their own PR, which is, uh, again, like, a recurring theme on this podcast for the 10 episodes we've now done is, like, not everybody can do this.

Everybody thinks we, Pete Zuckerberg gives us the tools to think that we can take care of everything ourselves, but you can't. You cannot, and when, when you're, uh, you're, your own business owner that's under fire, you should not leap onto your own page.

So, apparently, it just got batshit insane. It, I, I watched, I looked at all, the entire thread, and as it started, and just devolved into... Was this the Reddit thread, or the, the Yelp thread? Well, apparently, they started to feed into each other as well. Yeah. The Reddit thread then drove people to Facebook.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was cross-pollination between all the stories. The interwebs is very incestuous. Yeah. This is how it works. I, it's a feeding frenzy. I mean, this is true viral action. This is not the viral action that... They wanted. ...the movies hoped for. This is real viral action. This is not the viral action you're looking for.

Yeah. This went truly viral. It went fucking ape shit. But in the worst way possible for Amy's Bakery. Yes. Amy's Bakery is pretty much done. Maybe. Well, I saw, I saw an interesting, uh, like, follow-up piece on it where a woman actually was at the bakery and on the show and saw, like, their crazy, insane shit firsthand.

And she's like, yep, they're crazy. And she got a note that she was supposed to go meet with Gordon Ramsay and talk about the experience. And then, like, the morning before she was supposed to meet, they got, like, a, no, we're not going to need you kind of thing. We got enough. We're not going to do that. Yeah. Like, Gordon's kind of fed up.

Yeah. I mean, this is, uh, A1 Pure, probably best example that's happened about how you shouldn't run your own shit. Yeah. If you're not a professional in this, do not run your own shit. And if you're, if you're insane, don't run your own shit. She was calling people witches and God is going to smite them all or some shit like that.

She went Christian on their asses. Oh, big time. They're a little crazy, like, fucking crazy Christian type people. So, like, this is like the Westboro Baptist Bakery. Jesus cakes. It's good for you. God hates flan. Oh, man.

So, I mean, that's not the only, like, crazy bullshit thing that, that a company did this. I mean, there's a lot of examples, but this week seems to be. There's a lot of examples, but this is probably the first one that really hit the public consciousness so hard. Like, and it was so out there. Like, even the Today Show covered it in the morning.

They did? Matt Lauer talking about it. Oh, my goodness. Hilarious. I couldn't get over that. Yeah, there's tons of crazy stuff. Well, then you've got the Abercrombie and Fitch dude this week. Fat people shouldn't wear our clothes. Yeah. And we will not donate our clothes to the homeless because we don't want homeless people wearing our fucking cargo pants.

No, that'll downgrade the brand. So, you saw the video? Yeah. Yeah, I didn't actually. What was the video? Good Lord. I haven't seen the video, and I can tell you what it's in it. The problem is I'm, like, four beers in at the moment. Go ahead. So, it's basically a dude took a bunch of Abercrombie and Fitch clothes down to Skid Row in L.A.

and handed them out to all the homeless. Put them out. Oh, Fitch for the homeless. Yeah, Fitch for the homeless, yes. Yeah, it's a little insane. You can't do worse branding for yourself than to, like, deny this stuff.

And then this is what happens now. This is the world that we live in. This is your Vine. This is your Twitter. This is everything. You can't do something that stupid. It's a permanent record forever that will haunt you until the day that you die. There is no anonymity anymore in terms of statements on any online medium.

And to actually defend these companies for a second, because I don't actually, I don't think that these people have the best interest in heart. This is also a way to get famous quick. If you see something that's stupid and wrong, you're going to go out and make your own viral video to make yourself famous.

You see a niche there. All right, I'm going to go make a video. I'm going to go take all, I'm going to go buy a bunch of Anne McCrombie and Fitch cargo pants. I'm going to take it down to downtown LA. I'm going to shoot a video of myself giving the pants out to people. Is that entirely altruistic? Oh no, you know, he's got to be self-serving.

