105: The Lone Chimp

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. Jason, we're home.

We're home? That was the best trailer ever. Oh, you damn Star Wars people. Hey man, two minutes of that trailer completely erased those abortions of prequels from my mind. I cannot wait for this episode. Fucking movie. We'll see if it delivers. We'll see.

Yeah, all you naysayers out there while the rest of us are squealing like little girls. It's awesome. It is amazing. I'm not saying I'm not squealing like a little girl. I definitely dropped my iPad when it happened. Yeah, I lost my mind. It was really, really, really good. Fantastic job.

And, you know, I had my misgivings. I was like, we cannot give J.J. Abrams the key to both my sci-fi kingdoms. He cannot have Star Wars and Star Trek. But at this point, fuck it. Give him Battlestar Galactica 2. Oh, God. He can have it all. Redo everything, man. Well, we'll see. We'll see. The jury is out. I'm not passing any judgment until it actually hits the screen.

Because, you know, so far we've heard two words that anybody gives a shit about. Look, it's Han Solo. It's Grandpa Solo. He actually didn't even look that bad. They must have done some amazing makeup work on him because he looks old in real life now.

Well, he looked old in the trailer, too, but we'll see. We'll see. You know, more to come, more to come. It was good enough to make Matthew McConaughey cry. Now, see, that was worth watching. The Matthew McConaughey reaction video was pretty damn good. That was hilarious. And I haven't even seen Interstellar, but that was awesome.

Yeah, you don't have to see Interstellar to appreciate this. Honestly, you don't. No, it was very funny. So we have the link in our show notes. Take a look at that if you have not seen it yet. But judging from what we found, we found it about an hour ago, and I think that's about what it hits, and it's spreading over the internet like, well, like memes do.

Yes, like wildfire. Interstellar wildfire. That is very true. So I did the iOS update after we did our show last week, and I would like to point out that Bluetooth did not switch back on this time. Oh, that's good.

And now I officially don't care because I lost the only thing that I used it for, which was my Fitbit. So I really don't care anymore. Where do you think this Fitbit is floating around at? We know that there's one floating around at Finmacool's somewhere. There is one. This one is probably at Terminal 7 in the right-hand X-ray machine going through security.

I'm pretty sure it fell out of the pocket I put it in in my backpack to get through security, and I think it's just kind of sitting there. Probably wedged in between the rollers or on some TSA agent's hip right now as he, you know, jogs around. Yeah, it just totally, every time I take it off, I always forget about it until I'm at baggage claim at the next city, even though, you know, I could get, I figure I get the steps anyway because it's in my backpack and I'm carrying my backpack.

So I'm probably getting a few extra steps. But, yeah, I always forget about it because I'm too busy trying to put my belt and my shoes back on and put all the electronics back in my bag because I carry, you know, all this crap with me everywhere I go. Yeah, and this is why I like to just use an app-based step tracker because it's one less thing to carry around and lose.

Yeah, I'm done for a while. I can take a break. Well, there's no point in you getting another Fitbit, right? Because you're getting the watch. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, you can't get one until June now. I know. I saw that nice little bait and switch. Yeah, definitely.

Well, I'm amazed at how the pre-sales went. They just kind of knocked it out of the park with the pre-sales. Yes, they did. So, once again, Apple has a hit on its hand even if nobody really seems to care too much and it's not that big of a deal. But it's an instant bestseller. I haven't looked at the stock.

How's it doing? I actually haven't either. So it can't be too massive because I have little stock alerts if things go apeshit on anything that I own. Ah, the apeshit alert. I like that. Yes, the apeshit alert is good. It tells me to go in and either buy or sell. I should get one of those.

No, I'm not going to get one of those. I don't care. That stuff's just staying there. I'm not touching it. Hey, long-term investing is probably the best way to go unless you really want to pay attention and waste a lot of your time and tear out your hair. Just buy something you like and let it sit. Yep, just going to sit on it.

Now, you posted a link in here about a guy who actually reads all the happiness studies. He came out and acted on it. I personally think that he listens to our show because we talked about this study quite a few times. So, yeah, it's basically, well, there's several studies, but the general consensus is if you make up to about $75,000 a year in the United States, your general happiness is like, that's peak happiness.

Yes, and this guy just said, screw it. Everybody gets a raise. Yes, Dan Price, founder and CEO of Seattle-based credit card processing company called Gravity Payments, has basically taken his salary down considerably and spreading the wealth and almost doubled, I think, half of his employees' salaries to get them up to $70,000 a year.

So, this guy wins. The interesting thing will be to go back in, say, a year or two and see if it actually worked. Yeah, that will be interesting. I hope that there are a team of psychologists there right now doing some groundwork testing, and then they can test them again a year from now and see if they're happier.

Can you get a decent psychologist to come in for $70,000 a year? I don't know, but maybe a happy one. Well, happy is better than rich and grumpy. Yes, rich and grumpy. Although, you know what's worse? Being poor and grumpy. Poor and grumpy is worse.

You know, a lot of people say money doesn't solve problems, but... Bullshit. Bullshit. Yeah. Yeah, I'd much rather be rich and grumpy than poor and grumpy, or, you know, my current middle class barely hanging on and grumpy. Yeah, scraping by and grumpy. Scraping by and grumpy.

Yeah, so that happened. I wanted to talk about some of the annoyances of our modern life, which even making $70,000 a year probably won't make you feel better about. The first of which I just dealt with, and we took a little pause in the middle of our intro segment. I am so sick of the window, the service and delivery window.

Are you getting ready to start your stand-up career? Because that's like how every stand-up starts their set. I should have done it in Jerry Seinfeld-esque voice, I suppose. No, it's annoying as hell, and they've actually started to do something new, which is really pissing me off, which is the call about a half an hour before, but they warn you that if you do not answer that call, they will not come and do your delivery or service.

Yeah, I've had that happen. That one sucks. Yeah, that one is complete and utter crap. I can't believe that I'm starting to do that now, so I'm taking a stand, damn it. And doing what about it? Absolutely nothing, because I want my stuff, and if you miss the window, it's going to be another month. Yeah. Yeah, what kind of stuff do you have that you have to have this kind of crazy window?

Well, this is some furniture things. It's not terribly exciting for the listener, but I'm finally getting my bookcases and things like that, you know, because you also, at least I remember as a child, you would go to the furniture store and you would leave with furniture. Yes. Now you pay for it and wait two months for them to deliver it to you.

You must have been listening to The Morning Dump, because Jordan Cooper's been bitching about this for all week. Well, no, I have not been listening to it, although I did have a little chat with Jordan on Twitter. I had no idea he was a soccer fan, so when the USA-Mexico game was on, we batted back and forth a bit on Twitter.

So, hi, Jordan. I'm glad that we're dealing with the same bullshit. The other thing that happened to me, which drove me absolutely insane, and this is just a company not knowing what they're doing, as part of my current day gig, we are working with a lot of third-party companies because it's kind of a big charity-related thing, and third-party companies want to get the magic pixie dust of working with the charity on them, so they offer their services pro bono and whatever.

It doesn't matter. So I'm dealing with a lot of third-party companies, and third-party companies hire another company. In this case, I will say the name of the company, Tech Validate, to send off the forms and go, did you enjoy your experience with our company, and can you give us any feedback, and all of that crap that we get with everything now.

I'm sure that I'm about to get a call from this delivery company in about a half an hour asking me how it went because we have to get feedback all the time about everything, which is fine. I get it. At least this company is offering, if you fill out this form, you'll be entered into a lottery, and you can win $500 for your valuable customer research survey information.

So that's all very nice. The problem is they sent me this customer research survey within a day of even starting to use this third-party company. I haven't even done anything with them yet, so it's a bit early. So I'll cut you out. Yeah, I get those a lot now when I go to different websites.

