102: 10,000 Moderately Interested Fans

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Good morning, Sir Brian. How are you today?

I'm okay, Jason. How are you? I have a slight headache. I have a slight headache and I also have a slight cold. So if I sound a little raspy, that's the reason. And of course, along with the cold, it snowed again this morning and there's construction going on outside. So I got the trifecta going on today.

Going to be 100 degrees here this weekend. Blow me. Yeah. So I'd like to announce our first Patreon winner of the Clocky. Woohoo! Gary Inman is the winner of the Clocky. We will be in touch very shortly, Gary, to get your mailing details. But congratulations.

Congratulations, Gary. And thank you very much for supporting us on the Patreon thingy, my bobber. Yes. And thank you for helping to clean out my closets. Yeah, that too. So I posted a link in our show notes. It's called Life of Layoff.

And this is a blog post from my friend Nicole, who kind of details her and her husband, my friend Calby's, basically addiction to getting laid off. And, you know, over time, they're photographers, which is a really tough racket.

The Internet has killed photography, obviously. The Internet has killed a great many things. Yes, yes. But they feel the bite of the photography definitely more than most people. So, yeah, my friend was working at a commercial studio and he got laid off last week. And I thought she did a really good job of just kind of talking about how tough it is, you know, just out there.

And I thought I thought you would enjoy this because, you know, you're always talking about the death of the middle class. I did enjoy it. And it is. It's very true. I mean, it's nothing that you and I don't know, having been contractors for as long as you and I have been contractors for basically are running our own show, especially if you keep your business nice and small like we have to because we decided not to become some big, stupid thing.

Right, Jason? So, you know, any time that I would lose a client, that's akin to getting laid off because a client is a big chunk of your income. So you have to scramble. I understand this feeling very well. She she did a really nice write up about it. You know, she she did standard writing number one, though.

So good on her for being so positive at the end. I would have ended that with fuck this shit. Yeah. Drops the mic, walks out of the room. Exactly. Yeah. She she kept very positive. It's a it's a good read and it is the the ups and downs. And and, you know, I do I would ask them personally why they didn't just stay contractors instead of continuing to try to get hired on full time by people.

But everybody has their reasons could be, you know, health insurance could be anything. Yeah. They had a kid. Yeah. And photography is a tough racket. No, it's very tough. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't necessarily so much say the Internet has killed photography, although it certainly helped. But the iPhone certainly is putting some nails in that coffin.

Well, yeah. Yeah. Digital photography. Digital photography. Yeah. And let's be honest, people don't really give a shit about quality anymore and people don't want to pay. And it's very rare. And you're going to make an argument that people do. And I understand that. And there is a very small percentage of people out there that do care about quality.

But nine times out of 10, the iPhone shot is going to be what's going to be on the news story. And that's going to be good enough. Now, do not tell me what my argument is going to be before I can place my argument. It's been two years of doing this, Jason. Well, I mean, she's got a very good, you know, wedding business. So she does wedding photography and commercial photography.

Yep. So, you know, she is her own shop. He is not right now because he was had a day job. So, you know, they're trying to figure that out now. And you can look out for the Nicole and Calbee podcast coming soon because I'm teaching them how to podcast. Well, we can talk about that in a few minutes.

I did. I did, you know, preface it with saying that if you definitely do not ever want to make any money, go into podcasting. And they're like, well, and I also just don't see the I mean, you know, you and I, when we started doing this podcast and we're totally skipping a story, but we'll just mention this briefly and then we'll get back to it.

We kind of we knew we probably weren't going to make any money. We had high hopes, of course. But we also kind of figured if nothing else, this directly relates to our industry and perhaps people will know about it. And, you know, this may get us some jobs because we can showcase our expertise and tell people how they're wrong about everything.

You know, I think I would caution them to think about what doing a podcast would actually do for their business. Yeah. Because they certainly aren't going to make any money doing the podcast. No, absolutely not. And I gave them a lot of tips on how to actually structure it so it will be more, more useful for them than this has been for us.

But for us, this is just fun. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Well, it has to be because it's nothing else. Hey, man, we're doing pretty well on the Patreon. We've got a bunch of supporters now. So, yeah, we're doing all right on the Patreon. So thank you very much on that. And I know you don't want me to get too negative about this.

Listen, I'm not saying this about our podcast. Like you said, it is kind of just for fun. And I do enjoy doing it. And that doesn't matter. But let's talk about the reality. And this really struck home because I am still occasionally listening to the Adam and Dr. Drew show. And I was listening to number 222 a couple days ago called Satisfaction.

And basically, they just drone on in the background while I'm doing work 90% of the time. I don't really pay close attention. But around the 26-minute mark, they started to talk about something that really did perk my ears up. And it's the reality of, you know, everybody can do anything now.

Everybody can do everything now. We can all put it out there for the world to see. But nine times out of ten, actually 9.99999999999999 times out of ten, you're farting into the wind. And it means absolutely nothing. Well, yeah.

I mean, yeah, everybody is a media creator now. That's a given that's been that way for a while. And it's going to get worse. You know, there's no two ways about it. Everybody's going to want to try it. Yeah. Differentiating yourself from the masses is where it really comes down to where the rubber meets the road. And also, you know, a lot of people are just doing it for fun.

They've got day jobs. But they do want to have a show on the side because it is fun. You know, yeah, you are not going to be the next Adam Carolla unless you spend 20 years learning your craft, getting good at it, and building an audience. That's just, that is the reality of it. But I want to point out, you know, this is an article we've linked to probably three or four times now.

It's Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans. And it's a great write-up that if you do want to make, you know, you know, like a cottage industry of being any kind of artist or content creator that, you know, you need those 1,000 true fans to really get behind you and buy everything that you do. And once you hit that tipping point, then you can make a nice living off of it.

Not a great living. You're not going to be buying a Ferrari. But, you know, you can make a living off of it. And I've always stood by this article. And, yeah, we're still trying to find our 1,000 true fans, but we're getting there, you know? Well, I was with you with the 1,000 true fans paradigm when it first came out.

I mean, this article was back in 2008 already. What I think that they – Well, actually, nowadays you need 10,000 true fans because that's the minimum ad buy for a podcast. Well, you need 10,000 true fans, but I think what is left out of this entire concept is the fact that we have actually raised a generation of people that think that you don't have to pay for shit.

And that is ignored by this article. I mean, I guess it's not because he's saying you need fans that will actually purchase everything that you put out. But I think that there has been a massive shift in the way that people approach content, and they don't think that they should have to pay for it. And God bless you people that are giving us money on Patreon because you're the few and the rare.

Because most people just won't. They don't pay for content. And I don't think the 1,000 true fans thing holds up once you start to look through it through that perspective. Yeah, I guess it could use an update based on the changing landscape of how people do pay for content or not pay. Yeah. But, I mean, when you look at the stuff that we get in from Patreon, I put it right back into the ecosystem.

And I think a lot of people are doing that. So I think a lot of us content creators are just going to be basically shoring each other up as we keep going. I was about to say, you know who's paying for content? Content creators. Yeah, exactly. Those are the only people paying for content. We're all just jerking each other around.

Hey, man, if it pays the bills, it pays the bills. What are you going to do? Right. So Rowan from Budapai sent us a really interesting link called The Billionaire's Typewriter by Matthew Butterick. And did you read this article? I did. What did you think?

Oh, let me actually preface that by saying this is an article about medium and how wrong medium is. I have two thoughts that came to mind immediately. It looks like it's on medium. It does. Out of his way to make sure it didn't look like it was on medium.

And he spent about 3,000 words saying what he could have said in one paragraph. Well, no, he's got a couple different points because he's talking about the design aesthetic and minimalism versus other things and all that. But he does get to the point in the middle of it by saying, you know, medium is going to monetize by taking your content, running ads against it, and learning the behaviors of the readers and the writers and selling that information.

And, you know, as we've always said, if you're not paying for it, you're the product. And it's a really good way to back it up. But I'm just glad other people are out there. Yeah, he could have used a few or less words, but a few or less words. That's real good English.

But he backs up everything that we've always said about, you know, when you're posting stuff on somebody else's platform, it's not yours anymore. They're going to make money off it. Whereas if you posted it on your site, you might have the opportunity at some point to make money off of it. But, I mean, yes, the end result is the same, that your stuff is out there, but still you have the opportunity to do it if you so wish.

But, you know, filling somebody else's coffers for the sake of just getting eyeballs is just a no-win for the creator themselves. Yeah, I agree. You know, the combination of things that we have in our intro segment here, and, you know, I'm going to go negative.

Sorry. It's reality. Whatever. No, it's Brian. It's me. Okay. So, thinking about Medium and their business model and how they're screwing writers and the 1,000 true fans thing and the talk that Adam and Dr. Drew had about all this and the life of layoff and all of these things.

You know, there was – the whole idea of the internet was that we were going to get away from this idea of there being this gateway control to basically everything. I mean, media, whatever it is you want, music, you can now do your own music and put it out there yourself and you can find people and you can do your own shows and you can have your own photography business and set up your own website and sell your photos.

