108: Just Sayin'

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. Got a watch yet, Jason?

A watch? No, no. I still do not have my Apple Watch because it will not be my Apple Watch because I don't want a fucking Apple Watch. All right. Watch this space, dear listeners. No, don't watch this space. No. Okay. Good job, Jason. I listened to your Grump on Grump episode with Tim Ferriss, our little special episode 107 that came out on Tuesday.

Oh, thank you very much. Can't wait to hear yours. I enjoyed an awful lot of it. I'm really intrigued in how the diet thing is going for you, so maybe you can talk a little bit about that. But the biggest point for me, and I love this one, is when you and Tim both went off on being your gun nuts, and then he actually admitted he thinks it's the less realistic I think being a one-man army could be.

Yeah. Which has always been your, like, gotta have the guns in case the shit goes down. Even Tim Ferriss has given up on that. No, no, no, no, no. There's a difference here between owning guns and having them just in case, and then being like, you know, having an armory. There's a big difference between those two. Okay. And I've never said that I wanted an armory. I'm reasonably sure that Tim Ferriss was basically stating that even, you know, having a gun just in case is kind of useless.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no. There's a... All right. Just saying. No, well, you can just be saying and go die in a fire, because I hate... Whenever you say just saying, that's just the worst backhanded comment. Well, that is the point. So it's just like saying, I don't mean to offend you. Well, fuck you. You just did. Just saying.

See, that just means you're not willing to have an argument about it. You just, you have made up your mind, and you're just going to stick your head in the sand. You're right. I have made up my mind. Yeah. I think guns are bad. Okay. Well, I don't. I've been shooting since I was six, and I haven't killed anybody yet. Yet. Yet. Just saying.

I'm moving to your neck of the woods real soon, so watch it, buddy. Just saying. But in... So, I do not have a watch, but guess what I have now again? Another Fitbit. Yes, I do. I lasted 12 days. Yeah, I think you're single-handedly keeping them in business at this point.

Yeah, I've spent at least $550 in their ecosystem, because I've got a Fitbit 1. This is my... Well, I started with the regular, then went to the Ultra, and now this is like my third one, I believe. And also, I've got the ARIA Wi-Fi scale. Okay. Because I'm locked in now. I've got lock-in. What are you going to do?

Apparently you do. I don't know. Yeah, MXV, the roommate got... He was... I gave him my old Misfit Shine, and the band on that old Misfit Shine sucks so bad, it always popped out, and he ended up losing it. And even he was like, three days after, he's just like, man, I feel like I'm wasting my steps when I'm walking, because I'm not counting them.

And he went out and got the new Misfit, which is like $32. It's super cheap, does the exact same stuff that the Shine does, and has a band that won't let it fall out. So, if you want to go on the cheap, check out the new Misfit. Or just use the Argus app on your phone.

I got a plus, man. I can't keep this thing in my pocket all the time. I know. I'm actually due for my phone upgrade in two weeks, so I can't wait. I'm not even going to get the plus. I've already just seen the 6, and it's just a monster. Boy, someday I hope the technology comes around to make these things smaller.

You should try it, though. You should try the plus, because you know what? Everybody I know now that has a 6 is like, yeah, I should have just gone with the plus. A buddy of mine has one, and I've played around with it. I've gone to the Apple Store, I've held them both, and I've got an iPad mini.

I don't need one that I can talk on. I tell you what, if you had the plus, you could just sell the mini, honestly. I know, but I don't want the plus. I just really don't. I like to have my phone on me when I do bike rides, all that sort of stuff. So the smaller, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I might actually buy your Razer off you. No, my Razer is mine.

Although, I told you, that Razer, like the radio in it's terrible. Yeah. So I have the one that I bought to get the chip to put in the Razer, and I just ended up using that. It's like an LG or something like that. But, you know, when I travel, I always have my two phones. Yeah, well, you're great, great.

I am, I know, I know. But if I lose my iPhone, then I at least have the way to call somebody, you know? That's true. And the battery on it lasts for days. Although the 6 Plus, the battery lasts for days, too. What are you going to do? I can't wait for that. My iPhone 5 is just, it lasts about 45 minutes now on a battery.

Yeah, everybody's I know is like that. Unbelievable. Oh, well. What are you going to do? Hey, go crowdfund yourself a new phone. Ah, I love this. You know, we talk about Morrissey quite a bit on this show, which is a little bit strange considering we're a technology show. But, you know, Morrissey's practically a Luddite.

But we like him. And you like him a lot more now. I like him a lot more now because I was not too thrilled when he was touring with Amanda fucking Palmer because, as we all know, I'm not a big fan of hers anyways. Oh, really? I've never heard that before. They toured together and the entire reason that Morrissey has made his comments about crowdfunding is because Amanda Palmer, in her typical subtle way that doesn't draw any attention to herself whatsoever, advocated that Morrissey do crowdfunding in an open letter on Salon because, you know, she couldn't just say it to him in catering.

I know. I'm like, OK, you're touring together and you're such an attention whore that you have to go out and do an open letter to a guy that you're on tour with. Yeah, well, that's the Amanda Palmer way. Why say something privately when I can put it everywhere in public and get attention to me, me, me, me, me. You know, I really liked her after the book and I followed her on Twitter for a little while, but she is too goddamn chatty.

So I had to mute her. But that open letter thing, that was just such a smarmy move. And I'm like, OK, maybe Brian has something there with her, but it definitely changed my tone. I only read like a little bit of it and I'm just like, wow, this is just desperation.

It's so bizarre, like trying to get people on your side to prove your point, you know, and Morrissey is just like, no. Yeah. So Morrissey basically didn't he didn't respond. He was asked in an interview, which is how one should probably do these sorts of things instead of an open letter.

Well, that's how you do it when you're a goddamn rock star. Exactly. So he called crowdfunding a desperate measure and insulting to your audience. What's the next thing you're going to ask? Brush our teeth. So I love Morrissey. What are you going to do? No, I still haven't read his book because it was just too damn depressed. I got 12 pages in and I'm just like, no, I can't do it.

I really enjoyed the book, as I said on the show. And but it is depressing. And you certainly get an idea of why Morrissey became Morrissey. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. I think I could figure that part out. But it was funny. Speaking of Amanda Palmer, I read a tweet from Neil Game. He's like, I'm trying to go to bed, but my wife is reading the Morrissey bio out loud.

And he's like, yeah, it's really depressing. Yeah. Well, she even look at look at Amanda Palmer. She even needs attention from her husband in bed. She can't just read by quietly. She has to do it with an audience. Everything with an audience. She's maybe she added that onto her Patreon page.

You know, give me 200 bucks and I'll read a chapter. I'm just waiting for an open letter to Neil Gaiman on Salon saying, honey, we need milk. Pick it up from the store tonight. That's pretty good. Other good things that happened. Jay-Z took to Twitter to defend title. Yeah, I know we said we were not going to talk about title anymore, but this was so damn funny.

I can't resist. I'll put the link in the show notes. Let's just say people got creative with their hashtags and basically told Jay-Z what is really going on. Yeah, the title facts hashtag was pretty funny. I got to give it to that. That was good stuff. And again, another example of how maybe Twitter isn't the best way to try to get your message across.

At least when you have to say whatever. Yeah, moving on. OK, moving on. The other thing that is a little bit funky about title and this one I actually I feel a little bit bad for title about, but it's not really a surprise. If you want the title app and you go through Apple store to get it, you're going to pay more than if you just went to the site itself.

Well, yeah. Well, they're there, you know, they're they're tacking on the 30 percent that Apple charges to be in the app, you know, in the ecosystem and passing along, passing that along to the consumers. Yeah. So most apps would just, you know, eat that themselves. But, you know, title isn't going to do that.

Well, here's the here's the upside. Nobody's going to end up paying for it because nobody's signing up to title. So it's a moot point. It's a totally moot point. And if you're dumb enough to not just be able to go to the website and sign up, well, then we'll just call that a dumbass fee. Yeah, I agree. It's the idiot tax.

And I wanted to follow up on what we were talking about last week about music and streaming and revenues that you can get from various services. I did finally find the chart that that was in my brain, but I could not find. And I popped it in our show notes for this week. And it's from Digital Music News, how a musician can earn minimum wage in 2015.

So he kind of takes that tact on it. I don't really care about the minimum wage numbers. What I am interested in is you can just see the different revenues and how much you have to be streamed on multiple streaming services to make any amount of money whatsoever. And if you think posting your music on YouTube is doing you any favors, go take a look at this chart.

Yeah, I mean, just my only problem with the chart was they screwed up out of the gate and said, you know, if an artist sells CDs at $12 each, they earn $12 in profit, which means they didn't include, you know, the cost of goods, transportation, you know, driving back and forth to the shows at the post office, packaging.

They didn't factor that into the equations, which means I just feel like the numbers are going to be sloppy for the rest of it. So, you know, it's just it's a litmus test that if you if you screw up the first numbers, chances are the other numbers are probably going to be somewhat skewed, too. Well, I agree that you have to factor in distribution costs for physical products, but you do not for these streams.