It's like, welcome to our website. We see that you're a new-time visitor. Would you like to take a survey to tell us how well we're doing? I'm like, I can't tell how you're doing because you put this fucking survey in front of your website that I can't get to now. So I'll tell you how you're doing. You're doing shitty. That's it. You're just doing shitty.

Yeah, I ended up filling out the customer research survey, not on the company that I was supposed to, but on Tech Validate. So I wonder if they'll read my important feedback. Nice. Nicely done. Nicely done. Yes, thank you. I do what I can. In the news. So we've talked about the podcasting patent several times on this show and talked about how Adam Carolla went after him and then, you know, keeled over and played dead and took all our money.

Yes. And, yeah. So the EFF finally got it knocked out. It's done. It's dead. It's been invalidated. And the lesson here is if you want to donate money, give it to the EFF and not a media personality.

When you're looking to get something legal done. Yeah, I agree. This has been big news. And obviously, you know, Carolla does news on his podcast. So it was very difficult for them to not talk about it. So he went into a big rant about how he's pissed off about the fact that the news story is that he settled.

And he's like, it's not settling if you settle for no money. Whatever. Whatever. All I know is my hundred bucks went to him settling. Yeah. And you never got your t-shirt. Well, I picked the digital swag package and told him to keep the t-shirt because I'd rather just have the money go to getting the thing done that we're trying to get done.

Honestly, that was it. Yeah. So that's done. That is done. Now, another thing that was going around this week was the founder of a $50 million startup just sold his company and he didn't make a dime. Now, this is Lane Becker about Get Satisfaction. I know Lane.

He's a great guy. He's the only person to give me a hug after the JPEG magazine blow up and all the press about that. So I love Lane. The funny thing is, yes, he didn't sell his company. He was kicked out of his company a long time ago. Okay.

And all the founders were kicked out basically like five years ago. I'm sure he still had some stock in it, but he had no control over the outcome whatsoever. And so it's kind of a clickbaity thing. But he did, you know, he had a giant Twitter rant about it after all the paperwork and everything was signed.

He said he wouldn't just vomited and all this shit because the current C-level people all got paid. Right. And none of the original investors and none of the original founders got a dime. And the interesting thing that I wanted to point out about this was he cites the VC money is what really screwed him.

Taking money at a super high valuation because that is in the news this week. Wait, can't they just talk about that on Silicon Valley? Exactly. That's the whole, that's the theme of the week is taking a valuation that is way out of bounds with what you can perform to.

So basically the entire tech industry right now. Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, well, the smart ones don't. But on the heels of this news comes another article about Slack. They just raised $160 million at a $2.8 billion valuation.

There is no way in hell that Slack is worth $2.8 billion. They've got 750,000 users. Yep. You know, what's that on a per user cost? I mean, how much is that user worth? It's ridiculous. But the funny thing is they already raised $120 million last October.

They haven't touched a penny of it. Then why did they go get more money? I think Stuart's just like, well, hey, it's like free money nowadays. Screw it. We'll just take the money. I think he's just having fun now. It seems to be. I mean, this whole industry is insane.

It's absolutely insane. And we talk about, you know, the collapsing middle class and all of that sort of stuff. And I know personally lots of people that are still looking for work and can't find any. But this is happening. Yeah. Well, that's the whole point of everything we talk about, dude.

I know. The fact that Stuart took this money, I think, honestly, is kind of just, he's just having fun. He's got more money than he needs, obviously. Yeah. Because of the, you listened to shows ago, we talked about the article where he's like, yeah, I've got enough money. And I have more money than I need.

And honestly, people are going to pay me more money than I'll ever deserve. And a lot of people here are going to get more money than they ever deserve. It's like, okay, well, maybe he's just going to be a philanthropist. He's just going to take all the money and then flip it and go Bill Gates himself out. Who knows? I'm okay with that if that's what he does.

The thing about Stuart is you never know because he's a cheeky little bastard. He's, I think he's a pretty subversive kind of guy, even though he doesn't really look it on the cover. And if anybody doesn't really remember, Stuart Butterfield was one of the original founders of Flickr.

And that's what got him on the scene and got him his first big payout. Right. Well, you can't look subversive if you want to raise $160 million. So you have to look nice. Well, he's wearing a bow tie. I guess that's about as subversive as you can get in San Francisco anymore. Probably. Yeah.

So I got some follow-up articles in the show notes about big valuations. And there's a TechCrunch article that is really dense. And I fell asleep halfway through it. But it's an actual VC talking about why these big valuations are dangerous.

And, you know, or just read Lane's article where he's like, yeah, we screwed up. We took too much money. That's it. And we'll get to the Silicon Valley stuff in a little bit. And it was, I mean, it was jaw-dropping. How close they were with everything that's going on this week. It is a little hilarious.

Mm-hmm. So let's do some title follow-up. All right. Let's follow up on title. And I would like to personally believe this is the last time we will ever talk about title. Except when they close. Yeah. When the title wave crests and flattens out.

That'll be it. Yeah. Which is going to be in three weeks. I give it three weeks. It'll last a little bit longer than that. We've had a couple artists basically come out and say the title sucks balls. I believe is a direct quote. Let's see. Guitarist Winston Marshall from Mumford & Sons called titles owners the new school fucking plutocrats.

Yeah. Well, I mean, this is, the interesting thing there is that he's not, he's not a pauper, but he's still, you know, they're still a working band. Yeah. To Mumford & Sons, the very mention of title is greeted by a series of loud fart sounds. I give, I give, give it up to him for that.

I'll take it. So apparently they must have just played their hit song because that's kind of, kind of how I look at them. Yeah. I look at them as they have one song, but it's okay. I mean, people like them and they do well. This is not, I mean, I think I said this when it launches. It's the only, the only artists the title is good for are the ones that signed up at the beginning and own a little tiny part of the company and are already mega rich.

Anyways, your Rihanna's, your Kanye's, your Madonna's. This is, no other artist gives a shit. This does nothing for them. Nope, none whatsoever. So that was coming out left, right, and center. Let's see, who else did we have that was bitching about it? Death Cab for Cutie, singer Ben Gibbard went off on it as well.

Lily Allen has just been awesome. If you, I don't know if you're a Lily Allen fan, you probably aren't because Lily Allen fans tend to be 14 year old girls, but she is incredibly funny and incredibly active on Twitter. So I suggest you follow her because it's quite good. And she, I mean, from the launch, she basically live tweeted the launch and was just, shitting on it left, right, and center.

So that was great. Steve Albini, well, he hates everything. So it's hardly surprising he's coming out against title as well. Bunch of artists. Yeah. So this is not, this is not going well. And as far as the exclusives that one get from title, I believe Rihanna's song had the video, the latest Rihanna song, the video was exclusive on title for about three days.

Ooh, three days. Yeah. So how's that? Is that awesome? Doesn't that make you want to sign up with this incredibly stupid idea? Well, they finally got some new tech because I was always pissed off or not always pissed. I was pissed off for about three minutes when I signed up and I'm like, well, where's the, where's the import?

I can't, I can't import my collection from iTunes or Spotify. Well, lo and behold, you now can with a third party service called Soundbliz, I think. Soundees. Soundees, Soundbliz. Soundees, apparently. Yeah. You can bring over safe playlists from all kinds of places.

Okay. So here's, here's the deal. Um, so the people at Engadget originally wrote this, uh, this article and they screwed up the name of the company of the partnership, but they left it in the permalink. So somebody over there doesn't really doesn't know how to change their permalinks very well.

That's why I couldn't pronounce it. Cause I'm like, oh, you misspelled it in the URL. You dumb motherfucker. Uh, anyway. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And, uh, Portishead came out talking about their lack of royalties. Yeah, this doesn't have anything specific to do with title, but this is something that I support.