All of this stuff worked for a brief and shining moment, but then what happened is some people won and they won an awful lot of money. I'm talking your Jeff Bezos, your Zuckerbergs, your – the Twitter guy, whatever his name is that started Medium.

Evan Williams. Yeah, all these guys used that promise of the internet, crafted something amazing, beat the big players that – or created entire new industries that didn't even exist before, and won the game and got so much money. And you know what they've spent their entire lives doing since then?

Becoming what they hate? Making sure nobody fucking else can do it. Yep. Exactly. Controlling the damn industry. And the promise – that promise of the internet, at least right now, is dead. It really is. You and I both know that. Oh, absolutely. No, no, the internet is not the internet that we had when we started.

And here's the thing, though. It's not coming back. I don't think it is either. No. It's been controlled and it's been – that's that. No, we've hit the – We can etch out a little bit of a living and pay the bills and all that, but that's about it. The big guys that had the chance to win on the internet, they've won already and they're controlling shit.

Well, yeah, I mean it's over. The old days, the promise of democratization of everything, it's done. You know, we're back to the AOLs and the prodigies of the world, the walled gardens. And especially when you look at Facebook now trying to con news organizations into putting their news stories exclusively – or not exclusively, but mostly on Facebook.

It's like – I mean, are you kidding me that they think that they can get away with it? Because at least all the smart people that are left on the internet have come out and said, you are stupid if you even think about taking them up on this offer. So, there are a few people left.

We're getting ahead of ourselves here, there. Okay, okay. We have segments, Jason. Structure! Structure. Okay, moving on. In the news.

Amazon today has decided that they want to go after Dropbox. Okay. Yeah. For $60 a year, you can get unlimited storage in Apple – or I'm sorry, Amazon's cloud. Right. I think cloud, I think Apple. iCloud. No, this is A cloud.

A cloud. A cloud, which – With G cloud and M cloud and D cloud. And, you know, it's like, you know, cloud without all of the integration like, oh, say Dropbox has. But, you know, what they say is unlimited storage, which they don't put a number on, which I never believe.

I would love to have someone just start filling that thing up. Yeah. Yeah. I want Google to buy a $60 account and put their petabyte of data on Amazon's cloud. Yeah. If I were Google or Dropbox, I would just go ahead and buy my $60 account and outsource my entire cloud services to everyone else.

You said unlimited. The problem is they don't have apps for everything. They've got an app for their photo storage that they came out with a while ago, but they don't have anything to, you know, get your documents back or, you know, whatever. So we'll see how this plays out. But I see this being kind of a flash in the pan.

But if you have a Fire Phone, it works perfectly. Well, you know, Amazon has to go into the market because they have to go into every market because they're not just a bookstore anymore. They are trying to compete with the big boys. Well, no, here's the deal. I mean, their compute system is, you know, one of the best in the world. AWS is no joke.

I mean, that is flat out no joke. But, you know, apparently people have moved off of it because they have so much disk space now that they can just sell it for cheap. Yeah. I don't know about that one, but we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. You know, I'm still, I know I'm starting to sound like a Luddite, but it is grumpy old geeks.

I don't like cloud storage. I still use Dropbox. Unfortunately, I had to for work. Well, I use it for collaborative sharing, that sort of thing. But I'm not putting, I don't put my personal data up on the cloud. I just don't. No, as well as you shouldn't. You know, it's all work stuff.

And especially since Condi took over, you know, I don't, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. As we write to each other on Hackpad, which is bought by Dropbox and all this other stuff. But yeah, I would not put like any personal documents up there, anything, because I mean, it's been proven to be insecure.

People can get into it. So, and I don't see how Amazon's going to be any different. Keep it on your, keep it on your, your machine. So when one hacker gets it, only one person has it. Exactly. It's a good attempt anyways. In more A news, this being Apple, you know, Apple bought Beats Music and basically everybody with half a brain knew that they were going to move into streaming with that.

And if you've been in the music industry at all, you know that that is well on its way and they've been working on it for a long time. So they're starting to actually drum up the press machine about it. And of course they've gotten their poster child, Trent Reznor, to redesign the iOS music app. You know, what could go wrong with this?

Trent Reznor probably knows as much about UX as I know about industrial music creation. So, yes, this is exactly, this is, hey, here's the upside. It's not fucking Bono. Okay. That's true. I think you're going to push a button and then all you're going to hear is the sound of a washing machine on the fritz, because that's what Trent Reznor does these days.

I love Trent. I mean, Nine Inch Nails, one of my favorite bands of all time. So it's hard to say too much about this. I'm assuming and hoping that he is just a figurehead and he is not actually doing any design work because last I checked, he spent all of his high school working in a recording studio, cleaning out tape machines, and has not done a full-on design class or learned anything about UI in the interim years.

Yeah, we'll see how this goes. I'm not really, you know, that bullish on this. We'll see. We'll see how it turns out. But I am definitely, maybe they'll just be, you know, instead of a home button, there'll be just like a rotating dead pig's head that you click on. Well, he's moved on from that now.

He does soundtracks and wins Oscars. Yes, yes. I see. I like his soundtracks. I know you say they sound like a broken washing machine, but they're pleasant to listen to while you're working. Let me rephrase that. I like his soundtrack. That's true. Yes, it is. There is definitely only one.

And then we had a report from Wired that longer lasting batteries are almost here. And then in parentheses, really, because we've all heard this story about a gazillion times. Apparently, there has been some sort of breakthrough that a smaller company has developed with batteries. Chances are they're never going to get it to market, but the hope is that somebody else will take this concept and we'll have better batteries.

But we'll see. You know what a better battery would go good in? The camera that you put around your cat's neck that Whiskas from Australia has developed. You know, we're in the middle of the greatest technology revolution that mankind's history has ever seen.

And now we have cat cams. Excellent. That's just what we need. I know. Oh, what are you going to do? I mean, yeah, I you know what my cat did all day when I had cats? They slept. Yeah, that's that's what they do.

Yeah, they're not roaming the yard like, you know, on adventures like you're reading a kid's book. They sleep and they lick their balls. That's what cats do all day. And when you get home, they just ignore you. So if you want to have that on Instagram or catstagram, as they're going to call it. Oh, no.

Maybe somebody is. Well, you know, somebody is going to come out with a new live video app called they might as we'll just switch the name around. They'll call it cat mirror. Oh, well, we'll get to the we'll get to the video apps in a second here. So Facebook had their F8 conference this week. And I actually liked Facebook developers on Facebook because back in the day I was doing a bunch of Facebook development.

So that seemed interesting to me during this entire conference. Every time I looked at Facebook, there was they pop in like the little video clips that they're putting up from the front conference. Right. Every single time it was like how to do security on Facebook. And I just started to laugh and laugh. You know, I know.

Come on. Who the hell do you think you're kidding? No. So they've got messenger as a service. They've got new drones that are bigger than 747s with lasers and all sorts of stuff. And, you know, the Internet of Things was at Parse is now moving into the Internet of Things.

Oh, joy. Yeah, no. Everything about this made me want to go cancel my Facebook account immediately. That's it. It really did. You just do. You do that every other Monday. Well, yeah, but this came out on a Monday. Oh, that's true. The timing was excellent by the Zook.

Yeah. And yeah. And we talked about this briefly before how Facebook may now host news sites content, which everybody agrees is the dumbest idea in the world if you actually make news and want to get it out there. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, it's a smart move for Facebook. And, you know, it depends on how you define news, but certainly this would be great for a lot of the news organizations that got cut out once they started tweaking around with their algorithm. I'm sure that's how it's being sold. And I know that you're saying that, like, nobody in their right mind is going to do this, but I bet you a lot of people are just to make sure that they get published.

There'll be something in the contract that says they're going to push it out to more people than they would otherwise, and that'll be good enough for them. Well, yeah, now that Facebook has their draconian, you know, grip on the news feed and just publish what they think you should see, well, then they think that you should see their partner's news.

Exactly. And another reason why I wanted to quit Facebook, because I don't really want them telling me what I need to see. And it's getting harder and harder to do the view by most recent. And, you know, on the website, it never used to change. On the app, it would change every time you launch.

But now, even on the website, it's reverting to, you know, whatever the hell they think you want to see. Yeah. And I guarantee you, within a year, that button will be gone by view by most recent. It's going to be gone. Okay. So we should all go back to Ella.

Hello. No, I'm just going to, I'm going to, yo, I'm just going to, yo, everything. Okay. Excellent. Then I'll send you a, I'll send you a cash tag. Cash tags. Now, yeah. Square launched cash tags at cash.me. And they're saying this is, you know, an easier way to send cash to people, which is pretty much what Square has been doing the entire time.

This is just kind of almost a rebranding effort, but gives you a short, this is basically putting a short URL on Square. It's cute. It is. It's very cute. And because I do listen to the morning dump with Jordan Cooper, he was making fun of it saying, you know, I want to get the cash tag, go fuck yourself.

Which, you know, if you know anything about the internet at this point, you know that you should never say a domain name before you register it. I've made a very good living by getting domain names by people who talk about them in public before registering them and then selling them back to them. So if you want to send me money, you can go to cash.me slash dollar sign, go fuck yourself, because that is me now.