You put it up on YouTube. It's self-serving. It's self-serving. Yeah. And especially with their views. What are YouTube's numbers? I think for every million hits you get, you get maybe a thousand dollars of ad revenue. You get a ton of money. Yeah. So this is now the world that we live in where you can be an asshole on one end and you can be doing the right thing but still kind of be an asshole.

But we also come to the argument about whether or not there's any such thing as true altruism anymore. I don't think there is. I think we've become so narcissistic and egotistic that drives everything now. You've been listening to way too much Adam Carolla. No. I've been living here in Venice and doing my bike rides every single day and everybody is filming themselves doing stuff instead of actually doing stuff.

All right. But on Venice Beach, what the hell is the altruism in the dude that wears the Speedos and the rollerblades? No, there's not. But at least he used to just wear them and do it. Now he's got a camera on himself the entire time filming everything, waiting for something to happen that can make him the next fucking viral YouTube star that appears on the Today Show.

Huzzah! It's interesting. I did see an article this week too about how much money these people are making with shitty content. Not much. No. They're making tons of money. It's a fucking fool's game. It's a mug's game. But there are channels... Everybody is sold on the fact that they think that you're going to become fucking millionaires shooting something cool.

But the percentages on the YouTube thing, the percentages on the YouTube thing are ridiculous. But there are people making upwards of $80,000 a month with these crappy little shows. But it's 1% of the people that are out there on YouTube. It's even worse odds than trying to be a musician.

It's worse odds than winning the lottery. Front has six balls and fuck stupid people. The lottery. There it is. I like that one. It's good. No, it's... It is the lottery. The internet is the lottery now.

We give this idea that you're going to become famous and rich if you do something interesting and cool and put it up on YouTube. But the reality is it's 1% of 1% of 1% of people that are posting things on YouTube that can even make a living. Yeah. Well, as long as they're releasing it on a regular schedule. By the way, listen to Grubby Old Geeks every...

Every Monday, like us on iTunes, give us a five star. And tell your friends. On Facebook. And Kickstarter. Yeah, we have to put up that page pretty soon. It's...

Yeah, there's no money to be made. It's... I just don't... It was put out as a democratization of things. And I don't see that happening. It's just not happening. Psy does his thing. And there's a study that came out about that. Like, about how this viral stuff isn't really viral.

It's all these PR machines moving things around now. Yeah. Like, you can't have a true viral hit anymore unless it's something so insane like this Amy's Bakery. Well, I've read about, like, the negative viral machines that work on Reddit. I mean, I guess there are some groups of people or such that will downvote everything that revolves around certain news stories reflecting certain countries' politics.

Right. Yeah. People start to band together. You're anonymous, which I don't really know if they're good or not. But that's a biggest example of it. And then... No, anonymous is like six guys, but... Yeah, exactly. And a bunch of trolls. At the top of the food chain?

Yeah, definitely. But everything is. That's why we have a republic here in the U.S., not a real democracy. Yes. Because that actually works. Democracy does not. I think, if nothing else the internet is teaching us, democracy does not work. It just doesn't. There's too many stupid people.

Sorry. A little fashion plague lets them the herd. Yeah. I'm down with that. Oh, there's a movie coming out that's basically, like, for the next 12 hours, crime is legal. Which is basically a thing that we used to talk about years ago, like in the early 90s. We called it International Darwin Day.

We called it International Darwin Day. And somebody finally picked it up and wrote a script and made a movie about it. That's awesome. I just wish it was real. It sounds almost like the comic book 99 Bullets, where it's just you're given 99 bullets and you can do whatever you want. Whatever you use these bullets on, there are no legal repercussions at all.

Oh. Working up by a box of those. But see, we're immediately talking about a republic, not a democracy. We're thinking we're the smarter ones and we can take care of these things. Thank you. If only we had those 99 bullets, don't give it to that asshole.

He's an idiot. And you know what? Those guys are saying, don't give it to those guys. We're idiots. You know, that's 99 bullets and you all eat one. But, I mean, how is this working? How is this internet democracy actually working? How is this upvoting and downvoting? What are we seeing happen?