And anytime any artist does, does this, I, I want to basically trumpet it on this podcast. At least he's being a pretty open about the amount of money that they make from streaming services, which is nothing, nothing. Uh, basically 34 million streams for Portishead net of them, roughly us, 2,500 bucks, 2,500 bucks for 34 million.

And this is Portishead. Portishead is a big, real, super sign to major labels, tours a lot, can headline Coachella act. Well, they should stick with that because, uh, the streaming isn't going to make them any money. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, that's, that's what all these reports are telling us.

And I want more major artists to come out and talk about it as well. Um, you know, the, the, the much ballyhooed trumpeting of the streaming services, saving the music industry is not happening. Um, if you cannot go out and play and you cannot get big enough, uh, audience at your shows, you are not going to make any money as a musician.

So keep up with the coding or whatever the hell else you're doing, or just, you know, go do a startup. Apparently people just throw money at the, at those people. Just don't do a podcast, but go do a startup. Yeah. Podcast is the new music. Do you have any idea on, uh, what radio plays get?

Like how much 34 spins on the radio or 34 million spins on the radio would, would net you? I don't have the figures in front of me. It's certainly better than the streaming rights. Okay. Okay. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I should have actually looked this up, but, uh, I'll have it for next week.

We'll do some followup and I'll, I'll do some breakdowns because there's, there's a site out there that is fairly specific about, uh, what most people are getting paid for specific instances. And it would be fun to look through those numbers. So we'll have that for next week. Yeah. Cause the rates on ASCAP and BMI for, for radio is, is public record, right?

Cause since, since that's regulated, regulated numbers. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I mean, all of this stuff is out there. I, the, the site that I'm thinking of offhand, which I'm just going to keep talking, talking about not having the site in front of me so we can talk about it more next week. But, uh, it, it does, uh, it does a, it does a breakdown of radio plays.

It does, uh, you know, physical sale and then streaming and YouTube and blah, blah, blah. It shows you exactly how much you're getting paid per play in, in any format. Okay, cool. So that's pretty good. Uh, and. In the show notes, uh, I'm not going to talk about this too much, but it is interesting. Uh, there's a link to an article on Forbes, the revenge of the record labels, how the majors renewed their grips on music.

It's actually very well written. Again, the much value hoot breaking down of record labels by, by these tech companies like RDO and Spotify, uh, has not happened because the record labels were very smart and went and made exclusive deals with all of them directly. And they're back in control.

And they, and they, oh yeah. The, the deals that they made basically were for, for stock in the company. So it's like now, now these studio labels own parts of the companies that are tearing apart the business. So I don't know how that's going to work out, but yeah.

And, um, once again, Jay-Z with your title, um, your artists are assigned to these labels who now own parts of your competing companies. So why would they give all their stuff to just you? Because they can't, because Universal owns half of Spotify.

So Universal wants their artists to be on Spotify. Yep. What was your business plan? Uh, have a press, have a press conference. Yeah. Have a big old party with Chris Martin. That's it. That's all you need. Uh, it's been a big music industry week this week.

Anyways, I, uh, and the conversations are definitely out there and happening. Um, and I will also, again, direct everybody to our show notes. Cause we're not gonna, I'm not going to read all of these verbatim, but Ian McNabb, who's the singer songwriter from Icicle works, which is the song whisper to a scream, which you will recognize if you're of our age, um, went on a big rant online on his Facebook page, actually, uh, talking about beggars banquet and the fact that he's never earned any money from sales of records.

And he goes into that a great length. And then friend of the show, Carl Wallinger, who is from the band world party. Well, basically is the band world party, uh, got involved and was commenting along with him. And I grabbed both, uh, Ian McNabb's original post and then Carl's comments about it, pop those in the show notes.

Uh, Carl actually really kind of got super interesting with it because he started to talk about how the record labels and the way that this has all changed in the last 10 to 15 years has basically killed counterculture. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting with the counterculture bit because it made me think, uh, the counterculture that we had, you know, when we were growing up in, in our parents' generation and things like that, I, I, here's what I'm thinking.

I'm thinking it's not just the music industry that's killing this problem. Um, it's the fact that we've got everything else, the, the, the entirety of social media, the fact that everybody's watching, the fact that everybody's already talking means that you don't have to hide in a back room anymore. And, you know, silkscreen your own t-shirts, you can, the counterculture is now like just culture.

It's interesting. It's really interesting how everything is diffused unless you live in a oppressive regime. Like, yeah, I mean, the concept of a counterculture is kind of an us against them thing. And, and, you know, me and my friends have this thing and it's kind of, it's ours and nobody else can have it. And it's hard to get involved in it and it's hard to find it.

That doesn't exist anymore. Not at all. The internet killed it then. Yeah. No, I mean, I, I thoroughly believe that. I mean, the internet killed it a lot. I mean, the internet also is what forced the music industry to make these horrible changes that they've been doing. Which killed counterculture and music. It is killing things.

We've killed it. We, we, we built it and we killed it and we're just all going to go die now. Okay. Okay. Speaking of the internet, Google has planned an expansion into, where the hell was that? There's some little podunk place. Charlotte, North Carolina.

We talked about this a couple of times. The big six companies that are getting Google Fiber right away. Big six cities. Yeah. Um, so a time Warner cable made a preemptive strike and made all of their, all of their packages, uh, up to six times faster.

Great. It no additional charge. Hey, time Warner. I'm right here in LA and I've been paying you for fucking 10 years now. How about you speed mine up? Which is funny. I spent a better part of, uh, last week on the phone with them getting a new internet service set up and it turned out that, uh, uh, the person I was staying with had been paying for a 50 megabit connection, uh, for over a year.

And I'm like, you get nothing here. It's, it's like 20 up and one down or a 20 down and one up. Right. And it turns out they just never sent her the router that she was supposed to have. And I'm like, okay, well, can we get some kind of rebate? They're like, Oh no, we don't do that.

Of course they don't. No, no. So I ended up having to jump it up anyway and I just went and had bought a router. It's like, cause it's eight bucks a month to rent a router. Yeah. It's actually smarter to go ahead and buy your own. And the one I got was fantastic. I got this Motorola thing. It's got blue lights on it. It's pretty. And, uh, set it all up and it'll pay for itself in a year, you know?

And it's like, wow, I really wish that would have been nice. Cause the first person I talked to, they're like, Oh, um, when they told me about the router problem, he's like, yeah, uh, we can send you the new one and all this stuff. It's going to take some time and all this. I'm like, well, can you just tell me the model number I need to go out and buy?

And he's like, no, we don't, we don't expressly tell people to go buy their own routers. And I'm like, okay, okay, we'll just, we'll put that on there. And then I had to get bumped up the chain and the next guy's like, dude, why are you renting a router? Go buy one. And I'm like, thank you. I found a nice person at time Warner.

And he's like, Oh yeah, man, here's the model numbers. Don't listen to those people. I took you off of the thing. We're all good. I'm going to give you a deal. I got a coupon here for you. It's good for a year and totally jacked it down. I walked in there with, you know, two minutes, 20 megabits down, two megabits up.

I walked out of there with a 200 down 20 up and ended up paying 10 bucks less a month. Amazing. I mean, it's with these companies, it's always just about the person that you find. Exactly. If you get somebody that's smart and knows what they're doing and is nice on the phone, it will basically change your entire life.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And here's the funny part. When she went to go take her old router back to the drop-off for time Warner, the guy looked like pulled up her file and he's like, Oh, you got the, you got the old coupon. I'm going to knock another five bucks off your bill. Amazing.

And he's like, no, this is only for a year. So in a year, you got to come back in here and just bitch a little bit and we'll give you the new coupon. It's just like, it's nice to see that their employees are turning against them. Yeah. That's a good thing. It's a very good thing. I had a time Warner guy over this week as well because the time Warner app, they promised that, you know, you can control your DVR through it and you can watch your recordings on the app.