You let me know if you get a buck. If I do, I would be just amazed, but no. I do have to say something. I mean, I don't mind this idea. It doesn't really bother me. It's clever. Good on them. The thing is, anything that involves money, go to cash.me.com.

I don't like little cutesy animations that involve my money. Yes, and it's just cash.me, not cash.me.com. Oh, sorry. Cash.me. Yeah, little cutesy animations do not give me a sense of, like, security or safety. Well, and they made the worst design mistake here. The site is green.

Everybody that knows color theory knows that blue is the trust color. That's why every bank's website is blue. Come on, people. How can you trust your money to them if they have never even read, you know, just the basic books on design? Seriously. They just read Trent Reznor's book on design.

Pig's head for fun and profit. Exactly. All right. Boeing just patented lasers. A force field made of lasers. This is awesome. Yeah, it's an interesting concept. I, you know, we'll see what it works like in the field, but they're talking about putting it on trucks that already can, like, you know, take care of the shrapnel, but this dissipates the shockwave.

Yeah, it's a method and system for shockwave attenuation via electromagnetic arc. Which is cool, man. It's cool as hell. Yeah, shields up, man. Oh, man. You know what else is not cool, though? Twitter has finally rolled out their quality filters. Okay.

You know, to stop the bullying, the cyberbullying, and the, oh, your song sucks. Yeah. You know, whatever. I mean, the basic thing that Twitter is based on. Yes. Yes. Okay. But you can only get that if you're verified. Of course. And the verification process is a black hole, which I know very well because I had a friend that worked in the verification department a long time ago.

And she's like, yeah, no, I can't verify you because it's just, we can't talk about it. And it's random. You have to be, quote, unquote, somebody, even though a lot of people I know that are verified are just tech douchebags like the rest of us and have no idea why they're verified.

They didn't even want to be verified. Just one day they showed up and the checkmark was there. It's like, okay, I don't get it. No, it's a total black hole. I mean, I've been working for, I guess you would consider, you know, celebrities basically for the last 20 years and not that Twitter's been around for 20 years, but since Twitter came up, it has been the holy grail to try to figure out how the fuck I can get anybody verified.

There's no way to do it. You can write anybody you want. You can know people that are there. Someday you just get an email and all of a sudden you're verified and there's no reason for it. The fact that I had a friend who was in the verification department and doing the verifications and she couldn't tell me how to get past it really kind of says that, yeah, you're never going to get verified.

Yeah. So the quality, I mean, it all starts with a quality filter. This is, I know you love Twitter, but I think this is one of the things that's actually going to start to kill it. Nothing's going to kill it except people walking away from it. But this is just, this is just silly. This is honestly just silly.

It's, it's to stop like entitled celebrities from getting butthurt. That's all it is. They should just call it the butthurt filter. So, and Twitter also this week threw a lifeline to Foursquare, surprisingly. They're going to start using the Foursquare location information when you're tagging tweets with locations.

That's cute. I didn't even know anybody's still on Foursquare. Yeah. What's, what is that? Oh, that's right. It's their swarm now. Foursquare became the, the local business thing because, you know, you'd want to split that into two different apps that people are going to use, right? Uh-huh. Sure. So, yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was buzz for a second, but it's swarm because it was swarm. Yes. Yeah. It was a B as a logo. Tweets and swarms. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that Foursquare is finally doing what we told them to do two years ago and make some deals. It's a bit fucking late. Day late and a dollar short.

So, I'm sure that Twitter got a really good deal on that partnership. Oh, yeah. And it'll be absolutely useless. Yeah. So, have you heard of Amazon Unlocked? I have not. So, it's another thing where you can pay some money and get apps for free. Well, you know, with your subscription, of course.

Okay. So, it's a subscription-based model, much like they're doing for books and they're doing for TV and they're doing for everything else. So, now it's for apps as well. Yeah. The Netflix for paid apps. Again, this only works on what? Fire? Oh, yeah. Something like that. I'm sure it's Android only. Yeah. Android-based app store.

It's just taking more money away from people who build shit. That's all it is. I don't. Well, I mean, I know. I'm turning into you. Jesus Christ. Hey, I know why Amazon and tech companies like this all-in model. Because they get all of the money. Just go ask a musician how this works if you're an app developer.

Exactly. Go talk to any musician you know and ask them how well this is working out for them. Can we talk to Amanda fucking Palmer? She's not even a fucking musician anymore. She's just a fucking personal PR troll. Oh, God. Anyways, I'm not going to talk about her. Yeah.

So, anyways, this I thought really interesting. First off, you and I have talked about how the fact that domain names barely really matter that much anymore because people just type in to Google and you hope for the best result there. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, when they started putting out, you know, just a few new TLDs like .am, FM, TV, me, jpd.me, if you want to go learn more about me.

By the way, speaking of naming domain names that you need to go buy really quick, butthurt.me. Or you can get that or .sucks is coming out, you know. So, let's talk about .sucks. Yeah. So, .sucks and .porn came out, which is, again, we think this is ridiculous.

It's basically a cash cow and everybody's always kind of known that because any brand is going to go in and buy everything. I got in arguments with clients for years because I was like, you're spending more money on domain names than you're paying me. And there's no use in this, in you having all of these things. Well, what if somebody sets up a site that says my brand sucks?

So, what? Who cares? Again, nobody's going to type it in and the SEO on that's going to suck. .sucks. And nobody's going to fucking find the site. And if they do, so what? And worst case scenario, you send them a cease and desist. Big deal. You'll spend less money in the long run to do that. However, because .porn and .sucks came out, the interesting part of this story is that these people then reached out to brands to let them buy the domain names.

Before they were released to the general public, which is fucking bullshit. No, it's called the sunrise period. Every domain that comes on the market has the sunrise period where you can buy things ahead of time for an exorbitant amount of money. Yes, which is bullshit. Why?

If you've got the money. Well, no, I mean, I understand the reasoning for it, but it's not the free and clear and available for everyone internet that I know. Well, it's because it's a business. I know. And somebody already has butthurt.me, by the way. Damn it. Yeah, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? Yeah, I mean, although the cease and desist when it comes to those types of arguments doesn't work because, what was it? 2,600 used to have, I think it was fuckgeneralmotors.com. And they, there was, don't quote me on that one.

It was something similar to that. There was a lawsuit around it and they won. And that's pretty much it. You can still, you can, you can have that. It's free speech. It doesn't, doesn't mean anything. So you can have those domains. But the fact that people are going out and buying them ahead of time, I would just wait till somebody else buys it, put something up and then sue them into oblivion.

Instead of spending the time and the effort to go get the preemptive domains. Well, that's kind of basically what I meant by the cease and desist thing, but you got it. Yeah. So I, yeah, I would do the same thing. I mean, if anybody counseled me about this sort of stuff, I would say, no, don't waste your money buying these things. It's stupid. Speaking of stupid, Meerkat has raised $12 million at a $40 million valuation for a company that's been live for about three weeks.

That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Especially considering for a company that's been live for three weeks and had their legs cut out from under them and are now almost completely useless until they build their own backend system. Yep. Because Periscope is out and it is much better. And Periscope is basically the death knell for Meerkat.

Meerkat will survive for a little bit because of the buzz and the money. I guarantee you within a year, we won't even remember the name. Yep. They're talking about how, oh, there's space in the space for us. No, there's not. And I'm like, no, there's not. There's no space in the space for what is basically Jenny Cam.

Ooh, Jenny Cam. I like Jenny Cam. Well, that's all this is. This is all this is. This is, it's Jenny Cam. It's, it's FaceTime. It is. No, no, no. Periscope is teleportation. Didn't you read the articles? Jesus fuck. They're saying it's teleportation because then you can, you know, you can affect the outcome of celebrities while they're waiting at bars and airports.

Apparently John Hodgman was one of the people that was, was an early adopter and was doing things. Writing on napkins. You can make John Hodgman write on napkins with Periscope. Again, this is brilliant if you're a brand and you got in quick and because you get some attention based on you.

But look, I don't even like FaceTiming people I know. Why am I going to want to watch video from somebody I don't know walking around with their jerky iPhone camera? I know. I did a little bit last night because I went to my buddy Tommy Elsa's show. He did a little music show. So I, I, I periscoped his last song and I'm trying to figure out how to stop the feed.

Right. I inadvertently double tapped it. And all you saw was like my four chins in my unshaven scruff. And I'm like, ah, I dropped the phone. Yes. So, uh, yeah. But anyway, these, these video things, it's going to go the way of Vine. People are going to get bored of it and nobody's going to care.

Honestly, I don't, I just don't see it. I do not see it. It's a gimmick. It's a novelty that everybody's going to use for two weeks and forget about it. Remember slow-mo when slow-mo came out on the iPhone, you saw slow-mo videos everywhere. We even posted one on YouTube or, you know, that, uh, that water resistant paint.