So at least for the streaming stuff, I don't think that there's any skew with that whatsoever. Well, you still have to factor in production costs. So I'm going to go polish my gun and then we'll hit the news. Just saying. In the news.

So we've talked in the past about Tesla and the fact that they were going to try and put batteries in houses. Yep. Well, it's done. We're going to have them. I think that's amazing. The power wall. I'm very excited about this.

I think it's a it was a genius move on their part. And I always knew that Tesla was never going to stick with just the cars. It was always about the power. And, you know, I've complained many times about how we're basically in a third world power grid here in the U.S. So I'd like to see anything that can help change that.

So you got two options. You got the 10 kilowatt hour option for thirty five hundred, the seven kilowatt hour model for three thousand. And it is not a tiny battery. It's three feet by four feet. Yeah. And about six inches deep. They show it in the press photos next to, of course, a Tesla.

And it's not tiny. But, you know, you would expect a battery that can run your house to not be tiny. Yeah. So, I mean, this isn't really for people that live in apartments, but if you got a, you know, your standard American dream white picket fence house with a nice big garage, you can definitely get this in there and get yourself off the grid.

And, yeah, there's a lot of stuff coming out with this as far as dealing with power companies and like solar companies like Solar City. It's going to be a pretty big move for them. Yeah. Now, I did miss the announcement itself. I know that there were rumors swirling around right before that they were going to try to lease them and so that you actually didn't own them.

So, I'm glad to see that you do just outright own it. You buy it. It's yours. Good. Well, I'm sure that they're going to do a lease to own option like with the likes of Solar City because that's, you know, that's a whole like overtime deal. So, if they couple with them, expect to see that as like, you know, an add-on bonus.

Right. Upgrade. Yes. So, in other megalomaniacal news, Jeff Bezos launched his rocket, the Blue Origin rocket, which looks more like a pocket rocket if you look at the pictures. It is a very penis-looking spaceship.

Are you going to go up in the space cock today, Joe? Yeah, I'm in the space cock. Yeah. You know, I'm whatever. I mean, it's totally magnanimous. Maniacal, but I'm okay with these basically independent – I'm going to go like Ayn Randian a little bit here.

If our government is basically abandoning space programs, I'm okay with people that have shit tons of money doing it. Somebody's got to. This is – you know, we're human. We're supposed to be reaching towards the stars. If it's Amazon guy doing it, fine, because our government certainly isn't bothering anymore.

Yeah, yeah. I just wonder when, you know, space Amazon deliveries – like when the drone just can't handle it, put it on the space cock. I need it now. Fire it off the rocket immediately. I just kind of wish he would have stuck with, you know, saving journalism, which was his original thing when he bought the Washington Post.

But Washington Post hasn't really gotten that much better. I haven't paid any attention to it because it's the Washington Post and – yeah. So there you go. So, yeah. In local news, Santa Monica, the city in which I call myself a resident and I own a property, has moved to ban most Airbnb rentals.

Well, this will be good, I think. If it forces them into, like, you know, dealing with local municipal regulations, eh, we'll see. Yeah. No, I'm, you know, I'm, on the one hand, owning a property here in Santa Monica. There's a bit of a hackle that goes up that says it's my damn property.

I get to do what I want. But this is my point, and this is why I've not liked Uber and Airbnb and all this economy 2.0 crap, which is you don't get to disrupt the system by just ignoring the regulations and rules. And that's exactly what these companies have done.

So I'm 100% behind this, you know. Basically, they're saying, yeah, you could do this if you followed all the regulations and rules and taxes that everybody else has to. Yeah, and I think it's, eventually it's going to move into that because everybody wants their tax dollars.

That's it. I bet they don't even give a shit about the regulations. They just want their tax money. You give them their tax money, everybody's happy. Yeah. But you know what makes me happy? What? Venice Beach has passed the topless sunbathing proposal. Okay. So, you know, when we come down, we might have to shift from Finn McCool's down to like a picnic on the beach.

Look, we've had Go Topless Day in Venice every year since I've lived here, once a year. And obviously, who cares? Women can go topless if they want to. This happens in Europe, and it's always been that way in Europe, and society has not crumbled. So I think we're okay.

The problem with this is I have gone down to the Go Topless Day in Venice once or twice, and it's never the people that you wish were topless. Of course. And I have been to the beaches of Europe, and it is hit or miss. It is definitely hit or miss. Speaking of misses, Marissa Meyer missed her target, and she was docked $13 million off her paycheck.

Yeah, I bet that really hurt from the other $42 million she still made. Exactly. $42 million to run Yahoo into the ground. The only way that that company is in business right now is because they own 15% of Alibaba. Yeah. That's it. That's the only reason that Yahoo still exists.

You and I could run Yahoo better in one hour on Friday. In fact, I think we do on this podcast. I don't know. When was the last time that you or anybody you know has been at Yahoo? My parents still have it set to the default homepage on their browser.

Exactly. Once the actuarial tables start to kick in and we start to lose the greatest generation, the Yahoo numbers are just going to fall through the floor. They have a timeline right now. You can probably go by an actuarial table that will show the death of Yahoo.

I think so. And speaking of death, looks like Twitter's in a bit of a spiral. Yeah, they had a little oopsie. A little? Yeah. A couple billion dollar oopsie. I like it when people finally start to realize that these companies aren't worth gazillions of dollars.

Oh, yeah. I'm not saying that Twitter has no value. It certainly does. But it does not have the value that we seem to give it. Well, all these people have these outrageous valuations. I mean, they did bring in $436 million last year. Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, Twitter does have value.

It's not going to die. I don't think so. But I see this as one of the first times that any of these big companies have actually gotten whacked on their insane valuations. Well, and this was all because of, you know, automated trading and an errant, you know, Twitter account. It was it was a comedy of technological errors.

Yes. But just reporting bad news. I mean, I'm focused more on the news than the errors that published it early. So. Yeah. So anyways, speaking of horrible technological news. Oh, this is so disappointing to me. You don't you don't like the new Microsoft browser?

No, I was so I mean, the whole all the publicity leading. Leading up to this, we've talked about it a bunch of times about Project Spartan and how this browser was going to be stripped down and just great and fast. There is more shit in this browser than you can shake a stick at.

Well, the whole band is in there. They even shoved Bono. Oh, I know. What are you going to do? See, yeah. Make a YouTube joke. Everybody was. So, yeah. No, no, no. My problem with it is now I've got the edge of glory from Lady Gaga stuck in my head because that was the first song that came to mind.

I'm like, no, get out. Get out. It's incredibly strange that you would know Lady Gaga song and I didn't. God, it was everywhere for a long time. I'm good at ignoring things. Well, yes, I know that. Yeah, I'm just it's just annoying. Why didn't they just make, you know, a really lean standards compliant browser that everybody would like, you know, as a as a well, pretty much X developer at this point.

I look at this and go, oh, great. More crap that I have to support. Who cares if you can doodle on a page? Look, I just see Microsoft as forward thinking because that's, you know, a lean browser is how Firefox started and how Chrome started. And they skip directly ahead to being full of crap that we don't need.

So Microsoft just said, well, why don't we skip the middle part and just go straight to the end? Yeah. Bloatware out of the gate. See, forward thinking. Speaking of bloaty, Chipotle, anyone? Yeah. You know, I know you're not a fan. I find it to be delicious and one of the better fast food options you can get and certainly healthy if you order it correctly.

This this article was a little bit misleading. They called it Chipotle delivery. It's technically not them. They made a deal with a company called Postmates, which delivers which will now deliver Chipotle burritos, bowls and tacos in 67 U.S. cities. Unfortunately, the Postmates is not quite ready for prime time.

Yeah. They're like the Uber of diarrhea. Yeah. Because they will bring Chipotle right to your door. Chipotle is good. And a big part of your buddy, Tim Ferriss, is a slow carb diet, I believe. Well, no. I mean, yes, the ingredients are there. But whatever Chipotle puts in their food, I mean, from it's from mouth to ass in 30 minutes or less.

This is from the guy who loves Del Taco. Oh, well, Del Taco doesn't send me screaming to the border. OK. OK. So a Florida man named Robert Heath has filed an age discrimination lawsuit against Google. Yay. I love it.

Yeah. This is great. So, yeah, he's he's 64 now, but he was 60 when he applied at Google. And everybody said, like all of his tests, he was overqualified or not just overqualified. He was completely qualified for the job. Right. And they didn't give it to him. So now he's he's he's suing them.

He's trying to get a class action suit against them. Yeah. Maybe it's probably interviewed by a 22 year old kid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope he wins this lawsuit. I think it's it's a good thing. We've talked about this many times. And I mean, this guy, I mean, our main argument for hiring older people is their experience.

And, you know, this guy, it's not even just experience. I mean, he actually he knows his crap better than those kids do. Yeah. No, he is a qualified developer. I'm just, you know, if I'm coding at 60, then shoot me now. Exactly. I have one shotgun shell that says retirement plan on it.