So that's great. I can sit, you know, in bed with my iPad and watch something I recorded, except it's never worked. And then I spent three weeks with their customer service, just either through the online chat or on the phone. And they kept giving me the, well, we're going to reboot everything. And in two days, it'll surely work.

And in four days, it'll surely work. And finally, I was like, I got really pissed off. I might've had a little bit of wine. And I said, it's not working. It's never worked. Get somebody over here. The guy showed up. He knew exactly what he's doing. It's like, oh, I don't understand what's wrong with customer service. The cable, the cable box that you have doesn't support that.

We have to swap it out. Boom. Done. Same problem. I wasted a week. It's all about just finding somebody, you know, and I think that's going to be my new customer service thing, which is as soon as I'm getting the impression that this person doesn't know what they're doing, I'm just going to hang up and call back, you know, play the lottery until I get somebody I like.

Yeah. Bounce up the ladder, move around, shuck and jive, shuck and jive. That's right. Now, since we have been talking about Time Warner in the state of California is they're saying reject this Comcast merger like the officials are saying, no, no, don't do it.

Don't do it. It's bad. It is bad. Of course it is. It's two of the worst companies in the world combining and then you have no options. But I'm glad that we have state officials from California like sticking their head in and all that's going to be is a recommendation because the FCC is going to be the one that's going to approve the merger.

Yeah, and they will approve it because there's too much money in it for them not to. We'll see about that. I mean, well, there's a big fight going on right now because the FCC published their net neutrality rules, you know, to the legal body. And within like seconds, the wireless and cable industries put out the lawsuit saying, no, we don't like this.

We told you we didn't like it. We told you we were going to do this. Here it is. So let the fight begin. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I'm my money is on the merging, but we'll see. Oh, yeah, I was I'd put a bet down on it, but I think it's 50 50 right now.

I really think it's 50 50. Now, in the in the we are getting old department messaging apps like, you know, WhatsApp and all that crap. Yeah. All that crap with yik yak and not yik yak is one. No, no. I was trying to make a rhyme, man.

It's early still. I'm in California time, so they finally caught up to the social networks as far as traffic goes. You know, I OK, the link is in our show notes, and I'm not entirely sure I buy this because well, I mean, I do.

I get it. But aren't those apps basically they've just taken over for texting? And I think texting was always bigger than social network apps. People text it all the time. Now people are just using these apps instead of texting. Could be. I mean, it is kind of a screwy methodology on how they did these numbers.

I definitely give you give you that. Yeah, I don't really think it's it's that big of a deal here. I think it's just we've seen people stop using built in texting and switching to various apps to do the same amount of communication that they were always doing. And here's the other interesting thing is, you know, put together you've got WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber.

Well, Facebook Messenger is the same as part of a social network. Well, no, because they're in the on the other side of the coin is the Facebook app. So they're treating them as two different entities because Facebook split them out. Yeah. And then you've got was I don't know.

Take a look at it. It was interesting. It caught my eye. And I definitely think that there's some shenanigans going on here. Oh, I definitely think there are. I don't. Yeah. So whatever. Well, this insider just needs some page views. Well, come on. Well, OK, your next story is about a chimp that knocks a drone out of the sky, which this is an awesome story.

How does you I mean, I saw this and I rejected 2001 Space Odyssey theme song in my head. It's great. A chimp. OK, whatever. Watch the video. It's fun. It's awesome. A chimp in the Royal Burger Zoo in the Netherlands basically knocked a drone out of the sky.

With a long branch. And it's great. And I love to stick at it and it falls down and goes, boom, I saw this and I didn't put it in the notes because I didn't think it was a story. But yeah, you have to watch the video and then sing the 2001 theme song. And it's very good. OK, anyways, the main reason I put it in the show notes is because of the last sentence of the story, which is basically exactly how I feel about drones.

A lone chimp investigated the crash before ultimately losing interest. That would be you. You are the lone chimp. There's a show title. The lone chimp. So I've got an article that I'm going to put in here. I recommend people go read it if they are in any way confused about the things that we've said about Facebook taking over the the content of news sites.

Yeah, this is by Trevor Tim. It's on what is this site? I don't even know the site CJR. I think it's I think it's I think it's his personal site, maybe. No, no, no. Columbia Journalism Review. Oh, OK. Well, definitely not his site then. But it's I mean, it's long. It's eleven hundred words. So I'm just going to summarize it saying he sums up everything that we've talked about in our show about what the dangers are of, you know, planning your garden in someone's backyard.

Yes. And I think I think I think they're even more dangers as to what they're talking about. But it's a lot about how Facebook would have so much control over different stories when they're tied to advertising. And, you know, it's always that that separation of church and state between editorial and advertising needs to be there.

And that has completely broken down. And and now it's like, hey, let's just let's just cut to the chase. You know, this isn't even this isn't even new. Like, this isn't a new situation. All the all these journalism sites, all they have to do is look at what Facebook did to small businesses with their pages.

And then they lured them in and people were able to build up a business like, you know, I love science and all that sort of stuff. All these tiny little businesses were able to build something on the Facebook back end, get get a bunch of money, start to actually make real money. And then all of a sudden, Facebook changed the game on them and they were screwed.

You think that's not going to happen to you, journalism sites? Yeah. Pull the rug right out from under them. Exactly. And it will be stupid. And it will happen again and again and again. Yes. And along with the Star Wars trailer, they we have also basically been inundated with a Twitter unveiled new Star Wars emojis, which I mean, because I love Star Wars, I think they're really cute.

But there goes the emoji thing, because now it's just going to be all branded emojis everywhere. Well, the thing is, I'm never going to see him. So I use I use a tweet bot on my phone to go to Twitter. So I'm never going to see him. I had to look at the screen grab that you posted.

Yeah. Now they're cute. And then there's a big airline. Japanese airline is basically wrapped an entire plane in R2D2. Yeah, this is cute. I like it. I like it. Yeah. I think people should get more inventive with their planes and the designs anyways. That's that's really cute. I got to go to Japan. Well, I fly the Hello Kitty one and then the Star Wars one.

Well, I mean, this is just an extension of the stuff that we've done for what, 30 years for movies. We call them bus wraps. You know that we used to design bus wraps at my my department at Paramount and they were fun and they were cool. You know, it was really fun to do those those things. And now that we have the technology, let's slap it on a plane.

Agreed. Which is I want to know how they do it. And if it's a custom paint job or not, I got to read the article because I think going 600 miles an hour, the vinyl would probably peel off. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's not a vinyl wrap. If it is, I don't want to be on that plane.

Security. Now, there's been a little bit in the news about this eighth grader who was charged with felony, you know, wiretapping, computer changing, cybercrime-y shit, right? You've seen the story, correct?

I have. I did this crap when I was a kid. The crap being you basically just go in and he was changing his teacher's desktop, right? Yes. To a photo of two guys kissing. Yes. Which is very clever. I actually give this guy a hand. So the the problem was it got out that, you know, OK, an eighth grader is being charged with a felony for doing a little prank like this.

Yes. A couple of problems with the story that weren't really reported by the mainstream press. This is not his first offense. Ah, they they caught him before. Breaking into the computer networks and he was suspended for three days. OK, so this is not like some kid being funny.

They they warned him. They suspended him. And he went back and did it again. OK, well, now they have a problem. They do have a problem. But the problem isn't that he's going to be a felon. No, he's going to get a suspension for 10 days, probably. And the judge is going to just wipe it.

And most likely he's going to have a startup and it's going to be valued at one point two billion dollars in a couple of years. Exactly. So let him let him do his thing. But yeah, this was, you know, Tempest in a teapot at the beginning of the last week. And I was just like, what the heck? No, come on. There's got to be more to it. They're not going to put him in cuffs for although it dependent, I guess, depending on where he was, the picture of the two guys kissing might have been a little much for the local law enforcement.