Yes. And we got a lot of views, but now nobody cares because everybody's got slow-mo, you know, when everybody can do it, nobody cares. And that's the way this is going to be. This is a typical shark fin. I think of an entire segment that we're going to see. That's my prediction.

I agree. All right. Now, uh, Disney has, uh, uh, have you been to Disney lately? You're like a Disney fan boy. I would. Yeah. Well, I mean, I grew up three blocks away from it. I had annual passes, uh, you know, every year from 12 to even younger than 12.

Um, you know, I went all the time. I have not gone in ages because it is ridiculously expensive. It's always crowded now. Um, no, I haven't been in a long time. I do like to, I tend to like to go around Christmas time because I like when they do all the, uh, the decorations and things like that, but it's been a long time.

So you haven't tried this new wristband that they've got. I have not, but I, this does make me want to go and give it a shot. This is, uh, this is genius on their part. The Disney magic band. It looks pretty cool. Honestly, it looks like neat. Cause I, I remember going there and just, you know, having to deal with the lines.

And then when I found out that you could pay to get to the front of the line, I'm like, sign me up. I'm in, uh, and I would go on the haunted mansion like four times in a row and just get dirty looks from everybody. As I came out the door and walked back in past the line. Yeah. There are a lot of ways to game your Disney experience, but I like how they did this.

This is, this is the kind of project that I wish I would have known about. They must've started working on it probably three or four years ago. And I would have loved to have been involved with, this is a beautiful thing. I love the whole design aspect that they use. The fact that you can, you know, it encodes it with all your information.

People reach you by name. You know, the characters will say your kid's name when you walk up to them. Cause they'll know. I mean, there's some, you know, privacy issues with that, but it's just in Disneyland and it's Disney. It's fine. Yeah. This is a non-invasive, invasive technology. Exactly. That's exactly what it is, Jason.

Well done. Thank you. I am such a fan of this. I want to go and try it out. I really do because it just looks neat. You know, I don't have kids. I don't have friends. So I'd be walking around. They'd be like, hello, party of one. What would you like for dinner? Hello, Jason. Would you like a sad hamburger?

Yes. Would you like a sandwich? What I really love about this is that they decided to basically go their own way. And, you know, they could have just as easily made this nap that worked on Android or your iPhone or whatever, but they're trying to control the experience. They're trying to brand the experience.

It's Disney. That's their that's their bread and butter. Exactly. So this is this is genius. Well, well done, Disney. And I'm definitely going to have to go check this out. No, definitely. And the nice thing about it, it is really well designed. It looks nice. You know, it's not just better than the damn Apple phone or Apple watch looks.

Yeah, no, it is very cool. I definitely can't wait to try this out. Yeah, I agree. Netflix for magazines. Have you heard of this one? Yeah. Well, magazines are dead anyways and whatever. No.

Yeah. Magaziner and Readly and a couple of other these. This is an article that I found on PBS and it's Netflix for magazine services explain why they're not doomed. Yeah. Sorry. Was there an explanation? You know, I didn't even have to read it because I know in my heart of hearts that they're doomed.

Nobody. Yeah. Nobody cares about magazines anymore. It's it's a dead medium. It honestly is. Really. Nobody does care about magazines anymore. The only time that they do care about magazines are like when you're about to board a plane and you want you actually want the physical thing just to look through anyways, or maybe if you're on the crapper.

But that's changed now because now you can use your iPad or your Kindle on takeoff, you know, in the old days when you couldn't couldn't actually read the devices that you had on your phone or play Angry Birds or whatever. You know, there was a case for magazine. That was the last case for magazines. And now, no, nobody, nobody cares at all.

So it's it's it's a sad state of affairs. But, you know, they kind of did the same mistake that the music industry did to a certain extent. I mean, Apple had a really good product. Their their iBooks was a great model that could have worked really, really well for magazines.

In terms of subscription and digital reading. But instead, you know, they should have just all signed a deal with Apple and pushed everybody there instead of all the over these different different companies and basically screwed the industry. Well, and also they all made mistakes at the beginning. Look at Wired's magazine.

Remember when that came out? That was every every time. Yeah. I mean, the design was nice, but the UX was terrible. You had to know that you had to scroll down or sideways. It was I made several blog posts about how terrible the UI was. And every time a new episode came or issue came episode issue came out, it was a 700 megabyte download.

I'm like, why? Oh, all the crappy video and in tchotchkes you have in there. Can I just get like, you know, a PDF? Oh, I want a PDF. I don't need to see the dinosaurs animated at the header of an article. I mean, it was cute for a one-off, but it reminded me of CD-ROMs from the 90s.

And I'm like, you're going backwards, guys. You're completely going backwards. Yeah, exactly. The media should have been left online. And if you wanted to actually read that part of it, then it would reach out and download it, blah, blah, blah. They made a ton of mistakes. Yeah. Speaking of mistakes, Brian, you're a fan of Slate.

I know you are. Yes, I am. And I found an article on Slate this week called Mesmerizing Photos of People Lying in a Week's Worth of Their Trash. And you always say that Slate's about journalism. Explain to me this one, please. Sure. No problem. I can explain this very simply. There are a lot of really crappy articles on Slate.

Excellent. Okay. Those are the ones that get the clicks that pay for the good journalism. This is why Slate is still in business and GigaOM isn't. Glad we cleared that one up. How's my explanation, Jason? Your explanation was perfect. I was expecting you to do some kind of, oh, you know, just explaining for them.

Magasplaining. No, no, no. The entire explanation is a lot of people probably clicked on this and looked at it. And if anything, I'd find this shitty photography. So let's get back to talking about my photography is dead. Oh, God. It was terrible. This is absolutely horrible. But no, no. This is a total clickbait article that's paying the bills.

Oh, God. So speaking of reading things, have you heard of Clean Reader? I had not heard of Clean Reader until you put it in the show notes, and then I looked at it, and then I almost, I just started walking around my house screaming curse words. Yes. So Clean Reader is an e-book store where you can buy books, and then they will take out all the swear words.

Yeah. Now, there's a great, there's a couple of great articles that we're going to have in the show notes. But I found out about this from Charlie Strauss, the guy who writes the, was it the Laundry Files? Right. Yeah, yeah. Great writer, love his books, we've covered his books, but he's just, he says fuck a lot in his books, and he's like, no, this is not cool.

You cannot take out my writing and change it because you think you can. Well, no, you shouldn't be able to, and it's a flawed concept to begin with, because generally, I mean, last time I checked when Harry Potter is talking, you know, in the first book when he's talking to the five-year-olds, he doesn't drop a bunch of F-bombs.

You know why? Because that's written for children, you know, who uses F-bombs? People who are writing things for adults in context, and there's a reason for it. So their tagline, read books, not profanity, fuck you. Exactly. And Charlie writes, mangling an author's text is a clear violation of the author's moral rights, an element of copyright, which is very weak in the United States and very strong elsewhere.

And, you know, he goes through and incites a lot of legalese in his article, and it's really well-written, and there's a lot of articles on this, primarily from writers, and they're pissed off. They are pissed off.

Look, they should be. I mean, there's a bigger issue in this, in that the problem with, this is a big part of what San Francisco wants to do to the world. They want to be able to allow you to create your own bubble where you only see, well, frankly, what they want you to see, but what you think you want to see.

There's a reason that I read Fox News. What? I read things that I disagree with to see other viewpoints. I want to see what other people think. I do not want to create this homogenized existence around me that is only things I'm comfortable with and only things I agree with.

I mean, in a perfect world, it would go well beyond clean reader. You know, the next iteration of Google Glass, when I wear it and I go to Easter dinner with my family, it's going to replace my uncle that is, frankly, quite racist. And when I ask him to pass me the broccoli, instead of seeing my uncle, I'm going to see John Oliver sitting across from me because I want that perfect world in which I agree with.

No, that's not how the world works. You need to see all these things. Just because you don't like it, tough shit. Yeah, I was reading Pando Daily for the same thing for a while, but yeah, I don't. I was just on their site trying to figure out if they are actually from San Francisco, because this this seems like a Bible Belt product, but it does.

But I can't. They their contact info has no info whatsoever on where they're located. Jesus Valley. The hell is Jesus Valley? I don't know. Now, I'm going to have to give major props to Google this week.

Yes, this made me this made me like Google for once. So apparently somebody was asking them about if they were going to go take YouTube into like the Twitch arena, like, you know, doing video game.

Yeah, live streaming video games because we're fucking dead as a society. And they basically sent the the guy who was writing the article an animated gif of a little girl shaking her head going, no. And, you know, and that was the official response.

It turns out. And this article, just just go look at the article because we can't explain it well enough because you have to see all the animated gifs. And Google's response to the response was another animated gif that is just beautiful. It was very, very funny.

No, this whole this whole thing, like, really just I'm like, you know, Google, you're a bunch of evil money grubbing bastards. But today you made me smile. So thank you. Security. We have an exclusive today.

Well, no, it's not really an exclusive. It's just break. It's just breaking news. It's on the Internet. It can hardly be exclusive. Nothing is exclusive anymore. Well, actually, Facebook will probably be able to start to say they have exclusive news pretty soon. That is true. I didn't even think about that. So firstlook.org, one of our favorite places to go find depressing news about how we're all screwed.