We're actually seeing collusions. We're seeing special interest groups. The same things that we're seeing in our own government that drive us insane are starting to happen online, too. Well, and go back to the old days of Digg. There was a herd of people on Digg that basically banded together to upvote certain stories, downvote other stories, to get top placement, and you could buy their time.

Yeah. Well, also, I mean, half of the whole Digg argument from the old days was the way that the algorithm was done with power, quote-unquote, power users. Yeah. And... Was Digg's algorithm public? No. No, no, no. So, a lot like Facebook still, where we don't understand what shows up in our news feed and why.

Exactly. Yeah. So, the big mysteries. And I had a dream about this the other night, because I'm like, when I would post something on Facebook just even two weeks ago, I would always at least get a comment or like, ever since they changed the mobile device to show their shitty news algorithm first? Yeah. Crickets.

Now, now think about this for a second. Maybe you're just not funny anymore. Oh, well, that's true. Oh, I'm kidding. Think about this, though. Drink more! And I own Facebook. Yeah. I can do, like, say, a Bayesian analysis of keywords in your stream. If I determine that you are anti-Facebook, I can give you a friendliness score.

Or I can... A friendliness score that then puts your placement in the news, where, basically, I, as the company owner, can just filter you out of the conversation. Or I can be aware of the brands and lifestyle choices that are giving me money to advertise on Facebook, and make sure that anything mentioning anything related to those is getting precedent.

Yeah. Yeah. See, that's where the whole, like, you know, filtering of content from the company's perspective just completely pisses me off, because it's like, it's... I don't want to give them that control. I mean, yeah, granted, I'm still using Facebook, unfortunately, because I have to for work. No, I just do it because I have to for work.

And since I'm on there, I might as well get some enjoyment. How many job offers actually come through Facebook for you personally? No, I do. I'm a LinkedIn guy. I do Facebook apps. I was going to ask you, because you're not on Facebook, do you find that a problem for work? Absolutely, because actually, like, you know, some jobs will go and do a search and, like, see, oh, does he have a Facebook? Oh, then this is an illegitimate resume, and I'll never even get a call back.

I mean, I've probably given out 100, 120 resumes over the past two and a half years while I've been looking for work, and I have not received a call back except for people email me, oh, I'm sorry, you're overqualified for this, or something, based upon, because I was applying for a lower position, just trying to find anything to take up my time.

Alcohol has not taken up the rest of my time. Yay! Oh, yes. LinkedIn is utterly useless for me. I've gotten no viable job offers from LinkedIn. Yeah, I mean, I've looked into... Some people swear by it. I think it works for certain professions.

I think it works for, you know, if you're legal, if you're in the serious business world, it works. I don't think it works for our generation and what we do, which is a nebulous bullshit thing anyways. There's one site called Media Match, and I've really looked into it, but I mean, the sites, they have job pools, and then they ask you to pay a monthly fee.

It's so surprising, because it's like, oh, yes, there's 65 jobs in your area, matching your criteria. And then after that, you get in there, you pay the fee, and then you realize, well, these jobs are from nine months ago, and 30% of the companies don't even exist anymore. They're built off the exact same model as dating sites. Yeah, but there's a happy ending in dating.

No. Ask Jason about his experiences. It should be called nomatch.com. It was eHarmony. Yeah, eHarmony was basically, even though it's, I know the history, it's all Christian now, and you can't really. They have an eight-step program. But I took the test.

I'm on the 12th step. I took the test, yeah. I think you're on the 13th at the moment. Hey, now. I took the eHarmony test, and they're like, yeah, sorry, dude, there's nobody for you. Yeah, same thing here. I mean, I went through the 500, back in like 2005, when I first tried it out, I went through the 500 item questionnaire that they have, and they said, we're sorry, you're one of the 5% that we can't match.