It was Florida, wasn't it? I believe so. Yeah, it's all good stories come out of Florida. No good stories come out of Florida. There's nothing good in Florida. It really depends on how you define good, Jason. True. But one good thing is a a international task force of computer crime law enforcement have taken down the SIMDA botnet.

Yay, this is what this is law enforcement. Yay. When they do good things, I guess the SIMDA botnet might have been running away and they just shot it in the back. But there were 770,000 PCs that were ensnared in this thing at that point.

And it was adding new machines at like 120,000 a month. It was a no joke botnet. Yeah, that's serious. And they had a bunch of bunch of cops in a bunch of countries all raid the command and control servers at the same time and basically took the thing down. Good job, guys.

Yes, bravo. It's very rare that we talk about this. Slow clap. Slow clap. And it actually wasn't a very slow clap. No, it was a quick one. It was a polite clap. We like that. I'm not clapping for the NSA, though. I am not.

Now they just want everything. And now they're like, we have an idea. How about you just give us the keys, but only part of the keys. So then when we want something, we can come to you and then you give us your key and then we go together and then we get the data on the bad guys.

Yeah. Yeah. What could go wrong? Nothing can possibly go wrong with this. I mean, they keep asking for it, right? This is not the first time. It's they just keep going and going and going. No, don't don't ever do this, people. Yeah, it's been going on since the 90s. And at least people are smart enough now to know better.

It's like, no, this ain't going to happen. Well, I mean, we defeated the clipper chip back in the day. There's been several other schemes that these guys come up with to get to the data. And the tech industry keeps saying, no, no, guys, no, it's a dumb idea.

It's a bad idea. It makes us less safe. And it just goes around and around and around. But yeah, now they want they they basically came up with a scheme where it's like, OK, yeah, we split the keys. You have some of the key. I have some of the key and we get together and then we put our keys in and then we you know, get your dick pics.

Yeah, which they kind of have anyway, but they just want to make it easier for themselves. Yeah, this is kind of the foil, the end to end encryption, like on on if I'm talking to you on my phone and you're on your phone and we have end to end encryption. Yes, they can't get to it. I mean, they can get the content of it, but it's it's encrypted and they can't get it out.

So yeah, they want to be able to get it out. Yeah. Yeah. Never ending, never ending, motherfuckers. Yeah. So tell me about this great cannon that China has. OK, the Chinese great cannon. This is what basically did a giant DDoS on GitHub for the past, you know, couple of weeks.

And what they're doing is so China has the great firewall where everything goes through it. So what they did was they're like, oh, well, you know what we can do? We can take that traffic, we can filter it and we can inject malicious JavaScript that then turns people's requests into basically turns your machine into a bot that goes after other websites as part of the DDoS.

Yeah. It's a man in the middle attack, basically. And I mean, at that point, they can inject just about anything they want into your machine. They can put any kind of malware they want. But they were just putting in JavaScript from like Baidu CDN and some Google Analytics stuff.

Yeah. And turning the, you know, the unsuspecting surfers going to Chinese websites into the villains that were attacking GitHub and other sites. There's some dissident sites inside that help Chinese people who want to communicate more securely do so.

And they were going after them and trying to take them down. But it's, yeah, when you put a when you put a filter in front of the entire country's Internet that the country controls, they can do what pretty much ever they want. Now, there's some ways around it with HTTPS, but there's also some backfires on that.

It's technically a bit complicated. Yeah. So I'm not going to get too deep into it because I don't want to make people's brains explode. But we'll have a bunch of links in the show notes. And it's kind of an ongoing story. And they're still trying to figure out how to kind of foil it so people can get around it without them.

Because there's some traffic that they can pull out with HTTPS. Yeah. Because even if you're going to a website that is encrypted, a lot of times there's going to be pages on that site that are shipping back elements that are not. Yeah. Because every website now has 4,000 includes that come from every other website.

So it's like just because you get a page from site A doesn't mean that, you know, even 10% of that page is built from site A. It comes from all over. You've got, you know, external JavaScript, external CSS, iframes, all sorts of crap that can be hijacked.

So it's not a kill all. Remember when we built websites, Jason, that were all just on our own server? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely everything was. Yeah. Oh, the good old days. No, I mean, I remember the day before the include. I do. Although, remember, you could do sites with frames that would have multiple injection points from other sites.

That was fun. Yeah. That was some of the first stuff that I built. Yeah. Little hidden frames and, oh, good times. Oh, the old days. Before we had giant cannons. Big cannons. Twitter has gone after ISIS again. Good. And shut down about roughly 10,000 accounts.

The number is unknown because Twitter doesn't actually say it. It's a third party company that's coming out and, you know. That is, quote unquote, follows these accounts. And Twitter's just playing whack-a-mole with them because, like, they'll shut down an account and then the next day it'll be back up with just an incremented number on the end of it.

Yeah. You know. Which is what everybody does. Yeah. They get shut down. It's, yeah, it's just, it is whack-a-mole. It's insane. So, but at least they're trying to do something, you know. They're following Anonymous' lead. Yeah. We'll see how this works out for them. But hopefully they'll just keep on it.

There are sites out there. I mean, Anonymous is just reporting all of the crappy accounts out there and they're going after them. So, I'm sure they got to be able to put filters on that stuff. It's like, come on, guys. You can tell. If, you know, Jihadi Bob123, if we kill that one, kind of keep an eye out for Jihadi Bob1234.

Yeah. Don't let it, don't let that exist or whatever. I don't know. Yeah. Here's the thing about this. I am so happy this is not my problem. Like, I think about these engineers working at Twitter and I'm like, Jesus Christ, man, I used to have your job and I just, I feel for you.

I feel for you. Yeah. It's a miserable gig. Yeah. I still don't think you are worth as much money as you are and you get paid too much. And now I can't visit one of my favorite cities because of douchebags like you. But I feel bad for your job. Yeah. It's no fun. Speaking of no fun, the UK has finally hopped on the revenge porn bandwagon.

Yes. But like most things that they do, they actually do a reasonable sentence for this. Two years. I think that's fair. Two years is fair. I have no problem with two years. Not the 18 years that that jerk got Kevin Bolert or whatever his name was. Bolert or whatever. Bolert.

18 years is a little ridiculous. Two years, I'm down with. Yeah. Yeah. It's enough to stop you from being a douche, you know, and it's also more tangible. I don't think people can wrap their head around 18 years. No, no. Two years is enough to scare the crap out of you and make you not do this when you're a dumb kid and not ruin your entire life.

Or the life of the person that broke up with you. Yes. I agree. So this is just a fun little story. We are heading up to election season and in Virginia, they finally decertified this particular machine called the ABS WinVote touchscreen direct recording electronic voting machine.

That's a mouthful. Yeah, it's a horrible name. But apparently there's we have a link in the show notes that list through the various problems with security on the system because, you know, we want our votes to be secure. The main problem being, of course, the password was admin. And the web password or the web key was like one, two, three, four or five or something.

It was there was there was nothing about this machine that was secure. Nothing. Yeah, absolutely nothing. And this was used to count votes. So sayonara. I'm glad. Again, this is another case where I think government is finally starting to get a little tech savvy and in a good way and figure some things out.

Well, the interesting part was they said that the Diebold machines that were being used, like the ones in the Ohio election that everybody thought was rigged, they said those were 100 times more secure, which, OK, that doesn't really say much, not much at all.

Yeah. 100 times zero is still zero. Exactly. Yeah. Just saying. Simple math people. No. And we've talked an awful lot about, of course, Snowden, but we don't talk so much about Assange. And WikiLeaks has just put up 30,000 of the leaked Sony files in a searchable database.