The TSA's secret behavior checklist to spot terrorists has been released. This is making the rounds today, so I wanted to make sure we got it in. But when you go to fly and you're standing in line, you know, to get your, you know, your package check and your shoe removal and all that stuff.

Do you ever yawn? Yes. Do you ever like clear your throat? Yeah. Do you ever stare at any of the other people because they're like, you know, bizarre looking or just inordinately large humans like there tend to be stupid? And I'm like, I can't believe I'm stuck behind this person.

Has he never flown before? Have you ever gazed at your shoes while you're waiting? Yes. You are a terrorist, sir, and you will have, have your day ruined by the TSA. Yeah. This checklist is ridiculous. It means absolutely nothing. Yes. The signs you might be a terrorist checklist.

I'm not going to read the whole thing because it would take a little while, but you're not allowed to wear improper attire for the location ever because, you know, because I'm in Chicago and when I'm flying to Los Angeles, I don't want to have my coat. So guess what I'll do? I'll freeze my ass off from the car, you know, to the terminal because I don't need a coat when I go to Los Angeles or vice versa.

I'll be wearing, you know, I'll be boarding the plane in Los Angeles, but I know I'm going to end up in, you know, Toronto. It's just going to be cold. So I have my leather jacket with me. Exactly. This is this whole thing. Rubbing or wringing of hands. This is a weird one, but no, just that's me putting on my antibacterial lotion because I'm around the scum of humanity when I have to fly like tomorrow morning.

This is a very, it's a strange checklist. It's obviously trying to, you know, basically say we're not profiling except for one of them. Face pale from recent shaving of beard. Now I would read that one as profiling. That is definitely profiling.

God forbid anybody gets some rub on tan. Look, again, I, I, I, I agree with certain people that are not very popular in the world that there's nothing wrong with profiling. No, I, I, I don't think so. I mean, I go with the Israelis.

They have figured it out. Let's use their checklist and God forbid this is their checklist. No, God, that is not their checklist. They have figured out how to do it well because they are like on the front lines. So I don't know. This is just, it's silly. Yeah, it is. Go read it.

You know what else is silly? Radio shack. We've talked about them going under and now they're like trying to sell all the data that they got when you tried to buy a pack of batteries and you needed to give them your, your home address, your dick size and where your mother grew up in Lithuania.

I have to say proudly that, I mean, granted, it's even kind of crazy to say that you ever did shop at radio shack, but believe it or not, kitties back in the day, we did go there quite often because they had a lot of stuff that we needed and they were right on the corner. I am proud to say that I fought with them every single time about that.

Never gave them my data. I never gave him my real address. So I never gave him any. I was like, I don't need to give this to you. Yeah. Yeah. And there are some places still that do that, like micro center. When I go there, they're like email address. No, a home address. No. It's like, whatever. I'm like, I'm buying a USB drive.

Why do you need to know where I live? Yeah. So, I mean, the problem with this story is that of course that their radio shacks privacy policy was that they will never sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone at any time, except for the fact that they now need to make some money because they're going out of business.

So, I mean, does it, yeah. Does it really count it? I mean, if they're selling the company assets, does it really count as selling the data while they're still a company? Is there a loophole there that they can get around by saying we're no longer a company, so we're not selling it. This is just a fire sale and to the highest bidder goes the spoils.

Ah, who knows? This is a thing for lawyers to figure out. And that's what's going to happen because they're getting sued to hell and back. Yeah. Which is like, how do you sue a company that's going out of business? Exactly. That's like why the IRS isn't coming after me, because you can't get blood from a stone. Exactly.

Speaking of getting bodily fluids from somebody, Tinder, Tinder's back in the news. Okay. There was a genius hack that this guy from California made that basically had dudes chatting up each other on Tinder. That's awesome.

It's so awesome. And made them think that, you know, each other were of the opposite sex when they're not. And it's like, you know, don't hack me, bro. Don't hack me, bro. I just, again, maybe I'm older. Maybe I'm just a kinder, gentler person than the average bro.

But I can't even imagine having a chat with someone and not knowing it was another dude as opposed to a woman. Maybe they just don't really talk to a lot of real women. Or maybe Tinder is just this cesspool of wonderful, sexy humanity. And I would have been so thrilled had it been out 10 years ago when I was single.

No, I know. But the screen grabs in this are awesome. He's like, I'm a male, a man. I have a penis, not a vagina. I'm confused by what you think right now. Maybe it's a language misunderstanding. That is awesome. There's so much goodness in this article.

It's from The Verge. They've actually been knocking it out of the park recently. It's kind of scary. It's been some good journalism. So expect some articles about photos of people in trash soon, Jason, so they can stay around. Oh, Jesus Christ. Now, we've talked about air-gapped computers before.

And we've talked about some of the crazy things people can do using the speakers to send data to air-gapped computers. Yep. And while we thought they were cool, it was just like, oh, man, nothing is secure. Well, it's getting worse. Apparently, computers can now transmit and get data from other computers by just using the heat signature if they're next to each other.

That's insane. It is ridiculously insane. And if you notice, my comment was, ah, fuck, I give up. Yeah. I give up. Basically. Pretty much. Yeah. No, this is a proof of concept. It's very interesting. Very slow delivery of data.

But it deals with trying to hack the heat sensors in the machines, like the thermal channels and stuff like that. It's very, very interesting as a proof of concept. But please, stop. Just stop. Yeah.

Can we have any kind of security anymore? I don't think so. No. No, we really can't. So that leads me to the article that I saw. This is on the Daily Dot, which is pretty good, by a woman named Sarah Merck. And she talks about how social media makes us feel less upset about surveillance.

And a lot of the, I mean, it's a good read. It's nothing that we haven't talked about about seven gazillion times. And it's, but it's worth reading if you think about this stuff. And it's, it's definitely a perfect world. It's like, oh, if only this could be better, but it's not. So the thing that I found most interesting is, that sums up, that should be our new tagline for the show.

Actually, that should be our title. If only things were better, but they're not. I hadn't heard of this program called Ghostery, which she used and installed. And basically it's a, it's a nice little plugin for your browser. Every single website you go to, a little window will pop up and tell you the names of all the companies that are requesting your info from every site that you go to.

Well, you have heard of this before, but you never listened to our show because I reviewed it probably episode like six or seven. We were drinking back in those episodes. Oh shit. That's right. Okay. Yeah, no, I tried it. And there were a couple of them that we did. We did a roundup of all of the privacy plugins.

One show like, wait, we should do it. We should do an update on that. We probably should. Yeah. It was a good one. I mean, right now I'm just using ad block, but I gave up on it because it's, it got depressing to see how many companies and how many cookies were being set every page I went to. Yeah. And there was some that it would actually break the rendering engine on the, the plugin in Chrome because it was so long.

Right. Right. That's funny. That's depressing, but funny. So yeah, that article was basically the, the world could be a better place. Then I ran into an article on wired, which is, uh, did you read this one, Jason? Uh, no, I, it's called the privacy revolt.

The growing demand for privacy as a service. Yes. In which they posit that people are getting so fed up that there is now a market for people to do, uh, basically privacy, privacy aware websites. And I say, bull shit. You know why I say bullshit wired.

You know why I say this is a complete and utter complete bullshit article. And it's not true because for two years, we've been doing this damn podcast. We are the security segment has been us screaming and railing at the world. And we know for a fact that absolutely none of our friends are paying any fucking attention or listening.

Absolutely not. And I, just to reiterate, I put the, the link to, uh, Steve Rombaum's privacy is dead. Get over it. Uh, talk from hope again in the show notes, go watch it. There's nothing you can do, but anyway, nobody cares. That's the thing that nobody cares.

Well, according to wired, people are starting to get fed up and that there is a market for this PPAS privacy as a service PPAS pass as in everybody that we know is going to pass on this. Oh my God.

And speaking of, you know, dumb privacy, Google glass apparently is not dead. They're just trying to make it better for the masses. Right. Or the glasses, the glass holes will be coming back again. I a hundred percent believe that it's not dead and that they're still working on it.

I just don't think, I mean, they're waiting to see how the watch goes. There could be a complete wearable market. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's under the nest, uh, banner now in the Google labs, but we'll see what comes out of it. I mean, the, the, honestly, the only way this ever gets traction is if they make it look like normal glasses, you cannot have that, that Geordi LaForge looking thing on your head.

You can't because everybody will know it. They, they need to make Google glass look like regular glasses. And then people like me who wear regular glasses will just get denied service everywhere because they don't know. You can't tell. Yeah. I agree. We're fucked.

Mm-hmm.

Comment of the week. I'd like to thank our newest Patreon supporters. They all joined up in the last week. So, uh, thank you very much to Jeff Clark. Rohan from Budaphy. Thank you very much. Uh, Mike Davis and Wendy Marvel also joined us on Patreon. So thank you very much.