That'll be it. So what do you think of this new thing with Google trying to buy patents to thwart trolls? I mean, I know we got we have to do something. I don't necessarily think that Google gave up do no evil a long time. I go. So I'm not exactly trusting them to go around and buy up all the patents.

Yeah, this is a trust. Well, it's a trust in giving a shit issue is how I think of it. It's like a if you're selling them your patent, do you trust them to not do anything evil with it in the future? And do you give a shit if they do or not because they're handing you a boatload of money?

You know, so it's like you have the moral side. You have the amoral side to whoever is selling the patents to them. And either way, I really just don't care. Yeah, honestly, this is not the way to fight patent trolls. The way to fight patent trolls is to get rid of software patents altogether.

I thought it was just to give Adam Carolla a lot of money. Yeah, that too. That too. OK, just checking. So Top Gear is finally dead. It is completely dead. News came out this week that that we all knew that they weren't going to do it. But James May finally made it official that he is not coming back to Top Gear.

So no more Top Gear. Now somebody has to run over there with bags of the monies and all the money. Yes. And I'm sure that they are in negotiations now. Oh, I'm sure they are as well. There's just so much money to be made. And those guys still want to keep doing the show. And they're very good at it.

So they're extraordinarily good at it. It made me care about, well, not really care about cars, but made me watch a car show. It actually made me interested in cars. I know more about cars now than I ever wanted to. I'm never going to buy one like that they have on the show. But, you know, I go buy the cheapest car I can get.

But it's fun to watch. And it's still, it is definitely, the show is not about cars. Everybody that watches it knows that. Yeah. But what people didn't know, this is funny. I put this in the show notes early in the week. There was a thread on Reddit. It was talking about tattoos and the Apple Watch.

And people were like, it thinks I'm dead. I can't find my heartbeat. And Apple finally confirmed it, you know, like a week later. But yeah, Reddit knew it before everybody that if you have certain colored tattoos on your wrist, it will not be able to, the light that they use to read your blood vessels can't get through the ink.

Or like, it has a reaction to the ink and doesn't respond properly. Yeah. Well, this is not terribly surprising. And what are you going to do? I don't, there's, you know, it's a technology thing. It's not, it's not like Apple went out of their way to, to screw with people that have tattoos.

Yeah, yeah, it's just stuff in the ink. You know, it's also, it's a little surprising that absolutely nobody that works for Apple has wrist tattoos and found this out themselves. Well, this could be why they make you go try it on first. Uh-huh. You know. There you go. So, as much as I complain about big data, and it terrifies me, and I think it terrifies you as well, some big data came out this week that I find incredibly interesting.

They crunched the numbers for Spotify and basically have discovered that age 42, which I am rapidly approaching on and you've already passed, is basically where we hit a musical midlife crisis. And we start to listen to the music that the kids listen to because we're starting to feel old, which explains your Lady Gaga.

I was going to say, this completely explains why I know who Lady Gaga is and you don't. Yes. Well, I listened to the, I love the first Lady Gaga album. She lost me after that. And I'm not quite there yet. So, I have not hit my musical midlife crisis and I'm not listening to the music of the kids, though expected in the next year, me talking about Wiz Khalifa or people like that.

Well, see, that's the funny thing. Yeah, like pop music was not the music of my teens. But I have been listening to a lot more of the old stuff, like Dead Kennedys and Old Screeching Weasel and stuff like that. So, they might be on to something here. They might be, yeah. They basically, the study goes on to basically say that age 35 is kind of where you've hit your prime musical taste, where you are listening to the most stuff that you will ever listen to in your entire life.

And you're very knowledgeable about music. And then it basically declines. And then around 42, you briefly go back to popular music and you basically spend a couple of months going, oh yeah, I'm listening to all this stuff. And then you finally go, get off my lawn and go back to the stuff you liked. Yeah. It's a strange curve that that follows.

It's interesting. But again, we've talked about this many times on the show. There are no subcultures anymore. There is only basically just pop. And I wonder how that would skew if things were different. If there were still, you know, like really strong industrial subcultures.

And I was listening to really great music that, you know, nobody puts out anymore. Yeah, most pop music. I'd rather listen to a cat in a blender than listen to Taylor Swift. But yeah, me too. What are you going to do? So the Japanese have come up with a kind of a cool little plan.

They're the Japanese post group IBM and Apple have partnered to deliver millions of iPads to Japan's senior citizens. That's great. With yeah, with different different apps to make sure that they're taking their medicine or if they've fallen and they can't get up, that kind of thing. And I think it's really cool because I think it's besides the safety aspect of it, I think it's it'll help them cognitively to be able to, you know, use technology.

Yeah, because as we know, you use it or lose it. So if they've got these kinds of things on, you know, they're using digital stuff every day and learning how to use an iPad. I think that will just improve their quality of life. So I do. I agree completely. And I think this is a great move.

In fact, I mean, I had an idea very similar to this a while back of a buddy of mine actually does basically an Uber for older people. So they feel, you know, safer and they have very, very calm drivers who are used to dealing with older people. And I had talked to him at one point about an idea of basically pushing his company a little bit bigger and going around to to retirement homes with things like, you know, iPads and teaching them how to use them and setting them up with FaceTime so they can talk to their families and all that sort of stuff.

I think things like this are great. And I applaud Japan for being forward thinking. Yeah. And we've got the press release in the show notes, but the the article under it is creating digital assistance for Japan's senior citizens. Read that one because that's from the guy who designed it.

Yeah. Like one or one of the lead designers on it. So that one is a worthwhile read for sure. The other one is just, you know. Yeah. The other one's press release. It's a press release. Um, now we've talked many times about putting your stuff in somebody else's digital yard.

Well, uh, this was, this is actually an article I found on slate, which I don't know how I got there. Um, I'm sure it's my fault. I'm sure it's somewhere along the way. I'm just saying, um, it's called deleting the family tree, uh, ancestry.com shuttered. It's my family.com site a while back.

And they said that they were going to give an export option for people and they did give them an export option, but it didn't actually export everything that they said it would in all of the conversations were gone, completely gone. And some of these people had 10 years of family history. They were using it the whole time.

Yeah. And it's just, it's, it's off to the vapor, you know? And I just, you know, if it's important to you, you don't put it in the cloud. I'm sorry. It's why I still use quick and instead of using something like a mint, I just, I'm not going to store my stuff out there.

I'm going to store it locally myself where I can do backups myself. Yeah. I was using fresh books for a while and they will email you like daily backups. Let's see. Well, that's good. Companies like that are smart where you, you know, you need to have your data on your computer. Well, I mean, this is like, you know, this is 10 years ago.

The site started. So, you know, data export, my data, all that stuff wasn't very prevalent back then. Although I like to say that I was a leader in the space with blogrolling.com because I gave you seven different export options, but these guys did not. And, you know, people got burned by it. And I just want to say, get used to it.

You know, if you're going to, if you're going to put your stuff in somebody else's yard and always remember that the cloud is just a euphemism for somebody else's computer. That is true. And Microsoft has rolled out something that is both, if it actually worked well, I would be more terrified.

So you're talking about their age guessing tool, eh? Yes. Well, the how-old.net, which is going all over the place today as people are figuring out that, you know, that they can't guess your age at all. I ended up 22, which I thought was flattering.

So thank you, Microsoft. Yeah. So I'm a 25-year-old female. Oh, okay. That makes sense, actually. Hence the Lady Gaga. Fuck you. I'm just saying. Yeah. So, I mean, it's kind of just a cute little front-end rollout for their facial image and speech recognition APIs that they're releasing.

Yeah. It doesn't work very well, but that's the whole point of big data. As it gets more and more data, it will. Right. And we're going to talk about this in the next section a little bit more. But, yeah, they totally underestimated how many people were going to go check it out because everybody's a narcissist. Yes, exactly.

Now, on a previous episode, we talked about the Waze issue with the LAPD, where they were, you know, trying to get Google to shut down the police tracking on it. And then they started doing their, like, you know, okay, well, let's just spam it with fake data, which Waze was smart enough to say, yeah, this is fake data.

Well, they've reached a little bit of a deal with the L.A. cops, and they're going to start using Waze for Amber Alerts. So, you'll be able to track Amber Alerts in your Waze app. We have Amber Alerts everywhere now already. They come through your phone unless you shut them off.

They're on all the freeway signs. I get it, but okay. Yeah, this is, you know. We need them in another Waze. And again, you're driving. Aren't you supposed to not get distracted with alerts? Yeah, you would think so. Okay, just checking. I still don't use Waze.

I'm never going to use Waze because, A, it just makes your phone ridiculously hot. Even when you're charging, your battery will go down. On a ride from LAX to the Valley, my battery went from, like, 90% to 70% while I was charging, and my phone actually turned off at one point because it got too hot.

Again, I've tried Waze here in LA, and I personally find it to be ultimately useless here. A lot of people swear by it, but there are people that are more comfortable trying to cross 18 lanes of traffic with no stoplight because Waze told them to go that way, while I'd rather spend the two or three minutes just going in a way that isn't going to make me want to kill myself.