I, yeah, I'm not on board. I'm not so cool with this. I'm not on board with this. What they're saying, you know, it's a multinational corporation and they have, you know, an in with the U.S. government and that makes it relevant because they have so much diplomacy, like, pull with the government.

And that's what they're saying is the rationale for putting these documents up there. Yeah. I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it either. And what I'm still not buying is this damn North Korean connection because a lot of people are still using that to justify why, you know, it has any kind of connection whatsoever with why they should be open to the public.

And it's like, well, you're perpetrating a lie, for one, to, you know, to just put these things out there because for you it's press. I don't see this as anything good. And, you know, Assange is kind of a douchebag anyway, but this doesn't help his case at all.

No, this is not a good move for them because there's really, there's nothing interesting in here. The only reason to post all this stuff is basically to embarrass people that have already been embarrassed. Yeah. Yeah. So knock it off. Have you started searching through them yet? No. Okay. I won't. I don't care.

I'm not going to, this is one of those train wreck things that I'm just not going to look at. I, the only reason to go do this is, is to basically, it's schadenfreude. You feel better about yourself because of other people's stupidity. There's, there's nothing security here. There's nothing, there's nothing business related here.

This is just embarrassing and I don't think the stuff should be out there. I'm pretty sure the journalists pulled out everything that they could possibly pull out by now. So we've, we've heard all the stories and yeah, like you said, there's, there's nothing in there for, for people like us. So I'll be skipping that one.

Moving on. Assange.

Comment of the week. We have two new Patreon supporters. So big thanks to Fergal Lions and Flash Jervis. You got nothing, Jason? You're not going to say thank you. Oh, I thought you usually follow up on that. Oh God.

Yes. No, thank you very much guys. Yes. Thank you very much. And again, uh, the absolute best way that you can support our show is to tell a friend and beyond that, go to, uh, check out our Patreon page and Jason and I are still posting on there. So you get some, uh, some exclusive stuff every now and then. And I think we're going to do some more giveaways and we're going to keep going on with that.

So, uh, so far we're sticking with this as an experiment and we appreciate all your support. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. Now that I'm back in Chicago and can go through my, my piles of crap, uh, I'll be putting up the, uh, the next giveaway will be on next week's show. And, uh, to our first giveaway winner, uh, it's going out tomorrow.

I'm sorry. I was traveling and I was only home for like three hours and then the UPS store was closed on Sunday. So it's going out tomorrow. I, I swear. Well, it's good to know that we're following along in the path of everybody else with their, uh, with their crowdfunding stuff and getting our stuff out super late.

Yeah. Oh, Hey, but apparently my, uh, my Zane Lamprey jacket's on a boat now for several, several more weeks on a boat. Uh, so we got a question in from a previous guest, Jordan Harbinger. Okay. How long until computers have their own SIM card?

Define computer. I'd argue that my iPhone is a computer. He definitely meant laptop. I know it's more about laptops to find laptop. Look at the surface three now, or the iPad. Well, you don't like it when I do this, do you?

Well, it doesn't make any sense because he's specifically talking about his damn MacBook. He wants to know when he could pop a SIM card in his MacBook and just get online. Okay. Well, I'm just saying that, you know, it's a malleable territory. It's very malleable and I, they never will. They're never going to do it because you have your smartphone now.

Yeah, it's going to be tethered. Everything is tethered through your smartphone. I mean, we, we wanted these a long time ago. Just put a, put a cell phone in my laptop. And I think there were some PCs that did it, but there were a couple, I think Dell actually put out a few that, that did that. So yeah, that would make sense.

But I mean, since laptops have such a longer lifespan than a cell phone, you know, cause we swap out our phones all the time. It's in the networks keep changing. It's like, can you imagine having to swap out your MacBook because your edge radio isn't up to your 14, you know, your 4g speeds.

So also, you know, they do have, I think I'm 90% sure they have some USB plugins that'll let you do that. It's just not going to be built in. Yeah. I've had all, well, you know, you had the MiFi boxes and all that kind of stuff, but there's, there's a gazillion ways to get online, which is why I don't think they're ever going to even consider putting radios inside of a computer anymore.

Yeah. Just because it's like, okay, you, you make it bigger, it's more to produce. So you're going to be cost more and yeah, battery, it was a battery thickness and cost. So you get, you get those trifectas. If you can pull that out and put it in a phone that you've already got, that's already doing the duty of getting you online.

Why would you ever put it in a laptop? Never going to happen that that ship has passed with the advent of the smartphone. Yes. And there are SIM cards and surfaces, which I would define as a laptop. But who, who would use that? A lot of people, man. They're selling pretty well.

And actually they're pretty snazzy looking. I was considering getting one. Have you, have you held one? No, no. God, they feel so cheap. Do they really? How can I have to go to the store and try it out? All right. They're fun. They're, they're nice to play with, but the, the feel on them is just so cheap. That's unfortunate. Yeah, it's very unfortunate.

So thank you very much for the question, Jordan. And if you have any questions for us, you can go to grumpy old geeks.com and click on the button and ask us a question or, you know, send something to us on the Twitters or the Facebooks. We will answer it on the show next week. I think we still have an LO account. I'm still working my way through Dune.

I'm now on God Emperor of Dune, which is the, the big daddy of the Dune books. And I'm loving every second of it. But since we have the big news with Star Wars this week, and of course, it's all about the Han Solo. I completely, totally remember reading these books, uh, when they came out and I believe they came out.

The first one was 1979 and that was 81. It was just after Star Wars came out. They, they, these books came out right away. The Han Solo adventures by Brian Daly. And I remember them being actually really good. Um, so if you need a Han Solo fix, you probably never seen or read these books because they came out a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

But, uh, it's definitely going to be next up on my reread list to, uh, it's a series of three books and, and they were absolutely fantastic from what I remember. So, and the Amazon ratings seem to bear that out because people do seem to like it. So need a Han Solo fix, go check out the Han Solo adventures.

Oh, good. You can tell us if they have legs. I will. Uh, cause yeah, I'm, I've got nothing. I was on the road and I got nothing. I didn't, I didn't even listen to half the podcast. So I'll see if I can dig something up for next week and put in my ear holes. Yeah. And I've got to find something new because I gotta, I gotta balance because the Scott Emperor Dune book is so damn long.

I'm sure it's not as long as the Vorkosagin adventures. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Media candy. Last week, Brian, you, uh, we're talking about daredevil. Yes, I was, even though I haven't watched it. I know. And you, you challenged me to watch it to see if it was any good. Yes. Yep. It is. I, I've gone through the whole thing. I finished up the final episode after I watched the series finale of just a justified, which was excellent.

If you haven't seen justified, I highly recommend that. Now that it's over, you can watch the whole thing. All right. Well, that sounds good. That is a good way to watch shows. I like that. And it was solid the entire way through. Same with daredevil. Solid the entire way through. The craziest thing about daredevil though, is, uh, Vincent D'Onofrio.

He is crazy scary as Kingpin. I'm just like looking at him. I'm like, I know who that guy is. And I'm like, holy Jesus. It's Vincent D'Onofrio. He's like, you know, seven feet tall and bald and fat. He just, you can't recognize him. He's a great actor. Absolutely. Love him. Yeah, no, he was, he's just amazing in this.

So I definitely recommend checking it out. It's the, in the guy that they have played daredevil. I have no idea who he is, but man, he can, he can fight. He can do our core. It's awesome. He's just a re is a really cool cat. And the way they treat the whole like Genesis of daredevil, I thought was really good.

I just enjoyed it. I'm not a daredevil fan. I thought Ben Affleck destroyed that, that franchise forever. Yeah. I mean that, I mean, I knew nothing about it, but that movie was just horrible. So this is definitely not horrible. This is excellent. Excellent. I mean, I'll have to try it.