And, uh, if you are one of our Patreon supporters, uh, you'll notice that we have actually started posting things there pretty regularly, including Jason's poll to make, because I complained because we did the two hour episode last week. Yes. You were very butthurt by our, by our, uh, hour and 50 minute episode.

Okay. So we got a, uh, a story link from which one is this one? This is from Gabriel on our website. Uh, it's a link to a story from allcrypt.com, which was apparently like a Bitcoin exchange. And they did a couple other different types of coin exchanges, Dogecoin and some other crappy ones.

Um, it's basically an article describing their hack and how they got hacked. And guess, guess what the, the front door was to their hack. Uh, WordPress WordPress. That's right. So, uh, I'm just going to read a little excerpt here.

The marketing director saw this email come in and forwarded to myself and another team member. Okay. The email that came in was a password reset email from WordPress to myself and another team member, and this is in parentheses, a technical lead slash temporary assistant support staff.

I'm sorry, but a technical lead should not be temporary assistant support staff. Uh, there's your problem right there. People, uh, letting us know what happened and that he did not request the password reset. Here's the, here's the catch. The technical lead slash temporary assistant support staff.

His email is the one that got hacked. So when the marketing director sent the email to the technical lead slash temporary assistant support staff, the hacker then had the password reset link and then destroyed their system, stole all their Bitcoin and ran them into the ground.

Yep. And I love this thing because at the very end of it, there's a, a, a list of what we could have done wrong. Uh, let me pull this up here. Cause there's one in particular there. He does a Q and a at the end. He's like, uh, you morons.

You had a WordPress site that allowed uploading of new files answer. It was the marketing director's account. Wait beings. Oh yeah. This is just bad grammar. Beings that he was constantly updating files. It was necessary for his account to have the ability to upload new files.

Yeah. Right there. That, that answers the entire question of why their site got hacked because the upload directory, if you don't protect that using something like security or any of the gazillion of security plugins right there that disallow execution of PHP scripts in the upload directory, you're an idiot because what happens is this guy put up basically a shell script PHP, uh, file that gave him access to the system.

Now it's a very simple HT access that you can put in your uploads directory that denies execution of any PHP script. This is where they went wrong and they are in fact morons. Yeah. So there, uh, I, thank you very much, uh, Gabriel for the, for the story.

It, it really made me chuckle because these guys are like, so, you know, indignant that everybody thinks that, you know, Oh, whatever. These guys were morons and I would never have trusted them with my Bitcoin anyway. And they were going under because they didn't have any volume. I wonder why you didn't have any volume because your security sucked.

Yeah. And it's Bitcoin still a thing. Apparently if you're a thief. Yeah. If you're a thief, it seems to be, it's, it just didn't make it as, as any kind of alternative currency. Everybody I know has liquidated their Bitcoin long ago. Yeah. I'm glad I never bought in on that. I was close.

I was close. Yeah. I was too. I wanted to try it out, but, um, everybody I know as soon as Kevin Rose liquidated his, his holdings, I'm like, okay, it's not a thing anymore. All right. Okay. And then we also got another, uh, message via the website. Uh, this is from Greg says, hello, grumps.

Hi, I'm a long time listener who has even provided you some funds in the pre-Patreon days. We appreciate that very much. Uh, but I'm not writing to complain about not being grandfathered into the premium, gumpy, grumpy, dot, dot, dot. But I digress. Uh, we have a note here, Jason. Yeah. So I put notes here about Patreon lifted from intro, which means.

I had a thing that I wanted to talk about, about Patreon in the beginning of the show, because now that we're using it, I've found like a lot of flaws in the system for us. Yeah. Mainly we can't take one time donations and we cannot grandfather in people who have donated before to get them into the system so they can see all the cool stuff.

There's no way to override that. And, you know, from Patreon side, I kind of understand that, but from a creator side, it's a pain in the ass because everybody that's given us money over the years. Through PayPal, I want them to be in here. I want them to see all the stuff we're doing, but there's, and, you know, I apologize for this.

There's just no way we can do it. We don't have the, the, the technical, you know, things that Patreon would give us. Building Patreon costs them a lot of money. That's a lot of time and effort and development. Um, and that went into it and to be able to make their money back from their investment, it kind of has to be a one size fits all deal.

So we don't get a lot of these options that we would have liked to have. Um, it's also just 20 bucks. Let me, let me give you 20 bucks and, and have the advanced features where I can bring in, you know, other people. Cause I, I can guarantee that everybody that is on Patreon right now did not start creating content.

When Patreon launched, almost everybody that's been on there has been doing this for a long time. And we have, we have a following. Here's the other reality, Jason. There's a Patreon may not be the end real and end story for us that at Patreon, we could something else could launch in a couple of months from now that everybody's switching to, and that is better service for us.

And then we move again. This is an ongoing, but it's called the internet. I mean, we tried it with tugboat and tugboat didn't work. And now we're, we're at Patreon, so yeah. Okay. Anyway, continuing on, Greg wrote us a very long email and I'm going to give you the TLDR version of this.

Okay. Um, Greg writes a very long rant about a major pet peeve of his about never ending subscriptions, which gets back to the Patreon thing. Um, his wife who has master's degrees in history and education got caught up in a bunch of subscription schemes and we'll let Greg describe it.

Would you like to take Greg? I will be the voice of Greg. You can be the voice of Greg. When I retired about three years ago, I started paying the bills and noticed a lot of monthly and quarterly charges on the credit card amounting to over $1,200 per year. Follow up revealed that these were for various purchases. My wife made over the years for which she had inadvertently committed to subscriptions.

She's a smart woman, but no match for the online vultures whose business plan apparently includes duping people into eternal commitments. Um, yeah, no, now, now, hold on. So Greg, I'm assuming that you put your porn subscriptions on a completely different card. Oh, porn subscriptions.

I can talk to you for days. This is a tale as old as time. I mean, this is a Columbia house records. This is what this is going back to. This is the, that was the model back then. It was to get people to pay. And the hope is that they forget because then you just keep rolling in the money without actually having to provide the product.

It's a, it's a good way to go. I agree with you that I find it horrible, but it is also the standard. Now it is what it is. It's the entire internet has moved to this model. The music industry is about a subscription model. They are pushing books as a subscription model.

We just talked about magazines and apps as a subscription model. I don't, you know, I'm not a fan either, but. Yeah. The people that really piss me off are the ones that make it difficult to actually cancel. Yes. Now I'm going to talk about that in a second.

Like those aforementioned porn sites. Yeah. I'll talk about the porn sites in a second because those people are the, are the devil. But remember free credit report.com with the pirates in the band, they got, they got nailed by the FTC or the subscription model that your free credit report cost, you know, it's like, okay, by signing up for a free credit report, you are now in our credit protection program in very small print and they got nailed.

And I think there are a lot of consumer protections out there now trying to go after people like this. So it's getting better because in the old days it was the wild west. I worked at, I, I actually, I didn't work at this company. I had a friend that worked at this company called BabeNet. Okay.

Now this is going to be a little graphic. I can't even kick you. No, you can't. I'm just telling the truth. I'm saying it like it is. There was a, a site that they had, I think it was a girls with animals.com or like a barnyard porn.com where they, they implied in the sales pitch that the women inside would be having sex with animals.

Okay. Okay. You're already, you're already screwed there if you're looking at it. So when somebody signed up, they went inside and it was literally naked girls hugging cows. That was it. Okay. And hugging pigs and llamas and everything.

It was, it was, it was still naked women, but they're basically hanging out at the barnyard. They're in a petting zoo. They're naked women in a petting zoo. Let's move on to the point, not the animals. Okay. I was just, I'm just trying to paint the picture. Less painting, more point. So when, when somebody got inside and they realized that they did not get what they thought they were paying for, the people at BabeNet, the support team would say, now I have to put down a reason why you're canceling your account for the credit card company.

So you would like me to put down on your credit card statement that you are canceling your account because the women were not having sex with animals. Genius. Genius, evil bastards. They are fortunately out of business now and probably in jail or hell, but that's like the kind of things that people used to stoop to.

So I think in the, in, if you're looking at the long run, we're doing much better nowadays. Yeah, no, I agree. And, but wow. Yeah. Uh, look, it, it, it, it's, it's what we have collectively as a society said that we're going to do online in terms of payments.

It is subscription models. Even I can't even have Photoshop without a subscription anymore. Well, you can, but we won't go into that. But you have to run an older version and yeah, anyways, you can do that, but it is kind of the way that we've gone. And, uh, you know, as far as I can tell, at least for people doing what we do, uh, the subscription model makes sense.

We, we, there is no way for us to charge you per episode. That is not possible through iTunes. We can, it actually is through Patreon, but we don't want to do that. We want just a very easy thing, you know? Yes, it is through Patreon, but we are producing, you know, four bits of content every month and we would love it to get, you know, we like the idea of getting paid for what we do every single month monthly.

Uh, yeah, I mean, it still doesn't go into what Greg was talking about with the perennial thing. And the thing with Patreon is they do send you a statement saying we're going to charge you and all that. So that's not, that's not really the point of Greg's thing. He was just, you know, pissed off that there are still these vultures out there who are preying on people with these uncancellable subscriptions and very under the radar.