So apparently, Jesus hates me. Yeah. But Jameson tastes like God came in my mouth. Excellent. All right. Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Christians. Yeah. So, just going back to the whole brand fucking up thing, there was another thing in the news this week, which is how people can fuck up quite possibly the rest of their lives in a...

In two seconds. In two seconds, because it is so ridiculous that my mind is still like trying to wrap itself around it, but there are a lot of teenage girls who want to see the surviving Boston bomber freed because he's cute.

I just... I... What? Well, I mean, do you think... I don't think they're really going to fuck up the rest of their lives. I think if... I mean, the one that marries him? Yes. There's a record of all these girls' names out there. You do a job search and they see...

They want to grow up and try and get a real job in the real world. Yeah, but aren't they all using Twitter handles like, you know, iHeartJustinBeavers slash slash exclamation point? I'd hope so. I'd hope for their sake and their fucking stupidity. I mean, one would hope. Yeah.

This is like the Suicide Club movie, you know? I mean, where just people just find a bad wagon and jump on it and they may hurt themselves in the long run, but they don't care. They just want to be part of a community that's pushing forward, even if it's the dumbest fucking idea ever. Well, it's kind of like that I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond than, you know.

Okay. So the small pond of people that are chasing after psycho mass murderers. Yeah, well, yeah, and they're still people that get married and... And chicks dig fucking... Chicks dig. That's why we have prison pen pals. Yes. Chicks dig famous people. Charles Manson got... Everybody. Everybody that goes to prison that's high profile gets wedding offers because...

They were on TV. Even my mom was... My mom used to be an operator at Pacifica Bell, and she would be running the patchboards and stuff. And, like, Manson collars would come through her patchboard, as well as, actually, Richard Ramirez, the... What's it? The knight stalker.

Knight stalker. Yeah. And, like... Well, and those two guys, the tennis guys that killed their parents. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. The poontang was rolling in for those dudes. It's insane. I mean, people are just... It's ridiculous. People are so blown away by celebrity. I mean, that's why your Kim Kardashians, your Paris Hiltons, it's...

Once the ball got rolling on that shit, everybody was just into it. They're fucking famous. Why? Nobody cares. Nobody cares why. They're just famous. That's it. There you go. Famous for nothing. Yeah, famous for absolutely nothing. Like Justin Bieber. Oh, Bieber, Bieber, Bieber.

Bieber, Bieber. Oh, that thing he did with... See, I don't understand why he's still... The thing he did with Anne Frank, I wish she was a believer. That was such a fucking cock. If you have any concept of what history is and what that actually means, you would just go, fuck that dude.

Yeah. I'm so done with it. Even when I was trying to say that he was better than the Beatles at one point, didn't he? I mean, it's like... Yeah. He is just such a douchey ass. That should have been such a social networking faux pas, but you're dealing with 12-year-old girls that don't understand history, and nobody seems to give a shit anymore.

This next generation that's coming up, I don't get it. They don't understand anything. Well, people just want to be fucking... They want to be normal, and for them, normal is, you know, following the mass opinions. Yes. Yeah. Not the mass murder and mass slaughter of millions and millions of people, but...

I'm sure she would have been in your crappy songs while she was getting killed by the Nazis. Yeah. Yeah. It's a horrific vision of madness. It skips a beat, my heart pounds, even when I sleep. Even when I sleep.

Rubbing charity. Rubbing charity. Rubbing charity. Rubbing charity. And the beer for today, we got to it a bit late.

Scrimshaw. Pilsner style beer. It's awesome. It's really good. North Coast Brewing Company. It's tasty. It's tasty stuff. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. Yeah. I take. Yeah. So, I saw a thing this... Not this week.

It's actually been out for a while. About zero-day exploit. The black market for zero-day exploits. Which are, you know... Yes, we talked about them a bit on the security episode. So, for the people who have not heard it before, a zero-day exploit is basically just a hole or a bug in computer code that lets you take over a device or computer that nobody knows about.

It's unpatched. Yeah. So, there's a black market for these. You can actually go out and buy these exploits. And they sell for up to a million dollars. The iPhone... If you have an exploit for the iPhone, top dollar. Really? And... I thought the iPhone was unhackable.