I'm sorry, Brian. Badges. Everybody wants a badge. That's right. Badges. Eat your stinking badges. Okay, and so you've got this thing about a burger. I just thought this was awesome. So McDonald's apparently has the build-your-own-burger station, right?

Okay, I did not know that. I did not know that either. I've never seen one because I don't go to McDonald's, which I'm assuming you don't either. You just go to McDonald's. No, I do not. So soon you'll be able to go to Chipotle and get your, you know, build-my-own-intestinal-distress machine. Well, they already do that. That's the new model for fast food, which is probably why McDonald's is trying to do this.

So this dude basically put together a burger that ended up costing $890. Wow. Yeah, but he found a bug in the system, and he only paid $25 for it. Smart. All right. But you've got to see this burger to just, it's been making the rounds. I don't know if, well, actually, it's not that bad.

There's only 11,000 shares on it, so I'm guessing most people haven't seen this. But yeah, he christened it the Big Macs. Turned out it was 3.8 pounds when he was done. Well, he put a lot of tomatoes in there, so that's healthy. He put a lot, I mean, basically, he just maxed out all the buttons.

Yeah, that's very funny. I wonder how he got it for so cheap. That's pretty good. But the funny thing is, I mean, this reminds me of Scooby-Doo. Like when he would make the Scooby snack, and it would be like six feet tall, and he would get out the string and tie it down. Yeah, this thing's pretty massive.

I mean, I thought 890 bucks would basically get you a McDonald's franchise. Pretty close. Okay. So we're going to have to have a new segment. We're going to call it Shark Fin Watch. Okay. We're going to have to get Bob up and get us a nice bumper for that. Duffel. A service that packs and ships your suitcase.

Oh. The Shark Fin Lazy Bastard. I can't wipe my own ass watch. Yeah. So they send you a box, and you put your clothes in it, like your general travel clothes. And then when you're ready to go on a trip, when they get it, they say, professionally photograph.

I'm like, I don't care if it's amateurly photographed. Who gives a shit? Just show me a picture of my shirt. And then you pick what you want, and then they will FedEx it from their warehouse to the hotel that you're getting to. Okay? This might be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Ten bucks a month just to store your stuff in a hundred bucks per trip.

And then when you're done, you send it back to them. They will launder your clothes and put them back in storage. Now, two problems with this. One. Only two? Well, one, it's fucking stupid. Okay. I'm sorry. Pack your own clothes, you lazy bastard. Yeah. Two, if I'm traveling with clothes that I want to wear on a trip, chances are I'm going to want to wear those same clothes when I'm at home.

Yeah, probably. And they also say, it's like, well, you get to, you recycle your wardrobe because you rarely travel in the same clothes. Like, you rarely travel home in the same clothes that you traveled to a location into. I'm like, okay, well, what if I really like the outfit that I flew in on and I'd like to take it home with me?

You know, it's like, there are many flaws in this besides the fact that it is just ridiculously stupid. You know, just bring back, bring back the service that just sells me quarters. You know, I was just thinking we should start a new startup called Booger and we will, it's a service that will come pick your nose for you.

Oh man. The funny thing is I actually came up with an idea similar to this, which I, somebody has built since then. Were you drunk? Always. You gotta be drunk to come up with these ideas. Of course. That's the best time to come up with an idea. No, I wanted to have like small space storage in a city.

So if I, if I'm traveling to a place all the time, uh, you basically, they have a tub that you have your stuff in and they just deliver to your hotel and then you use that stuff while you're there and then you put it back in and go. And when you leave, they pick it up. You could leave a gun in every city, Jason. Exactly. The funny thing is Tim Ferriss took this.

And if you go back and read his article on urban caching, where he credits me for the ideas with the urban caching. Now he leaves trunks at the hotels that he goes to. And then they have his stuff waiting for him. I'm like, okay, well, it doesn't scale for long-term for a lot of people, but you know, if you're Tim Ferriss, you can get away with it.

But you know, he took my idea and just kind of Ferrissed it up, I guess. But this is like, this is the globalization of what my original idea was. And I eventually determined that my idea was stupid. So they, they obviously are still drunk and haven't sobered up yet. Yeah.

Oh, and, uh, finally, I had a ton of drone news, but I just kept it out today because there's just one article that's making the rounds right now. And it's the age of drone vandalism begins with an epic NYC tag. Now, a, it wasn't very epic.

No. It looks like. It's a red line. Yeah. It's, it's like just a little bit of red paint. But this guy made a, this guy Katsu made a proof of concept drone that could, you know, tag places that the normal human couldn't get to. And, you know, this is just the beginning of it.

The drone news this week was, was pretty epic and we could just devote a whole show to it, but it's all these people that are saying, this is coming, this is coming. It's like all, it's all the ideas that we came up with two years ago. Yeah. And now they're like. All the bad shit that's going to happen when everybody gets their hands on drones. Yeah. And it's all finally, you know, it's, people are starting to come up with the same ideas we had and they're actually doing it.

Like, no, we came up with the idea and we thought that's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that. So anyway, my friend, uh, Jay Goldman, who was a previous guest on the show, he drove by that spot, uh, just a couple hours ago and, uh, posted a picture on Instagram that the billboard's already been replaced.

Yeah. You know, Banksy is a graffiti artist. I'm tired of artists always being attached to this. This Katsu guy is not a artist. This is just a dick with a fucking spray paint can. I've never heard of the guy. I don't follow the, uh, you know, the graffiti, the graffiti vandal crowd, but everybody knows Banksy and Banksy knows how to make art.

Yes. He is a real artist. Not the rest of you. Anyways, moving on, moving on. Security. It news that should be surprising to absolutely no one.

Uh, we've got the hack of the week and it's WordPress. It's back. Yes. WordPress had a, uh, consistent, uh, no, not a consistent, a critical persistent, you know, it happens, uh, basically cross site scripting.

Oh, day that came out and, uh, hat tip to Sam Harrelson for this one. He's the first one to, uh, tweet me about it. So he gets the, he gets the credit. He's at Sam Harrelson on Twitter. But, um, this one was interesting because it was pretty massive. It hit the latest version, the 4.2 branch of WordPress, which is like the latest.

And, uh, it was nasty, but you had to have comments on and you had to have approved a malicious comment to make it work. Uh, and if you have comments on your, you just stop it anyway. Yeah. Um, even if we have comments that we ended up using a third party, like discuss or something like that.

Cause WordPress comments are a terrible, terrible system. Yes. Hat tip to WordPress though. It was, I mean, hours and they were done. Yeah. They fixed it quick, you know, but that doesn't mean anything if you don't hire someone to keep track of your WordPress site.

Okay. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, 90% of the people out there will probably not install this patch for at least six months. And, uh, if you're a hacker, go to town. Yeah. Go to town. Cause basically kajillions of sites are, are infected at the moment or open for you to, uh, you know, have your merry way.

Yeah. So as I mentioned, I'm moving back to California and now I'm really excited because you guys actually have a Republican or not a Republican, a representative, uh, who's a Democrat named, uh, Ted Lou. Yep. I like this guy. Me too. I love this story.

Yes. Uh, in, uh, in a panel in DC, uh, basically he came out and said, uh, encryption backdoors are technologically stupid. I love it. He's got a computer science degree from Stanford. So yes. And, uh, yeah, he's a, one of our representatives. So I'm good on him.

Yep. Finally. No, it was great. I put a link in the show notes of his actual testimony on this panel and it is queued up. So you can just press play and watch it for like five minutes. And the dude rules and he's just telling everybody on the panel that everything that they've said is just bullshit. I love it.

Yes. And, and not to be partisan. So let's also mention the Republican from Texas, Will Hurd, who also has a computer science degree and worked in information security. And he basically agrees and shares his skepticism of the security of such backdoors. Excellent. So, hey, somebody in Texas. This is, this is a, this is an issue that goes across the aisle, as they would say.

Yes. So yeah, check this out. And it was, it was just, it was fun to, fun to watch. Honestly. Um, what was also fun to watch was, uh, there's an article on Ars Technica on how to crack a master lock in, uh, eight tries or less. Yeah, this is terrifying. It's not terrifying because I can crack a master lock with a tin can and a pair of scissors in under 10 seconds.

So this whole thing, uh, uh, Sammy, uh, cam car who it's interesting. This guy is everywhere now. Cause I just saw him on the, uh, picking up chicks episode of the Tim Ferriss experiment. Tim used him to like do all sorts of page scraping and stuff like that. And analysis on where he can find chicks and all that stuff.

But this guy is, this guy is really cool. He is a super smart, like Uber hacker. And, uh, he's got a YouTube channel. Check it out. Link will be in the show notes. And he's made a device that you can just plug the lock into and it'll just. Open it for you. Yeah. So it's very neat.