And one of my points was, I also know another company that will make their, uh, receipt emails look like spam. So Google flags them as spam so they can legally say that we send you a receipt every month, even though it is getting shoved into your spam filter.

So if, if the court said, well, why aren't you sending receipts? They're like, we are, it's just, it's flagged by spam. We have no control over that. While on the back end, they're actually putting in tons of keywords to make them look like spam. That's how evil people are out there.

So why don't you wrap it up with what, uh, Greg says at the end. Okay. I really wrote to let you know that I think you guys do a fantastic job. The new equipment sounds great. And I think you have the levels nailed. Jason, you put that in yourself, didn't you? No, no, no. Okay. I haven't heard of barking dog in quite a while. I've been concerned that Brian may pack it in now that he has the corporate job to keep him busy.

Uh, no, I'm not packing it in anytime soon. Although your continued donations to Patreon make me feel like I should just keep doing it forever. Indeed. A dollar, a dollar a month. That's like 20 cents a show. Yeah. And you know, if you don't want to do the monthly thing, we do just accept the standard PayPal donations off of our website.

Again, it's one of those things where, uh, you know, we're using the Patreon system to provide exclusive content and there's really no way that we can bring in people that just send us the one-time donations. I mean, we could start setting it. We could go to great lengths to do things like setting up special mailing lists that then get that content out to people who have only paid us through PayPal.

But the reality is we're basically just getting enough money to pay our bills to produce this at this point. So it's a tough thing. But anyway, um, and if you, if you don't want to give us any money, that's fine. We just appreciate that you listened to the show. Tell a friend if you like the show.

And also if you can go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating. And, and if you feel generous, give us a review. But yeah, don't feel the need to, to, to donate. We don't want to pressure anybody, but anyway, Greg, that's why we talk about nature on half the time on our episodes now.

Yeah. And Greg, thank you, Greg. Thank you for the email. And it was fun to talk about the old days and barnyard porn. Yes. Thank you very much. And I a hundred percent agree with Jason. We, by no means need or want your money. Well, yes we do. But, uh, the biggest thing and the number one thing that we want you guys to do for us is to tell a friend that you think would like it because that matters more than anything else.

At the library. So after reading the book, the, the follow-up, the, the mentats of Dune by, by the sun and complaining about how much I don't like it. Uh, the reason I don't have a book for this week is because I said, fuck it.

I'm going back and reading the original. So I picked up Dune. It is 842 pages. So maybe next week. Well, we already know what Dune's like, so you don't even have to review that one. Okay. Well then I better pick up a second book and try to read things concurrently. Otherwise I'm not going to have anything for at the library for a while.

So I've been, I've been, um, threatening to read data in Goliath, the hidden battles to collect your data and control your world by Bruce Schneier for three weeks. Now I am 25% through it. Um, here's the deal though.

Hmm. Everything in the book at this point, we have said very succinctly and exactly like he says it in the book on this show. So if you would like to go back and, and get a primer on everything we've talked about, big data security, how we're screwed, why we're screwed, who's controlling us, get this book because it is, it's fantastic so far.

I love it. But the thing is, it's like, I'm rereading show notes for grumpy old geeks and you know, it's, it's hard to get through, but it's, it's fantastic. It, it, it, it really backs up everything we've said. And the fact that Bruce Schneier wrote it, I feel vindicated.

I feel absolutely vindicated by the fact that, you know, this is the book that he wrote and this book, Edward Snowden actually says is a great book. All right. So yeah, check it out. Honestly, I'm, I'm waiting to get to the, I'm not waiting to get to the rest of it.

I'm trying to get to the rest of it, but I'm waiting to find out like what his tips are at the end. And if there are any like new tips that we haven't said, I will definitely be bringing them to the show because I'm, I'm hoping as Bruce Schneier, man, he, he knows his stuff, but even he says, it's like, it's, it's futile, like trying to remain anonymous anymore is futile.

You cannot do it. Yeah. And we have a, we have an excerpt, a link in the show notes about this. There was an excerpt that he posted on slate, which I read. I haven't, I haven't read the book yet, but the excerpt was really good. And it did talk about some of the stuff that, that maybe we hadn't thought of some interesting ways to basically obfuscate yourself.

Yeah. And you know, by searching for random people on Facebook to clear out their listings and just throw monkeys in the wrenches and things like that, but it's a, it's yeah, yeah, it's right on. Yeah. You know what? I actually, just a quick, quick aside. I talked to Dr. Teeter who was, you know, on the show before, and we talked about like, you know, filling the stream with noise and disinformation and, you know, just massive amounts of disinformation.

And the problem with that is they can, they can filter so well now that they can probably filter out the noise. Yeah. Plus it's also, it becomes almost a full-time job. It does. It does. I mean, we can write a lot of scripts. scripts to do things like that, but still it's like, what's the point?

I mean, honestly, we are not spies and granted that, that I'm kicking myself right now for saying that, because that comes back to the, if you don't have any big right now, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Every time we talk about this, you end up accidentally making my point.

Fuck you. God damn it. Ah, you asshole. I love this segment because of this. This is the best. Oh, God damn it. I am going to record that little bit and make it my answering machine message. There's Jason agreeing with me by telling me I'm fucking wrong again.

Oh, God damn it. I hate when you do that. So I didn't do anything, man. I'm just sitting here. Okay. I'm going to talk about a book next by, well, that would be good since we're at the library. Yes, but is it a book or is it an audio book?

See? Well, it's actually a Kindle book. You cannot buy it in physical format. It's called The Pact by Robert Patrick Lewis, who is an ex-Green Beret, basically an ex-Green Beret medical guy. And I learned about this guy on Man School with Caleb Bacon, you know, with the worst theme show ever.

And I'm going to have to make fun of Caleb right now because I've been writing him all week to update his damn show notes, so I can't link directly to this. So you're going to have to go to iTunes or whatever your podcatcher is and subscribe to Man School Show and listen to the latest episode.

I think it's 84 with Robert Patrick Lewis. And the book, The Pact, comes from, it's fiction. It is total fiction and it reminds me almost of Empire by Orson Scott, creepy guy. But what it is, is he's ex-military and he watches the global news a lot and he makes a lot of good points that someday we're probably going to get invaded.

And a lot of this stuff comes from guys that come back from war who have seen what war does to the native populations and they get freaked out when they think about it happening here in the U.S. Right. And it's terrible. But his story is kind of like a militarist, survivalist kind of story that's really well written, but it's part one of three and the other two parts aren't out yet.

But I loved it. I really loved it. There's some really weird shit about Freemasons in there, but, you know, I give these guys a little credit because once you've been to war and you've done the things they've done, you know what? Believe in what you want to believe because you've seen some stuff that I never, ever want to see.

But I love this book. I really actually enjoyed it quite a bit and I can't wait for the next episodes. So you're saying it sounds a lot like Red Dawn? Oh, no, it is. He even says it. It's like Red Dawn meets. Oh, geez. I can't even remember what the other one was, but it's, it's, it's nuts.

Wolverines! I can't believe we haven't done that on Does It Have Legs Yet? Anyway, check out The Pact if you're into survivalist military stuff. And definitely check out Man School with Caleb Bacon. He's a buddy of mine and I love his show.

Fuck a doodle do. Jeremy Clarkson has been fired from Top Gear. For someone that gives absolutely no craps whatsoever about cars, then that would be me. This is beyond sad news.

I've come to love Top Gear. I'm sad that I only started watching it basically about a year ago. On the plus side, I have many, many, many old episodes that I can go back and watch now. I love the show. I love the three of them. Clarkson is a bumbling idiot. Unfortunately, as my wife keeps pointing out and she is correct about this, there is only one person to blame.

It is Clarkson. He brought this upon himself. But, uh... Well, I have a different take on that, but I, I am very jealous of you that you've only started watching this a year ago. Because I've been watching this for probably seven or eight years, and it is one of my favorite shows.

I never miss an episode, and I don't care about cars at all. That's not what the show is about. The show is about the dynamic between the three of them. And when they, when they got James May outside of his house after the news came out, he's like, there's a, there's a magic between the three of us that you can't explain.

And he said, even though Jeremy Clarkson's a knob, I love working with him. So, let's hope they stay together. You really needn't worry, because both May and Richard Hammond have said that they will not be renewing their contracts when they expire in March. And there is no station in the world that will not pick up the three of them and pay them oodles of cash to do it.

You're missing me right now doing the, the, the touchdown dance. Honestly, my, my arms are in the air. That's awesome. I didn't know that. I mean, IT, yeah, yeah, they're, they're, they're all out. They're all out together. Oh, God. Oh, that makes my day. They'll get picked up instantly. It could be ITV over there.

It could be, you know, they're going to get picked up. It's not an issue. What did I say in your Facebook comment? I'm like, if, if Netflix, Amazon, and HBO do not have representatives on a plane right now with bags of all the monies in the world to give these guys, they're idiots.

Because they have a, they have an audience of 350 million people. Yes. I have no doubt that the three of them will be together doing another show shortly. Oh my God. You made my day. Oh God. I can relax now. Okay. Well, good. Okay. So let's bring up more old stuff.