Unless you jailbraked it. Everything's hackable, my friend. Everything's hackable. It's made by a man. It could be broken by a man. But that is their PR line. And they have very good PR. Had good PR. So, the big news is that the biggest purchaser of these zero-day exploits on the black market is the United States government.

America. I'm surprised it's not for BlackBerry, considering that they don't let anybody in government use iPhones yet. No, but they can at least then listen to what you're saying on your phone. Oh, that's true. You know? NSA, CIA, whoever can then backdoor into your phone and get whatever they need off of it.

What, is that Sebris? Or what's the name of the program behind the... Oh, maybe I've said too much. Sorry. All right. Delete, delete, delete. Well, so, me as a programmer, I wish I was an operating system programmer, because right now, I would be working at Apple, building as many super, super secret hidden backdoors as I possibly could for my retirement fund.

Right. You put in 10, you got 10 million bucks right there. Yeah. Well, hoping that they, you know, don't get found by somebody else, because the big money comes when nobody else knows about them. Right. Well, hence the zero-day. Well, it's not like you're putting a red pill on the homepage or something, you know?

That is absolutely insane. It's such a bad precedent. It's ridiculous. I can't believe the U.S. government has come out and said that publicly. This should... Well... Is it public or is it backchatting? How do you keep anything hidden anymore? That becomes the bigger question. You don't... Is there any way? There is zero way.

Yeah. Unless you have six different passports and a Skies kit in your car, you know? Well, no. Or you have a pen and paper. And you can't even send it through the U.S. mail anymore. No, everything is... Ew, analog. Ew. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so... It's a weird thing that they would do that, but I don't... I don't see any other way. How would they know? Why not? Buy it out. We tried to... We tried to buy off Bin Laden dying. We offer the rewards for that. But...

And also, there is a case for the government going in and buying these hacks, so they're not out in the wild. Right. You know? So, they get them first, they can either... But do they close them? They're not patching them. Right? Or do they modify them? Who knows? Who knows? So, it's still open for them, but closed for us.

Or, as soon as they find out what the... I like how, as soon as we're talking about this, a helicopter flies overhead. So, if I was the U.S. government, me personally, and I had a bankroll, and I was buying these exploits, I would use them until I found out somebody else had them.

Then I would expose them to the companies and say, fix this shit quick. Right. Do you think that's happening? I don't think they're... They've got the wherewithal to do it. Not when they're purchasing them at a million apiece. They're using them for private intel, probably, most likely. And they're also using them for Stuxnet.

And Snapchat. We did talk about that one.

I don't know if we're going to bust the Iranians with Snapchat. The U.S. government is collecting pre-team. Oh, look at this picture of a camel. Well, that was the whole database thing that they were trying to do with, like, every American with a state ID. They were trying to build a database with as much information, like, you know, pictures and all that.

Yeah. Now, have any of you actually requested a copy of your file from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act? Yeah. No, I have not done that. Yeah. I'm afraid to, because I think it will get me on more watch lists or something. Yeah, I think requesting is probably bad. Yeah. They probably just go, like, oh, he wanted it. Yeah. Interesting.

Let's look deeper. Let's put it a little more in there. The poll of the Inception must go deeper. It is a weird question. Like, going off the grid was a big deal about five years ago. I did a lot of research. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. We were even talking about doing a show on this. Yeah. Yeah. That was a huge deal a couple years ago.

I don't hear a lot about it anymore. Because you can't. And I've kind of gone the other way. I've gone totally on the grid. I figure, fuck it. All right. I'm going to sign up for everything. I signed up for all these travel programs. I've given them all my information. I'm like, go ahead. What are you going to do? You whore. I'm buying in.

You guys buy out. We'll see who wins. Did you sign up for Bang With Friends? No. No. I never. That was hilarious when that came out. Oopsies. What was Bang With Friends? Bang With Friends is... See, since you're not on Facebook, you don't get to experience this.