But yeah, honestly, uh, when I took my urban escape and evasion class, one of the first things we learned was how to get rid of a master lock in, in literally under 10 seconds. Right. Well, that's comforting. Yeah. They are not safe. And by the way, the funny thing is, uh, Kevin Mitnick, when he was on the run, had all of his papers and his money and he went to the gym and he used a master lock and he came back and it was all gone because the fun thing is it's almost unnoticeable how you, when

you open a master lock with a shim that you can't even tell it's done if you, unless you know where to look on the back of the hasp, there'll be just a few little scratches, but otherwise people come back. The locks are back intact. You don't even break the lock. Right. So this is just a fun hack. It's not, it's nothing new.

Master locks are terrible. Never buy one. Um, they're just, they're, they're ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculous, the NSA has made a coloring book for kids. Yeah. This is our government money at work. Now I look at this and I'm like, okay, just scratch my head going.

What the hell? The thing about this is the verge article has a bunch of scans of the coloring book. Yes. And I put this in here just so I could give our listeners a pro tip. If you're scanning something and you have back bleed coming through the scan, there's a fix for that.

You put a black piece of paper behind what you're scanning and it fixes it all. You never get bleed. That is true. And we learned this in 1993 when Missy and I were working on spew, uh, scanning all the copies of Vogue and Cosmo so she could have her supermodel picks up on the website.

But yeah, if you're scanning things, put a piece of black paper behind it and you won't look so amateurish when you're on the verge talking about, uh, how the NSA is taking over your children's minds. That would require journalism. Oh yeah. Well, I'm just saying, man, I'm trying to drop some knowledge, tips and tricks.

Yes. So did you see the Tesla hack? Uh, I did. It was very clever. Yeah. Did you see it in real time? No, I did not. Oh, I was, I don't, uh, you know, you know my thoughts on Twitter. Yes. Yes. Um, so I was watching in real time and everybody's like, Oh, it looks like, uh, Elon got hacked and then Tesla got hacked.

And the funny thing about this was, uh, simple social engineering hack. Uh, they called up the, the first, I think they called the phone company, had them, you know, transfer all the lines because you can call the phone company and just spoof your caller ID.

So that's how they got through that and then had the lines transferred and then they called network solutions and shame on Tesla for using network solutions. That's the most egregious part about this whole thing. I think. And yeah, we're not fans. No fuck network solutions.

They are the devil. And then basically they took over everything because once they got into network solutions and change the, you know, the email addresses and for everything, it's, it's Bob's your uncle. Yeah. So that's, that's game over. So yeah, social engineering hacks are still the biggest problem.

People are always going to be the problem. Yes. Yes. Always. Oh, actually not always because the American airlines hack was not a people problem. It was a software glitch with a bad map. Yes. Apparently on Tuesday night, uh, American airlines, uh, had to ground a few dozen flights, which means hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars actually, which is when it gets very weird after a software issue with pilot iPads, which prevented planes from taking off.

First off, I didn't know pilots had iPads. Yes. American, American, well, American is the, they've got a full fleet of iPads. Yeah. So everybody's got iPads in the, in the cockpits, but this was a specific glitch around a duplicate of the Ronald Reagan airport in DC. Yeah.

And so that was it. So it was a subset of flights. It was only 70, I think total. And you know, the, the crazy thing is they're not getting an update till May 8th. So yeah, I mean, it's a map update. Come on guys. And it's a week. Come on.

I mean, WordPress fixed it in a couple hours. Jeez. When WordPress is doing better than you. Yeah. And they don't even get paid. Well, I guess they do get paid, but it's open source, man. Uh, they're developers, whatever. Yeah. I can go on forever. Um, but anyway, yeah. The fact that it's going to take, you know, that long to fix a map problem.

Yeah. That seems a little crazy. Yeah. Well, that's what you get when you fly American. Well, and I also bet they don't keep the developers on staff. And so they're outsourcing it. So yeah, it's a, it's a, that's the thing. It's a third party app. Yeah. But with this much press, I would think they would have guys working around the clock to fix this, you know, I think stranger things have happened.

Stranger things have happened. You know, it would really be strange if people that we tell to use one password actually used one password. That's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. But there's a really cool article on the agile bits website. Agile bits is the company that makes one password. It's called a one password, find my stuff, how to not lose anything ever again.

All right. This is a clever hack using one password. It's kind of tedious and probably never going to be implemented by most people. Yeah. But what came out of the comments was the, the readers of the post were like giving agile bits tips and they're like, Hey, actually that's a pretty good idea.

So we might actually see some of the things for tracking physical objects inside of one password actually show up. But, um, I want to give a shout out to my friend, Lisa, who, uh, last night at, uh, at the bar, she said, uh, yeah, I was listening to your show and I use one password.

I'm like, really you do? She's like, yeah, I have one password for every site that I go to. Wow. So there is one. Um, no, no, no, no. She just uses a single password. Oh, she was making a funny. I got it. So that is the one password all our listeners probably do use.

Yeah. So I did tell her that there is no excuse if everything in her life goes kaboom. Uh, and, uh, she's like, yeah, I know. I don't care. That was the thing. She just didn't care. Well, that, yeah, that's the thing. And, uh, by the way, if everything in your life does go kaboom and you find yourself in a court of law, guess what?

They can access your entire Facebook existence. And, uh, hopefully you hadn't been very happy on it. Yeah. Well, your entire social media existence souped to nuts. Yes. Uh, this is, this is, I think one of the most important articles of the week. Yeah. Uh, it didn't, unfortunately it is a slate article just saying, but yeah, people who were claiming damages for, you know, like light or was it, uh, emotional distress, repeated

injury, uh, nightmares and slip sleep deprivation, loss of enjoyment of life. That's the one loss of enjoyment of life. Which is the strangest thing I've ever heard loss of enjoyment of life. And it's like, does that mean your entire life? Does just, that mean part of your life? Does that mean just getting up and shuffling to the bathroom in the morning that sucks or whatever in the article, one judge has specifically defined, defined it as the loss of watching one's children grow, participating in recreational activities and drinking in the many other pleasures that life has to offer.

So basically that just means you're dead pretty much. Yeah. Um, yeah. So they're using these people's, you know, Facebook posts against them to not pay out. And I, I, this is a double edged sword. It's completely. Yeah. This is why I found this article to be absolutely fascinating.

And I think everybody should read it. Uh, it's, it's really good. It is talking more from the point of people who are basically being told that no, you know, obviously you have not suffered anything because look, there's pictures of you smiling on your Facebook. Uh, but I see the flip end of the coin, which is, you know, this is a great way to stop people that are basically gaming the system, um, you know, for things like workman's comp, you know, we're, we're basically paying them and we know this is happening.

Uh, you used to have to have private investigators to follow them and things like that. But now you can just go to their Facebook page and see, well, you're obviously able to work because there you are jet skiing. Yeah. Well, there are different, there are different aspects to this. Like, you know, if you're dealing with somebody who's dealing with, um, sexual abuse, which is what the article starts off with, it's like, okay, yeah, they can be happy sometimes, but generally they're probably dealing with, you know, psychiatrists and therapists and all this other stuff.

So they want to post the few times that they're happy. Well, and people just do anyways, that's the, that's the bias of social media. And we've talked about that hundreds of times people in general, except, you know, except unless they're you and I don't post the negative things that happened to them or the things that they're angry about.

Everybody presents their best version of themselves online. That's human nature. And that's what anybody would do no matter what has happened to them. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. When you're coming to the workman's comp thing, I understand looking at pictures for that, but for the most part, I mean, if you're stupid enough to go get a, get an, uh, a settlement because your back is out and you're on workman's comp and then you go golf and take a picture of you golfing, then we get back to the idiot tax on that one.

You deserve whatever you get. But I mean, my mom has, she's, she was on workman's comp for years and on disability. And we had a private investigator outside the house for two weeks, taking pictures through the windows, this whole nine yards. And she's legitimately on disability and can't work.

And it's, you know, I understand them trying to, you know, not pay out because everybody's after, you know, they're out for themselves, but that's the whole thing. Everybody's got to be out for themselves. That's why they have that. And people steal and whatever. Um, but it is a spiral there, Jason.

Oh, completely, completely. But I mean, it's a huge invasion of privacy when you have these, these investigators outside of your house all the time. We ended up just going out and like taking them, you know, coffee and lemonade. And we're just like, you know, uh, in some, the beginning they would drive off and pretend that, you know, they were just looking for directions.

And then finally we snuck up on them and we're like, dude, you don't have to run every time we know you're here. It's okay. And then they'd like two days later, they never came back. But well, I mean, now the same thing is happening online. It's, you know, we're, we're being stalked and we've always talked about if you post something on social media, well, you're an idiot because it's public, no matter what you say, but now we're starting to see this being used in law and I don't know how I feel about it.

It's weird. Yeah. Like I said, it is, it was definitely a double-edged sword and people who think that their posts are private, they can be subpoenaed for them and they have to give them up. And yeah, I don't think that most people understand that. I, you do need to, to get that, that anything that you post, anything online, you can be subpoenaed and you have to turn it over.

Yeah. No choice. Yeah. Or you can just get a contempt of court and go sit in a jail cell. But anyway, yeah, this is, this is going to be playing out over the next, you know, 10 years. The rest of our lives. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So, yeah, but it's a really good read, even, even though it's on slate, I definitely recommend checking it out.