Serial. I finally binge listened to the whole damn thing. I went out to Palm Springs over the last weekend. So that's about two hours driving each way here. I ended up listening to all 12 episodes. Super NPR, super engrossing, super interesting. I'm glad I listened to it, but it's already kind of fading and, you know, you get obsessed with it really quickly.

I liked the fact that I binge watched it. I would have hated listening to this as a serial episode. They should just call it binge next season. Well, you didn't binge watch it, you binge listened, but honestly, I thought it was better listening. It was more engrossing knowing that it was coming out and I would wake up at five in the morning, have my phone next to me and hit play and leave it on my pillow because it was so like, you know, you got so engrossed in it.

But when you're binging that, that's kind of the story that you want to wait for. You want to savor it. And then, and then it just, you know, gave you the biggest letdown of all times, which was funny because it was actually mentioned on two broke girls this week as, as being one of the biggest letdown endings of all time.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I was saying that about the show back when you were first listening to it and I wasn't, I was like, there is no way that this is going to end satisfactorily for listeners. It's going to fucking piss people off. And yeah, when I got to the last episode, I was like, yep, saw that coming. Yep, absolutely. And it'll be interesting how they do season two.

They're going to have to do something completely different. It's not going to be a trial. It's going to be something entertainment related or something like that. They cannot even get close to touching anything near this. No, it's going to be, I had no idea how they're going to follow it up. They actually shouldn't. They should just call it there. Do the British TV thing and say one and done.

We're done. One and done. Yes. Speaking of things I wish were done, the X-Files is coming back. Oh man, why are you so sad on this one? I love this. I love the fact that the X-Files is coming back. I, look, I love the, you know how much I love the X-Files.

I, you know, my, I was crushing on Scully all through college. I still am. She's hot. No, you still are. I know that. I still am. I still am. Why am I so down on this? Because this is basically just going to be a mini series that wraps up the plot lines. They never bothered to answer 13 years ago.

Then they jerked us around with two bullshit movies about. Thanks. I guess. You know what though? Fox has a really good history right now with doing these short, short run revivals. Because I tell you what, the, the six episode or what is the 13 episode run of 24 that they did in London was amazingly good.

It was, it was tight. It got everything done and it was fun to watch. So hopefully they'll, they'll like bring that aesthetic to the X-Files. Here's hoping, but let me tell you, I, I've, it's been so long. I don't even remember what I was pissed off about when they, when they ended the show and they did the movies and didn't bother to answer.

So then I Googled it really quickly. There is a long list of things that they need to answer and they've pretty much painted themselves into corners on a lot of them. So I don't think anybody is going to be particularly satisfied by this. Yeah. Who cares? You know what? Who cares? Who cares? I get to see him on screen again. I get to see the credits and here's the theme song again.

And you know what? You could turn it off after the credits and the theme song and I'm fine because that's what gives you the chills. I am far more excited by the Twin Peaks coming back than I am by the X-Files. So there's some problems in the production of that one, but we'll see how that, that pans out. Yeah. Anyway, Steven Spielberg is going to be doing ready player one.

Um, I don't know how I feel about that. I'm not excited about that either. Spielberg. I don't think he's the right person to direct it. I'm not even sure it should be a movie. I've got two letters for you. AI. Yeah. Piece of crap. Took a, took what could have been one of the creepiest, greatest artificial intelligence movies from Kubrick.

And, and you can, I mean, when it's, when it swapped from Kubrick to Spielberg, it went from awesome and creepy to steaming pile of poo. Yeah. And I'm not even sure that this should be a movie, but I'm not, I'm not excited. Well, I can tell you what shouldn't be a movie is Blade Runner two, but you know, at least Ridley Scott had the presence and wherewithal to remove himself as the director of it.

So he's doing the Martian now. And they, they've actually got scenes now of, uh, Matt Damon, like filming with the, uh, the Rover. It looks cool. I cannot wait. I really cannot wait for the Martian ready player one. I really couldn't give a shit about, but man, the Martian that is going to be fun.

Matt Damon. I like Matt Damon, Matt Damon, um, and did you see the Tatooine is now a stronghold for ISIS? I did. God, that must've been a slow news day. No, that's a, that's an amazing news day.

I found this out from Bruce Sterling and his comment was, okay, maybe you will find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, which is one of the best tweets I've ever read. And I clicked through it. I'm like, Oh Jesus. Uh, yeah. So, and if you, if you saw a long way down the Ewan McGregor one, where he's riding the motorcycles from Scotland to the tip of Africa, they go through there and it's a pretty funny scene when he's in Tatooine and there's a poster of him and he's like smiling with the

thumbs up and nobody recognizes him. I feel like I've been here before. Yeah, no, it was pretty funny. Last story of the week is a guy who walked the, I think it was the Pacific trail from Mexico. To Canada, took a photo every mile and it, or selfie.

I'm sorry. It wasn't a photo. It was a selfie. Right. And it's, it's an amazing video because this is something that I've always wanted to do. You know me, I've always wanted to walk across America, but this is a pretty cool looking trail. Well, why not start tomorrow, Jason? Uh, because I have a job. Oh. If I didn't have a job money, then I could be homeless and walk across the country and do whatever.

Uh, but I have a job and this guy does not look anything like he did when he started. And that's the transformative effect of it. And the name of his website is lost or found. And the title is the end of the trail is the beginning of the story.

And he's making a movie, crowdfunding it, whatever, but it's a cool video. I recommend checking out the video. If you're a hiker, a walker, love to walk, check it out. I now have two favorite people in the world and they're both in Tacoma, Washington.

The first one, wait, I'm in Chicago. Well, you don't count on this story. The first one is a guy who was driving on interstate five up in Tacoma and, uh, he went in the carpool lane. Unfortunately, he was the only person in the car, but he did have a cardboard cutout of the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis beer ads in the passenger seat.

This is one of my favorite stories of all time. Now he would be my favorite person in the world, or at least in Tacoma, except for the cop, the cop that pulled him over, then took a picture and tweeted. I don't always violate the HOV lane law, but when I do, I get $124 tickets.

We'll give him an A for creativity. And you can see the guy like just cracking up in the, in the driver's seat. Very funny story. That's awesome. No, I mean, seriously, if you, you gotta go with, with, with somebody fake in the passenger seat, why not go with the most interesting man in the world?

Yeah, pretty awesome. Uh, and then the other thing I ran across, which I love because I've, I've had a week of corporate speak from hell. In fact, uh, nevermind. We're not using that as the title of the show, so forget it. Um, but this is a great one. It's on Vox and we have the link in our show notes at grumpy old geeks.com slash 102.

Uh, it's a generate your own bogus job description. So I ran mine through really quickly. Brian Schulmeister is a cybernetic theorist who uses straight up bullshit to create cloud based jargon generation of diversifying new partnerships. Now we, we actually ran through this, uh, when I was, uh, dealing with the morning dump previously and we, we ran it like about a hundred times and they've got a very narrow kind of AI on this, but it's still funny because I, Jason DeFillippo is a hacker who uses whiteboards to

create string theory of mansplaining in Africa. So just don't, don't expect to get too many different, uh, permutations, but it's still pretty funny. It's still clever. Yes. The fact that I'm mansplaining in Africa. So in my closing shout out today, I really kind of wanted to riff on the internet, what it may become, where it's gone, what's next and why it's so different from what we wanted

it to be when we were kids in our twenties and doe eyed, you know, idealists, but guess what? We're out of time. So, uh, Brian, do you have anything to say about that? Um, I, I, no, no, I don't know. We're in, we're in such a weird period with the internet right now where I feel like we're just recycling old things.

Like I said, I mean, the biggest thing out there right now is basically Jenny cam. It's an app that just lets you record crap. Um, I feel there's a lack of creativity going on right now. And I think that we're stuck in this weird world where VC funding is pushing things through that don't really even have any value.

Uh, I'm waiting to see what, what's going to break this. Um, what, what you mean? Yo is dead. You know it. Okay. Yeah. No, it's like I said, it is definitely a, it, it is a weird period of the internet. And the fact that we have surveillance from the governments, from advertising agencies, from Facebook and all these walled gardens, everything is changing right now.

And I think over the next, you know, set of episodes, we should talk about this because it's, it's really kind of disconcerting that we've lost the internet that we have spent 20 years building. I agree, but, uh, you know, we don't have the money. They do. That's true.

Okay, man. Uh, talk to you next week. We got to talk to you next week. Grumpy old geeks is a fan supported show. No, really it is. Go to our Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG and pick your level of awesomeness and we'll love you forever. Or at least until you cancel. If you can't spell Patreon, go to grumpy old geeks.com and follow the links.

The level of love is still the same. We really appreciate your iTunes ratings and reviews. Please go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars. Better yet, turn on a like-minded friend to the show so you can make fun of us around the water coolers on Mondays. You can also find us at facebook.com slash grumpy old geeks or twitter.com slash GOG podcast.

Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks.com slash 102. Wolverines!

Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks.

Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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