It's, I haven't, you know, I'm not big on the superhero thing, but it's been a while since I've watched anything that comes from that, that genre. So, and everybody is talking about how great it is. So, and the fight scenes, the fight scenes are so good. I mean, they are, they are serious, like Hong Kong actions, like level fight scenes.

All right. Yeah. You, you, if you like, if you like Kung Fu, uh, this is a good one for that. And just all in all, yeah, it's not very superhero-y. That's why I like it. Oh, okay. That sounds really good to me. Yeah. It's almost, I mean, he's got like his thing, but it's basically a badass, but he's like, you know, not superhuman, but he can, he kind of is, but either way, go, go check it out.

It's good. How about I'll just go watch it. Okay. Now I have some really, really stupid news. What the fuck is wrong with Fox? Guess what they're remaking now? Are they making LO the movie? Might as well be. They're remaking the Rocky Horror Picture Show as a TV movie. That's stupid.

Why would you do that? Even the, the original isn't even that good. No, the original is horrible. Yeah. I mean, it's a wonderful, horrible, but it's meant to be, nobody watches the Rocky Horror Picture Show at home. You go to a theater with rice and toast and dressed up and have fun.

And it's a group experience that probably, I don't even know if kids still do or not, but I, I certainly did. Did you ever do Rocky Horror Picture Shows like Friday nights? Never got to do it. I had friends that were performers and they were, they were like, you know, up on stage doing it every week. But just for some reason, I never got to go do it.

And I'm bummed. I really wish I would have. Yeah. I mean, it was a lot of fun and it certainly was a, like a teenage rite of passage, but a TV movie. No, I mean, I had Rocky Horror Picture Show on VHS and I think that watched it zero times because if you're not in the theater doing the thing, it ain't fun.

See, and that's it. I saw it like two or three times just so I'd have the cultural reference and know what the movie was about, but it doesn't matter because the movie is not the point. No, it's not the point at all. So good job, Fox. Yeah. Way to, way to shit on that one. Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about Silicon Valley because, uh, well, first off, I ran into this tech douchebag at LAX yesterday. This guy was sitting in the right next to a giant sign that said like, you know, this area for wheelchair only talking on his phone very loudly and obviously did not need a wheelchair because he stood up and down a couple of times when he was, you know, talking his talk.

And I'm listening to this guy cause I just, I just happened to stop next to him to kind of pack up and put my Fitbit in my bag. Hey, maybe he stole my Fitbit. Maybe. And I mean, this was, it sounded like a table read from this season of Silicon Valley.

I mean, they're talking about, uh, he's talking about, yeah, we need to, uh, jumpstart our user acquisition and maybe we can have some kind of heartfelt hashtag campaign to really kick it into high gear. So we can let people know that we're there really to help change the world and bring them into our fold.

So we, then we can jumpstart our valuation. And I'm like, this guy has to be reading one of those just, you know, uh, jargon bullshit generators. Yeah. It was, we need our ice bucket challenge moment. It was, Oh God, it was so bad. And I just, so I took a picture of the guy and I'll post it in the show notes, uh, at grumpy old geeks.com slash one Oh five.

And, uh, I just, I sat there just amazed at a while. And I'm like, why didn't I bring my H4N with me so I could record this guy? And, uh, that'll teach me for not having my gear on the go. See, you made fun of me last time when I brought it. And then I was shamed into not bringing it this time. If I'd have had it, we would have had so much sound for this show.

Oh God, we're going to start doing audio. I'd probably get sued too. We are doing audio. That's what we're doing right now. Other people's Jason. He was in a public space. He was in a public space. And he was in the handicapped public space. Yeah.

The thing about Silicon Valley now is that as we discussed at the very beginning of, of this show, it's, it's, it's not even, it's, they're not even making a joke anymore. They really are just doing what other people do. That's the funny part. I mean, I went back and I started to watch season one again, just to try and get like caught up a little bit because season one, I think honestly is a six episode setup for the dick joke at the end.

That's all, that's all that season one is. No, I don't agree with that. I thought it was very funny. I mean, it, it, it, it let people into the world of, of the startups and, and the VC funding, which a lot of people don't understand. So it was very useful for that and still very funny.

And I think that's why, like we were talking on Facebook while like season, the premiere for season two was on and I was getting like almost a panic attack. I was getting sweaty and just like queasy because it is what they're doing is what it's like when they're in those, those pitch meetings for the investors on Sand Hill road.

That is how they talk. That is, that's a, like, that could have been a documentary that could have been a hidden cam in a meeting. And I just wish I would have done what they did in the show. I don't want to spoil it. So go, go watch the episode. But I really wish I'd have done what they did because then maybe I would have been funded and I wouldn't be having to do this goddamn podcast.

Yeah. You know, the terrifying thing is, is first off the fact that they're not really even making fun of it anymore. They're just basically reporting it and it's fucking hilarious. The even scarier part is how mainstream it is because it's not everybody gets it. Like people that aren't just in tech are watching this and they're laughing and realizing how insane it is.

And that's such a quantum leap, even from like, you know, you had shows like Big Bang Theory, which are now mainstream. But when it started, it was really only sci-fi geeks and, you know, crazy geeky guys that watched the show and got it because the jokes were terribly inside and unbelievably funny if you got it.

But now it's just mainstream. Yeah, that show needs to go away. That show needs to go away because it's, I mean, they've run out of jokes and now it's just a normal sitcom again. But again, just how the whole tech industry and sci-fi has become mainstream in just the last five to 10 years is stunning to me.

Yeah, it's kind of, kind of crappy too. Yeah, it sucks for us. I need something new to laugh at. But yeah. So on the bus side, maybe more people will listen to our podcast now. Yeah, it could be. Yeah, see, bright side. We'll see. Yeah, I think, I don't, I don't think, you know, what, like normals who watch, who watch Silicon Valley, I don't think they really understand that it is, it's a documentary now.

It's not, this is not making fun of anything. This is how it is. It really is how it is. It's just they change the names. Pretty much, yeah. Oh my God. What are you going to do? Yeah, there's a Gawker article that we'll put in the show notes called Silicon Valley is becoming a documentary about Silicon Valley and it truly is.

And we'll get to see the third season because it has been renewed already. I'm excited. I'm happy for that. So, so far they are not disappointing at all. I'm loving it. I know. I just, I need to take a Xanax before I watch it. Yeah, you need to calm down, man.

The web's not dead. Oh no, it's not. Now, Brian, you were a big Flash dev back in the day, weren't you? I was, uh, Future Splash. I remember we got trained by the company in version one before it even became Flash.

Yeah. See, I had a feeling that it was always going to be a pain in the ass and be a problem. Uh, so I stayed away from all of it. I didn't touch Future Splash. I remember the training. I just, I just forgot it immediately after.

It was fun, but we, we immediately saw problems like you couldn't bookmark areas and you know, there were a lot of issues. And it just kept going that way for a decade. Yes. And it got so much worse before it got any better. Thank you to Steve Jobs and his dying words said, Flash sucks. And now Flash is going away.

And that and HTML5 fixed a lot of stuff. Yeah. And, uh, all the advancements in JavaScript. Anyway, I hated Flash. I never used it. I was forced to embed all of your guys' crappy Flash movies into my websites. Um, but now they're trying to archive them.

They're trying to save them for the, for future generations. Uh, there's an article on Vice on Motherboard about how they're like, you know, what the problems are with trying to save Flash sites. I'm like, the problems are extraordinary because you've got all sorts of backend communication going on behind the scenes.

There's almost no way to archive these things unless you just play them and videotape them. Yeah. Pretty much. Turn them into movies. Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of Flash sites that we do that for at some of the agencies I work for. It's like, okay, we don't want to save this. We don't want to save the server infrastructure just to be able to show a client a game.