So good find, Brian. Oh, thank you very much. At the library. I managed to mostly read an entire book that isn't about Dune. Oh my goodness. The spice did not flow?

The spice did not flow this week. And unfortunately, my brain didn't flow very quickly either. I wasn't able to entirely finish it, but I'm about three quarters of the way in. This is the new book by Ian Tregellis, who we've talked about a couple times on the big show here. It's called The Mechanical, and it's book one of a proposed series called The Alchemy Wars.

And it is very, very good and very interesting. And he's really, really good at the speculative past fiction. Yeah, yeah. He's the one that does like the demons and Nazis kind of thing, right? Yeah, yeah. The first series that I read by him that I really loved was The Demons and Nazis.

And this one goes back a little bit further and imagines that basically alchemy worked. And somebody back in like 1600s, some Dutch guy basically invented robots. Oh, and they took over the entire world. And basically, we have them as slaves now.

Okay. And France went over to the new world to kind of get away from it and are fighting the good fight against them. It's really interesting. I'm loving it so far. So he's just becoming quickly one of my favorite writers. I'm going to have to check out some of his books. I really think that you should go back and read the Nazi ones.

I can't remember what they were called offhand, but they were fantastic. I will search our show notes and go find them for sure. Because our show notes are searchable at grumpyoldgeeks.com. If you want to find any of the old links we talk about, just go search. Yes, search away. Speaking of search, I am searching inside myself.

Oh, boy. I am reading Search Inside Yourself, The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness, and World Peace by Chade Meng Tan. Okay. I think they just call him Meng at the Googleplex. So what this is, is I found this from a Business Insider article on here's what Google teaches employees in its Search Inside Yourself course.

All right. And the article intrigued me enough where I went and got the book, and I'm almost done with it. And it's kind of a well-written book on meditation, mindfulness, and compassion. Yeah. Because it doesn't take itself too seriously.

It's tongue-in-cheek. He makes pretty funny jokes every now and again. Some of his jokes are just terrible. But for the most part, there's actually some really good advice in the book if you're thinking more about meditation and mindfulness and emotional control and things like that. I was surprised that I actually liked this book.

I might have to read this because I am continuing my ongoing struggle with meditation and mindfulness. And I dip in and use Good Friend of the Show's, the Buddhify 2 app a lot, and then it goes away for months at a time. And then I start to realize I'm getting really pissy, and I get back to it.

So maybe this is a good read for me. Yeah. You know what I do now? Basically, I put it in my calendar. I have Todoist that I use all my stuff through, and I have a recurring thing. Every day, I have one hour of no computer, and I also have 20 minutes of meditation just filtered into my day every day.

Nice. And I can move it around if I have a call or something, but that is in my Todoist every day, and I get notifications where it's like, turn your shit off and go relax. So one hour a day, I literally have no gadgets. I turn my phone off. I turn my computer off.

I go sit on the couch, and I read a book. Nice. And it's really nice. Or I go for a walk. You know, do something, but if I go for a walk, I leave my phone at home. There's just, I have an hour every day now of no gadgets, and then I also couple that with the meditation, and it's really just calming.

I really enjoy it, and the only way that I could do it every day was to schedule it. Right. And that, because if you just say, oh, I should meditate now, oh, but I got all these emails. Yeah, you're never going to get around to it. Never going to get around to it. And speaking on that side, I found an article in The Guardian called, Distraction is a Kind of Obesity of the Mind, and it's a quote by Matthew Crawford, who I've never heard of before.

But he's got a, he's apparently been writing books, and he's got a new one coming out, The World Beyond Your Head on Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. It doesn't come out until later next week, or early next week. I'm going to pick it up and check it out, and I'll let you know if it's any good. But this article, it's a longer article.

That's why I figured it fitted at the library. It is very long. I feel like I just read the book. Yeah, yeah. But it's a good read. It's a really good read. And it talks about a lot of our philosophies about, you know, how we are too connected and staring at our phone all the damn time.

So check out the article. I'll have a review next week on the book and let you know if it's any good. All right. That's very interesting. And this is, we're seeing just so much stuff about this now. At some point, people have to really listen. But, you know, they also don't use 1Password.

Software, apps, and gadgets. So I was mentioning on the last segment how long that article was. Yes. I've been changing my workflow. Okay. On how we do show notes. And I've come across like a couple really nice tricks now.

We've talked about Spritz before. Yes. It's the, the, the quote unquote technology that lets you do like hyper fast reading. Yeah. And they've got a bookmarklet now called the Spritzlet that lets you use Spritz on any web page. And I'm cranked up to 800 words per minute now using that, using that, the little Spritzlet.

And I've been able to like crank through our show notes so fast. It really does work. It's amazing how well it works and you can tweak it and get, you know, like bump up as you get better at it. Retention. Perfect. Speed. Amazing.

And ease of use. Great. The only problem with it is you have to turn on third party cookies. Oh, I generally don't have third party cookies on because I don't like being tracked, but to use Spritzlet, you have to have them on and you have to have an account with them. That's unfortunate.

It's very unfortunate, but you know what? This, this is the give and take. Yeah. The time that I've saved using it has been so incredible this week. That, I mean, I, I do, I do our research for this show in bursts. Yeah. So I turn off third party cookies when I'm not in research mode.

So I'm not getting tracked all the time. I'm only going through the articles that I've picked out and how I'm doing that now. You're only getting tracked and all the crazy ass security shit we're looking up. That's great. Exactly. Exactly. But for the most part, I don't get, you know, the, um, the advertisements that do the follow on.

Yeah. So if I search for something poop related for listening, when I'm listening to the morning dump, uh, podcast, I don't get those all over the web for me anymore. But anyway, I use reader two for iOS and Mac and it syncs using, uh, I forget which account because since feed burners gone, I'm using a different service.

I can't remember what it was like feedly maybe. So it, it, it syncs between my phone, my iPad and my computer. And that's how I go through like the 2000 articles a week in what I'm doing now. Cause I used to like put them to pin board and then drag them over. All I do now is if I see something that looks interesting, I star it and then just move on.

I can go through like, you know, tons of articles that way. And then I'll batch it by going through and picking the stuff that I've starred, opening it up, reading it in spritzlet, and then figuring out if it's worth adding to the show that has cut off probably half the time. So probably five hours of my week now is given back to me just because of that workflow.

So reader's great. Spritzlet is great. And it's like just that simple change in the workflow instead of going to pin board, bringing it back, moving shit around, saves so much time. So I definitely recommend if you'd like to read a lot, get spritzlet, give it a try. And if you, if you still stick with RSS, like some of us old fogies, check out reader.

It's a really nice, uh, RSS app that has, you know, the cross platform compatibility, which syncs really well. Right. So I'm just saying, give it a try. I still use Instapaper. You know, I was doing that too, but, and I was, I really liked it.

I have an Instapaper premium account because I wanted to try out their speed reading stuff. It is far inferior to, to spritzlet, to spritz. Because spritz does that thing where, you know, it highlights one character in red and it shifts it and it really does help comprehension and retention because, uh, the speed reading in Instapaper is just, they're just spraying the words at you really fast and it does work, but not nearly as well.

Okay. I'm just saying, if you want to try it, try it. But for me, it has worked really well. I'll give it a shot. Although the cookies thing bothers me. Yeah. It did bother me a little bit, but man, saving five hours a week. Right. I like that more. I'll trade my, my, my advertising soul for a little bit for that.

Yes. We all trade our privacy. So we were talking about the Tim Ferriss episode before. Yes. And on that show, he talks about his precision extra blood glucose monitoring system that he uses to measure his ketones because he's on a ketogenic diet. Yes. I have bought one. Okay.

I am now on the ketogenic diet. Right. Except for when I went to sushi with my family on Sunday because I never get to see them and I would rather not be like a vegan and, uh, eat with everybody else. So that's the pain in the ass factor. And isn't the diet basically meat and vegetables is fat.

You get 80% of your calories from fat. So my morning routine now is I make my Puerh tea with the ginger and turmeric and each cup has a tablespoon of coconut oil in it. Right. And for lunch, it's like, okay, I'll just have a spoonful of butter. Um, yeah, it's a lot of fat.

I've got heavy cream and I'll have like a cup of vegetables, uh, steamed vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, a cup of that. And then some meat. That's about it. Uh, it's, it's, it's mind bogglingly monotonous and boring. Right.

But, um, six, I'm down six pounds in seven days. Well, there you go. I'm sleeping like a baby. Um, and the one thing he did talk about on the show is when he got to a 2.7, uh, millimolar concentration of ketones, he became cunty. I can completely, I can completely say that that is true.

I was at that yesterday morning and I woke up and I just wanted to go find somebody and rip their head off for no reason. You just get, you get, you get super grumpy. It is the super grumpy diet. So that does not sound good for me. That should be the official diet of grumpy old geeks is a ketogenic diet.