I'm so out of the loop. You don't get to see the fun of Facebook apps. It's an app that you sign up for on Facebook. And it shows you all your friends. And you click, I'd fuck her, her, her, her, and her. I'm into you. They sign up. I'm into you. And if they click you, and you have a mutual match, game on.

Really? Supposedly. Oopsies. Until somebody figured out, oh, when they first set up the application, they didn't set the privacy settings on it right. So, if you signed up before a certain date, it was public. And as soon as Facebook opened up their open graph search, you could find out who had it installed.

See, those Google Plus likes, those Facebook likes things always fucking annoy me. Because why the fuck do they even put them on the porn sites? Like, oh, yeah, I love watching this girl get ragged by this guy. Oh, Cher. Why?

What possible person would ever click that on purpose? Have you been to America? It's a weird thing. And privacy is a weird thing. Privacy is a myth nowadays. It's a total myth. That's why, like, going off the grid, I mean, you haven't seen articles about that in a long time, right?

Yeah. It really hit public consciousness, I'd say, about, what, six, seven years ago? And since then, declining, declining, declining. I don't hear anything about it anymore. Because everybody's frankly cool. Because the people that really wanted to went off the grid. Yeah, they're all gone. I bet you anything. You start up a Kickstarter for a privacy app on the iPhone where it just changes your background to a lock that is locked.

And people will buy the shit out of that. My phone is secure. I'm so deleting that. I'm pointing that out. I did buy a calculator app that is a fully functioning calculator. But if you punch in a, like, special code, then it opens up and then it's, like, secure file storage.

Interesting. What do you have that's so important, Jason? Nothing. It was free. It was on my free app of the day app. So I'm like, oh. But a secure app like that. I wonder if you bonded to the bandwidth and the network traffic on it, if that just goes, bing, bing, bing, back to whoever released that app.

Oh. In your secure section. Well, it's just for storing pictures and shit like that. Pictures and movies. Which, whoever made that, probably has access to. No, it's local storage. It doesn't go out. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Fuck. We don't know how this works, Jason.

I can't believe you're that stupid. I don't like having two hosts. Oh, if I would have said it myself, you would have discounted it. I needed a backup. One person I can handle. I can take you down any time.

You and I both know. It gets difficult. You and I both know that you can get to that shit. Yeah, it doesn't. And the whole thing is, it's like, okay, if you've got the app and you look at somebody else's phone and they've got the app, it's like the same icon and the name is, it's like, okay, what are you hiding? It's like, what's the fucking point of having?

You can't customize any of that shit. So it's like, well, I got it. So you know somebody's up to some shit if they got it. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. That's why I dumped it. I'm just like, eh, no. If I could hide it and make it, you know. I thought you said you just downloaded it. I did. I put in my code, opened it up, looked at it, and said, well, I'm never going to use this.

I deleted it. All right. Missed that part. The Jameson is strong with this one. Well, this has been an interesting episode. This is our most free-looking, fun, crazy. Can you still speak? No, I can't even still speak anymore.

Sorry. Second episode of the day, birthday episode. All right. Cheers. I'm empty, but I would toast. I'm not toasting with an empty glass. Are you empty already? All right. Fine. Thanks for listening. Sort of. Mostly. Sort of. Hopefully. Hopefully you made it through it. It was a good time. It was. Thank you, Joey, for coming out.

Thank you for enduring my drunken debauchery. Yeah. Anytime. Welcome back. Anytime. It was a good time. I enjoy talking about bullshit in a very fun way. I'm a bullshit artist, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Until next time, you can find us on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks, and via email at...

Don't even look at me. I just turned 40, and I've had a few shots. Podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com, and we've updated the website so you can come use our handy feedback form if you don't know how to use an email client. Ooh, feedback. Yes. I made the website prettier. We like that. Yes. Shiny. It's Squarespace.

It's easy. It's white. You can tell if somebody's on Squarespace because everybody's site looks exactly the same. It's white, and there's a couple columns, and there's two or three font choices. Comic Sans. Dope. Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer.

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