Yeah. So we'll just, we'll do a walkthrough and then we'll edit the walkthrough. So it's interesting because most Flash sites aren't very interesting. So these guys are trying to archive it. I'm just saying, no, let it go. Let it go. Yes. All those restaurant sites that play music. Oh God. All done in Flash.

And now, now we just get them in PDF. Yeah, pretty much. So, uh, I guess last week in Russia, which is not a way I typically start a sentence last week in Russia, uh, last week, Russia decided to try to ban memes basically, uh, or a certain type specifically to ban any internet meme that depicts a public figure in a way that has nothing to do with his quote personality and quote, otherwise comedy.

Oh yeah. Comedy. So in honor of that, I, we have a link in the show notes over to, uh, the chive, which basically put together 27 Putin memes, which are absolutely hilarious. So do your part for censorship. And I'm just going to tell you right now, Putin on the Ritz is my, is my all time favorite.

Putin on the Ritz is probably the best one of the bunch. So, uh, well worth a, a look and a damn good chuckle. Yes. I'll put the link in the show notes, but I'm also going to put the, the gif in the show notes because it is just so damn good. It's damn good. Putin on the Ritz. Oh, anyways, uh, another thing that popped up this week, which made me chuckle is, uh, at one point, uh, Google maps put Edward Snowden in the white house.

That was pretty clever. That was clever. It's Edward Snowden. I'm still laughing. I'm sorry. It was very funny. Link in the show notes. You got to look at the visual. It's very funny. Okay. And the last thing that came across this week that, that, uh, caught my eye and made me laugh quite a lot.

Dig put up this, uh, 1991 commercial for Sizzler and calls it goddamn magical. It's funny. This is, this has made the rounds so fast because I saw like right when I got the email in the morning from dig and I watched it immediately and I was just thinking, oh man, I remember when Sizzler was good.

And then, then I was thinking like, no, Sizzler was never good. I just didn't have any taste back then. Sizzler was never good. We were just kids cheese bread. Oh, it was all about the cheese bread. When I first started working in my first job in LA and my girlfriend came out, we would, it was a special event when I got paid and we would go to Sizzler steak and all you can eat shrimp with cheese bread.

Uh, the thing that drives me insane about this video is first off, it's really long. So I, I don't know where they ran this commercial because commercials are not this long. Secondly, 91 does not seem that long ago to me. No, it doesn't. When you watch the video, it looks like it was shot in the seventies or eighties, or at least it's starting to feel that way now.

So everything from the nineties that you and I remember really, really well looks old. Just, just, just think though. It's, I mean, it, everything that we've done on the internet has happened since this video was made. So it is, it is quite a bit ago. Yeah, it just, it looks and feels so old to me, but it is, it's damn magical.

It's about as old as the cheese sticks are. Cheese bread is now when you go to Sizzler, I went there and, oh, what is it? El Segundo. My buddy and I were like, come on, let's go try it just for fun. I think that's one of the last ones left. And, uh, I saw a bunch of them in LA when I was there this time, they're still around.

And, uh, yes, the only thing that was magical were the, the squirts we got for the next three days because it was not good at all. Closing shout outs. Uh, I want to give a shout out to a friend of the show, Kevin, who came out from Toronto for business and bought two rounds of Guinness.

Uh, don't worry, Jason, I drank yours for you. Oh, thanks. You could have, you know, maybe told me since I was in Los Angeles. Uh, I think it was the day that you were running out and trying to get out of town, actually. So sorry about that. Uh, I also want to give a shout out to my sister, Laura, who told me that, uh, she listens in her office and with some of her office mates and also told me last night that I'm going to be an uncle again.

So congratulations, sis. Oh, very nice. Congratulations. There you go. I don't really have any shout outs this week, but I do have one little bonus that I'm going to put in after the, uh, the closing music. I'm going to do a read of Generation X is sick of your bullshit. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a, it's a little piece that Matt Honan wrote a couple of years ago.

We posted it around a little bit, but I want to make sure that everybody can just get a read on it. So I'm just going to do a quick read of it. It's a short little piece and it's a, it's your first GOG bonus. Yeah, it's, it's a great piece. Are you going to do a dramatic reading, Jason? As dramatic as I can get.

Okay. I don't know how dramatic that's going to be. Yeah, it's a great little piece. So, uh, look forward to that. So, uh, I think, I think that's about it for this week. I think we've got enough. Yeah, I think. I think we do too. After my, my lovely day of travel yesterday that nothing went right on and I'm going to go more in my Fitbit.

Oh, well. Yeah. Well, I'll talk to you next week. So, uh, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo and you can follow me on Twitter at Jason.com all spelled out or at JPD.me. And I'm Brian Schumacher and you can follow me on Twitter at, at Slender Fungus, where I basically retweet Grumpy Old Geeks stuff and talk some soccer.

Some smack. Talk some smack. Talk some smack. All right, Jason. I'll talk to you next week, man. Later, man. 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.

If you can't spell Patreon, go to grumpyoldgeeks.com and follow the links. The level of love is still the same. We really appreciate your iTunes ratings and reviews. Please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars. Better yet, turn a like-minded friend onto the show so you can make fun of us around the water cooler on Mondays.

You can also find us at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks or twitter.com slash GOG podcast. Show notes for this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 105. Cheese bread. Stay on target.

Stay on target.

Generation X is sick of your bullshit. Written by Matt Honan and published in Gizmodo on October 18th, 2011. The story starts off with a quote from New York Magazine from an article titled, The Kids Are Actually Sort of All Right from Noreen Malone.

This was published in October 16th, 2011. Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course. This stall we're in has the look of something nastier. Social security, Medicare are going to be diminished at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along.

Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things, quote, going forward, unquote, to borrow the business speak. Economists are warning that even when the economy recuperates, full employment will be lower and growth will be slower, a sad little rhyme that adds up to something decidedly unpoetic.

A majority of Americans say, for the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than its parents, end quote. Generation X is sick of your bullshit. The first generation to do worse than its parents? Please, been there. Generation X was told that so many times that it can't even read those words without hearing Winona Ryder's voice in its heads.

Or maybe it's Ethan Hawke's. Possibly Bridget Fonda's. Generation X is getting older and can't remember those movies so well anymore. In retrospect, maybe they weren't very good to begin with. But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession.

It had even shittier jobs and actually had to pay for its own music. At least when music mattered most to it. Generation X is used to being fucked over. It's lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush and 9-11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis. Generation X wasn't surprised. Generation X kind of expected it. Generation X is a journeyman. It didn't invent hip-hop or punk rock or even electronica. It's pretty sure those dudes in Kraftwerk are boomers.

But it perfected all of them and made them its own. It didn't invent the web, but it largely built the damn thing. Generation X gave you Google and Twitter and blogging. Run DMC and Radiohead and Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. Not that it gets any credit.

But that's okay. Generation X is used to being ignored. Stuffed between too much larger, much more vocal demographics. But whatever. Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey kid. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies, which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories, not participation.

In fairness, Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn't had a real voice since Kurt Cobain blew his brains out. Tupac was murdered.

Jeff Magnum went crazy. David Foster Wallace hung himself. Jeff Buckley drowned. River Phoenix overdosed. Elliot Smith stabbed himself twice in the heart. Axl got fat. Generation X is beyond all that bullshit now. It quit smoking and doing coke a long time ago.

It has blood pressure issues and is heavier than it would like to be. It might still take some ecstasy if it knew where to get some, but probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning. Generation X is tired. It's apparent now, and there's always so damn much to do.

Generation X wishes it had better health insurance and a deeper savings account. It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up. Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that?

Okay? It knows that you're so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one less fucking cigarette? No? Whatever. It's cool. Generation X is used to disappointments. Generation X knows you didn't even read the whole thing.

It doesn't want or expect your reblogs. It picked the wrong platform. Generation X should have posted this to LiveJournal. That's how we roll, bitches! This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Bruise Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel.

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