But this little gadget is so cool. I, you know, I was really worried about pricking the finger, but I've got the device that comes with the glucose monitor and it doesn't hurt. Yeah. It's not bad. Um, I mean, if, if you can't take a little prick in the finger, then you're just such a pussy.

Don't even bother with it. Um, and the numbers are fun to track. I've never tracked my blood, uh, glucose before. And I'm, I hover around like between 110 and 70. I'm like in that range, which is pretty good. You know, I'm not, I'm not pre-diabetic or diabetic, so that's good.

And all in all, it's been a great, great experience. And this, so this gadget is really cool. It's fun. Except you have to, you know, draw blood every day. Yes. And then eat butter. Well, how is that wrong? And the one, the one tip is on, on, uh, the interview, he said that most bacon has sugar in it.

It does. I, going to the grocery store, all of, all of the mainstream bacons are cured with sugar. But you, if you just check, I found one brand that is just as tasty and it doesn't not use sugar in the curing process. So I can eat as much bacon as I want, except you don't want to go over too much protein and it kicks you out.

Whatever. Anyway, so check it out to the show. If you want the details, you should definitely check out the show. That is it. Grumpy old geeks.com slash one Oh seven. Um, so I got, I got two gadgets this week. Besides that, I got a black magic ultra studio mini recorder.

All right. When I got the Mac, like, you know, the, the modern Macs don't have any kind of video in, they've got video out. They've all got like HDMI ports, but getting video in is a black art. So almost like black magic. And, uh, I originally got this $300 video audio converter from them and it was shit.

It did not work. And I had to send it back and I didn't want another one because once I got it, I'm like, this is kind of crappy. But I, then I found the black magic ultra studio mini recorder, which all it is, is it's got two inputs. One of them is HDMI and the other is, um, I can't remember. It's like a coax, uh, like a professional coax type of thing.

And it's just got thunderbolt out. It's powered by the thunderbolt. And I hooked it up to my, uh, Nikon D 7, 100, set it down, installed the software and then pulled up Skype, check the video input. Perfect. So now I've got like, you know, DSLR quality video input into my Mac and any, any HDMI source will work.

139 bucks. That's cheap. It's super cheap. The thing is built like a tank. Um, so I'm not worried about it breaking. The other thing they gave me was just cheap plastic. So if you're trying to get video into your Mac, this thing is great. Okay. It's gotta be a Mac. It's thunderbolt.

Right. Um, but yeah, cause I, I did research for work cause we have to do like webinars and stuff and we needed something to get DSLR quality video into the Mac and this is it. It's perfect. Highly recommend it. Very cool. The other thing I got was I got the zoom H six because we talked on the show before I got the zoom H four N, which you saw because I brought to the pub and you gave me shit for recording our conversations.

And yes, um, which I deleted, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a good cohost, but the zoom H four N didn't work with the mics that I had that well, because it wasn't like very, very good with gain. The interface was just really confusing and whatever, and they had new models.

So I'm selling my zoom H four N and then I just bought the H six. It's twice as much money, but it's got four XLR inputs, a color screen, and it powers on immediately. Individual gain knobs. It's awesome. I use it last night to record my buddy, Tommy at his show.

Perfect. It was so nice. These have mics built into them as well, right? Well, this one, the, the H four N has mounted mics on it. Two mics on the top. Yeah. The H six N has a module system, so you can actually swap out the mics and the base unit comes with two mics.

It comes with a, a bi-directional mic, like the one that's on the H four N. And it also comes with an omni-directional mic. Okay. So I might actually buy the old one off of you. Oh, you better hurry up because I got a couple of people lined up for it. So if you want it, if you want it, PayPal me. Okay.

Cause I've got a, if I'm going to record my grump on grumps, they're most likely going to be in person. And this is, seems like an easy way to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's a great device as long as you have the right mics. Um, it doesn't, it's only XLR mics. So be forewarned, but yeah, the, the H six and it even, the H six even comes with an adapter with two more XLR ports.

So you can have up to six XLR mics on the thing. It's crazy. But the best part about it is it's got a color display that you can see really well. It's definitely nicer looking than the H four. And it comes with, in a carrying case. So yes, that was my gadget fetish for the week.

All right. I already go get on PayPal.

Media candy. I finally caught up with some movies and I watched the theory of everything, which is the story about Stephen Hawking. You know, I've got it. I haven't watched it yet. What did you think? Uh, I thought there, the acting was unbelievable.

There's, there's absolutely no doubt that he should have won the Oscar for that. Um, it's a great story, but it is just a love story. I was a little disappointed that they didn't get in so much to his career and his work. Uh, they, they kind of skipped over a lot of that and focus just on the love story. Uh, did you, did you see the imitation game?

I have not. That's next. Oh, okay. Cause I've got that loaded up. Yeah. Cause that was the other way around. So I think I will probably enjoy that more, but, uh, the acting was absolutely phenomenal. And if you know nothing about, uh, you know, how his career started and all of that, it's definitely worth it. Uh, because you do get a lot of that.

But again, I was, I wanted a bit more science and a little less love. Yeah. Well, that's you. You, you hate, you hate when the nerd gets the girl, you know? Yeah. Well, he's never just a nerd. He's always a dashing nerd that once you throw on the leather jacket, looks amazing.

Yeah. Okay. I'll check it out. It was no, but even my wife who, who is a big fan of the lovey dovey stuff was like, I wanted a bit more about Stephen Hawking. Interesting. Okay. Well, that, that, that saddens me, but is what it is. It is what it is. Uh, so I finished up the fall, the, you know, the British procedural with Gillian Anderson.

Yes. I finished both seasons. Loved it. Okay. The only problem I have with it is she's not really too, uh, in a hurry to go, uh, catch the serial killer slash kidnapper. Um, she could have picked up the pace a little, I think, but for the most part, I really, really enjoyed it.

And if, uh, if you've got some time, I recommend checking it out. If you like, if you like, you know, murder procedurals, especially British ones with Gillian Anderson, right up your alley, right up your alley. Yeah. Okay. I will. Uh, I definitely have to check that out because I have a big fan of her and, uh, you say the show's good.

So I'm, I'm on it. On it. Damn it. Uh, speaking of on it, blur have put out their first album in 20 some odd years of new material called the magic whip. It is, uh, not bad. Yeah. I listened to it this morning. I was like, eh, it's okay.

The whole promotional bit for it was really getting me. I love the first single. That is a rockin great song. Uh, and I love, you know, I love anything that's Japanese and they went with the whole Japanese artwork and design for everything, including the videos. So that's all been fantastic. But then when I actually listened to the entire album, he does what he always did to me at the end of when blur was finally finishing up and what he's done with a lot of his solo stuff, which is just too many dirgy, slow ballads that go nowhere.

I want some rockin songs. Damn it. Yeah. I didn't get any rockin songs out of it. I kind of, I, we had to do the show, so I turned it off. Yeah. It was, it was, it was me. Okay. There's a couple of good tracks on it, but, uh, that's about all you can really expect, uh, which is a little bit of a disappointment, but Hey, it's better than nothing.

Uh, well, speaking of rockin songs, Milli Vanilli, that's, they're coming back. That's what I think of when I think of rockin songs, uh, they're doing a new album, which is for Brice, the surviving member. And with the guy who did all of the, the vocals for the original vocals.

Yeah, that is clever. Isn't that not fucking clever? I was amazed when I heard this. Uh, I haven't talked to for Brice in a couple of years. He moved back to Germany and we kind of lost touch, but, um, I do have a bootleg copy of blame it on the rain that he gave me where he sang and it was really good.

So, um, you know, I'm, I've apparently passed the curve, uh, before I, before I hit the, the second slope, uh, I'm actually looking forward to this. I think it'll be fun. Yeah. You'll have to report on that for me because I will not be listening. I know.

I mean, never in a million years would I think I'd be friends with the guy from Milli Vanilli, but it just, you are circumstance happened and he's such a sweetheart. I mean, I've got nothing bad to say about him. Um, but you know, the one thing I do might have, I might have something bad to say is Netflix is adapting Dr.

Seuss's green eggs and ham into a 13 episode animated series. Oh my God. An episode per page. So if you don't know the story of green eggs and ham, green eggs and ham was a bet that I forget who the other person that made the bet was, but they, they bet Ted Geisel, which is Dr.

Seuss's real name that he could not write a book in 50 words or less. Yes. And out came green eggs and ham. Um, and yeah, 50 words or less for 13 episodes. I think they're probably going to have to break the mold. Yeah. That's a little ridiculous.

So I'm going to get more details on this tonight. I'm going to go have dinner with my dad. My dad is also the director of the Dr. Seuss gallery in Chicago's water tower place. So if this, if this series does well, I'm hoping more people will buy Dr. Seuss art so he can retire sooner and come join me in California.

So fingers crossed for Netflix, not screwing it up. But anyway, if you are in Chicago, please go to water tower place on the second floor, right across the hall from the Lego store and American girl, and be sure to tell them grumpy old geeks sent you. You won't get any kind of discount, but it'll be a trip for my dad to know that we're sending in business.

That would be cool. And it's a, it's a great store, a great store. And I love the Dr. Seuss stuff. You know that I've got, uh, I've got artwork hanging on my wall as well. Oh, and now I know what to get you for Christmas. Yes, you can definitely do that. I don't even know what to say about this one.

Um, a new study from the Stanford university school of medicine has discovered that basically thinking helps fuel the growth of deadly brain tumors. Um, okay, well, if you don't know what to say about it, it's probably not good for a talk show, but I'm just saying, uh, you should think about it some more, but if you have a brain tumor, that might be bad for you.

But the thing is, I don't want to die. It just goes to show you that the entire world is basically stacked against smart people, but here's the deal. We're all going to die anyway. So, uh, this is just, this makes sense that thinking, you know, activates the brain and feeds whatever's up there.

Cause problems and lead to, yeah. This kind of sounds like common sense to me that it causes brain tumors. The thinking would cause brain tumors. Yes, it does. No, no, no. It doesn't cause a brain tumors, but it can fuel the growth of brain tumors. Let's look at breathing.

Exactly. So it's a bizarre one. So there's a guy that is in no danger of getting a brain tumor. And I obviously didn't read the article about Facebook earlier involving, uh, how you can be used in a court of law. A criminal got arrested after liking his own mugshot on Facebook.

Oh my God. Charles, a 23 year old white male, uh, apparently the great falls cascade County crime stoppers organization puts up photos of people, uh, their mug shots. And, uh, he then proceeded to like it on Facebook and the police were able to go find him.

Oh my God. Well, maybe his brain tumor has, uh, already metastasized cause he's on, he's on for forgery, uh, quote unquote, common scheme. Uh, yeah, but Jesus Christ, you dumb shit. And you look at him and he's, you can tell that this guy is not going to, uh, have a movie made about his, his genius.

No, no. And that's why we call this segment Moron of the Week.

I had never heard of the artist John Holcroft before, but I'm a huge fan as of right now. He's an illustrator.

I believe he's over in London. Um, there is a link in our show notes to 16 images that perfectly capture how completely nuts modern life has become, which is a, how I found out about him in the first place. And this guy could basically be the grumpy old geeks house artist, uh, or the, uh, Rockwell for the current generation.

No, this guy does great stuff. I, I forget where I originally saw this. It might've been on that fake Banksy account on Twitter. Right. Um, but yeah, his stuff has been making the rounds. Uh, this magazine was back from December, but his stuff is timeless. I think, I think it really still works.

Yeah. It's all a pretty good stuff and definitely makes you think and worth taking a look at. Yeah. We have a link in the show notes, uh, we'll check out the good, uh, magazine article or go to johnholcroft.com proper spelling in the show notes. And what I found this week was a surprisingly a mashable article.

It's a, uh, uh, photos from 1913 called Christina in red, a girl at the beach one year before world war one. These photos are amazing. You just, I mean, you have to look at them. This is all visual, but you look at these photos and this could just be some douche bag with a Lomo right now.

Yeah. You know, and you just, you think about this and like, these are like girls having a picnic on the beach, but this is before world war one and they're in color and not colorized because they were actually using a color process back then. And they're just, I mean, I look at them and I'm just like, wow.

I mean, honestly, that was the whole only thing that I can think of is wow. When you really put this into perspective with how long ago these were taken and how normal these people are. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're great photos and this is definitely doing the rounds and you know, the one shot of her, it looks like, I mean, she could be a girl like Coachella.

It looks like she's wearing a hoodie and she's just sitting there. I know that's the thing. That's, that's what makes them so like almost poignant that, you know, honestly, I mean, they're just very cool. I was, I was totally taken by these photos. So I wanted to make sure, even though they are making the rounds, I want to make sure that they got into the show.

Excellent. Very good stuff. I'm glad that we did an entire visual segment on our podcast. I know, but it is the web's not dead and you have to go to the web to appreciate it. True that. Closing shout outs. I'm covered in bees. My favorite comedian of all time, Eddie Izzard or Izzard, depending on how you like to pronounce it, is on a world tour right now.

So you should go see him. I will be seeing him at the Hollywood Bowl coming up next month and I'm very excited about it. Did you get your tickets already? Yes, I did. Damn. I will be there next month and I wanted to go see it, but I don't want to go sit by myself. And I looked at the, I looked at the seating chart and it's pretty full.

Yeah, it's already pretty packed. I mean, I, my seats are actually really crap, but, uh, I just, uh, I had to go. It's been a while and it's a completely new tour with new material and I haven't seen it yet. So I'm very excited. So I've never, amazing. I've never seen him live and I would love to. I've seen him in, in kind of, uh, I've seen him at like the Wiltern kind of medium sized places.

And I've also seen him in a room with only 20 other people when he was, he often, uh, tries out material here in LA and he'll announce that on his site. So once you get here to LA, make sure that you sign up for his mailing list because he will blast out, you know, he, he literally just goes and tries out material in tiny rooms.

Oh, that's great. Get tickets and go. So I've seen him, uh, you know, like with 20 people and now I'm going to go see him with 20,000. I don't think, I don't think the bowl holds 20,000 people. No, not quite. But it feels like that when you're trying to get the fuck out of there. Oh Jesus. Yeah. That's the worst place to get into and get out of.

Yes, it is. I got to say the only comic that I ever saw do new material in like a private show was Robin Williams. Oh, that's pretty cool. It you'd think it would be, but I think it was the first time he was trying out this material because it sucked. It was terrible.

I don't want to get in there at the end when it's mostly honed. Yeah. When it's polished and ready to go. And I want to give a shout out to Herman Miller. If you are a work at home person like us, or basically anybody in design has these chairs, everybody knows the Aeron chair. They're absolutely fantastic.

I am sitting in one now that is about 12 years old. I did not know that they basically do an annual sale and it is coming up. It starts next week, May 7th, where you basically get 15% off anything. So I am looking to replace my Aeron with a Mira 2. Okay, go for it.

I'm standing. This does not, this does not actually apply to me. Um, but the only problem I have with those Herman Millers, no fart guard, no fart guard. Well, that's why I work from home alone. Alone being the operative term.

Yes. But when those things were in like a boardroom and you're sitting in a room with like 12 other dudes who just went to Chipotle for lunch, it can be a little stifling is all I'm saying. Or not stifling is the case, maybe. Oh man. And I never, I never found the Aeron's that comfortable.

Um, you really have to play with it. Like mine is just completely tweaked. Um, and it's extremely comfortable because I've gotten it there, but, uh, that's why I'm actually ready to, to try a different one. So the Mira 2 looks really interesting. And I walked down to design out of reach and, uh, where they actually have them.

So you can sit down in them and play around with them. So. You know what? Uh, another pro tip. What I found better than getting just the straight, you know, Herman Miller chairs, go to relax the back store. They, that's true. They have some really good stuff there. Yeah. I mean, granted I spent $1,200 on a chair there, but I sat in that chair and I could sit in that chair for 14 hours, get up and it felt like I wasn't sitting.

So you, you definitely pay for comfort, but, uh, no, this looks like a good chair if you don't fart a lot or have guests. Yeah. Well, luckily I'll try to contain myself. So I'd like to give a final shout out to Mr. Tim Ferriss for taking the time to come on the show. It was a fun chat.

I wish you would have gotten to talk about more things, but Tim likes to talk and, uh, I didn't really get as many questions as I wanted because the stuff that he was telling me was really good. Um, and, uh, I'm going to take him up on his, uh, offer for a round two in San Francisco.

It wasn't really an offer. It was more of a demand, uh, but I'll bring the wine and, uh, can hopefully get some more interesting stuff. Cause I wanted to talk about, uh, the honey before sleep with Seth Roberts. Cause Seth Roberts was going to be a guest on the show before he unfortunately died. And Tim and Seth were really good friends and a bunch of other stuff.

But, uh, anyway, super shout out to Tim Ferriss. Go check out the episode. Even if you think he's a douchebag, I think you'll still learn something. I'm still on the fence about him and I really did enjoy the show. And I do hope that you do get to do a round two and, you know, do the life hacking thing. Let more life hacking, less guns.

Well, you know, here's the, here's the problem with doing, doing an interview with Tim Ferriss when he's on a media push for a thing. You have to talk about the thing. The thing. Yeah. So that's why I tried to get him on different tangents while we were going and it worked. And you know what?

He's going to go take my advice for once and go get, get the, the water retention system for his house. So I would like, I, I'm very proud of the fact that I, I told something to Tim Ferriss that he's going to finally do. Although he generally does the things I do and then takes credit for him. But anyway, that's a different story for a different time.

That's a good way to get him back on the show. Nah, he's a bud. He's a bud. He knows what he knows what he's doing. So 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 Schillmeister. You can follow me on Twitter at, at Slender Fungus.

We'll talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan supported show. No, really it is. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog and drop a few coins in our cyber tin can to help support the show. We really appreciate it. And I mean, really appreciate your support. We also appreciate your iTunes ratings and reviews.

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