109: Generalization Specialists

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.

Hello, Jason. Hello, Brian. How are you today? I'm doing okay. I've got a wee bit of a hangover. A friend of mine from New York is in town visiting and every time she shows up she drags me to this horrible hipster bar and here I am. Oh, I'm sure you have to be dragged to a bar.

Kicking and screaming, Jason. The whole way. The whole way. Yeah, so I logged into Ello yesterday and, you know, for the show, basically. Some follow-up. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For research. Research. Yeah, research. Actually, I was just bored and I was like, is that still there? And it is. The last update in my feed was from four months ago, but they have updated their title tags to Ello, Social Revolution.

Yeah, not quite, buddies. Not quite. Yeah, it's dead. So when I saw you posted that, I went in and checked my Ello feed. Yes. And it was pretty funny. There is only one person and they're still posting. Like, literally, since I left, one person is still posting. Famed sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, I think, is single-handedly keeping Ello alive.

Wow. I mean, he's posting, like, multiple times a day and, like, long stuff, too. That's like, it's like his notebook now. I'm figuring he's just using it like we use a hackpad. Yeah, it could be. It could be. A little some ideas here and there. Yeah. Maybe it's like his Ello note instead of Evernote.

And in other big internet news, congratulations, Huffington Post. As I believe it was two days ago, it was their 10-year anniversary. So congratulations for your 10 years in which you single-handedly destroyed online journalism and created BuzzFeed and Kim Kardashian. Can't wait for the next 10, Ariana. But side boob. Side boob.

It's true. Lots of side boob. We have 10 years of side boob. Yes, but we can get that anywhere. This is true. This is the internet. Side boob existed before Ariana Huffington. That's for damn sure. Yes, and nobody wants to see Ariana's side boob. Anyways, I found an article that I thought was really interesting. It's called, I secretly lived in my office for 500 days.

And some guy, let's see, his name is Terry Kay, on Salon, wrote this long article about how he came out to L.A. and realized he couldn't afford rent and then ended up living in his office. I don't know how I feel about this. I'm interested in the article because times are tough.

Rent, he is insane out here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't think either you or I are the kind of person that would do this. I think we would come realize we cannot make it here and then go home. Well, yeah, see, it's a double-edged sword there because I love this. I'm like, ah, hack the system. I love it. Free rent.

And he used all the money that he saved on his free rent to go buy a truck and deck out the back of the truck, which is now his home. Right. But, you know, I have, here's the thing. After working in so many startups for so many years, this is just normal for me. I'm like, okay. I mean, they bought me a bed.

We had showers in the office. They didn't want me to leave. So for him, I'm like, if he did, if he would have asked, he wouldn't have had to hide. You know, that's what doesn't make any sense. It's like, dude, this app, I'm going to work 24-7. Give me a bed, a toilet, and a shower. I'm in. All right.

Yeah, that creeps me out a little bit. Yeah, well. I bet I'm not a startup guy. I never was. Never, never. See, I mean, that's the thing. You missed out on all that fun. Oh, sounds like it. It's a blast. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, you know, I did my time on tour buses. This is true. This is true.

Yes, and speaking of music, I know this isn't really a title story, because we're not going to talk about title anymore. Until next week. Until next week. When I get my Apple Watch. Oh, God. I'm not a big fan of Oasis, but I do love Noel Gallagher. He is one of those people that, he's a true rock star.

This is what rock stars are supposed to do. They are supposed to not give a fuck about anyone or anything and just say crazy-ass shit and not care. And he did, because it's awesome. There's a link in our show notes for an interview with NME that Noel Gallagher did, where he starts to basically talk about title.

And keep in mind that he is friends with all these people, but he compared them to the Avengers. Do these people think they're the fucking Avengers going to save the world? It was awesome. Very funny article. That's the thing, though. That's all you need. You don't need to read the article. All you need is that line.

Okay. Pull quote, done. Pull quote, done. All right. Never mind, then. It was funny as shit, though. I liked it. I fucking love him. He is just absolutely great. I think, you know, obviously, probably nobody listening to this, myself included, know anything about One Direction, but apparently one of the boy band guys left and Noel Gallagher tweeted to him or told him in an interview or something, get a really good accountant because life is long and you're never going to be a star again.

I love Noel Gallagher. He's awesome. Well, I mean, he's making up for his crimes against music. Yeah, well, it basically just ripped off the Beatles, but that's okay. Moving on. Moving on. I put this in the show notes, so now I feel like I'm compelled to talk about it.

But this is a death of journalism thing on Salon, which I usually love. There's an article called Please, Please, Please Don't Let the Smiths Reunite. I don't understand how this is journalism. This is a blog post from somebody who really liked the Smiths and doesn't want them to get back together and then spends about 10,000 words explaining why.

Yeah, we're not going to spend 10,000 words. We're going to spend about eight more seconds on this because it was nothing. If you see this, just don't go read it. This is our cautionary tale for the week. Stop posting personal blogs as news. Oh, wait, that's Huffington Post. Yeah.

Interesting. Hey, you found it, motherfucker. I know. So I found one on time, which is really interesting. It's called This is Millennial's Most Embarrassing Secret. I love this article, and this is what we've been saying since episode one. So basically what it is, is just because you can order Chipotle, take a picture of your junk, and it just doesn't mean you have any skills with a computer or technology.

And businesses are finding that out now because these people come in and they're like, what's a word processor? Where do I place my penis? I don't know how this works. And can I get a burrito? Nope. They're just finding out now that these kids have just been dicking around on the internet for their entire life.

Yeah, this is very frustrating to me because I've had to live in this for the last, I don't know, five years or so, where there's basically just this belief that anybody that's, say, 20 to 25 years old automatically knows how to do everything because they've grown up with it. No, no.

The way that you learn things is you're there at the start. You're involved, you're building things, you're doing blah, blah, blah. All these kids, all they know is how to download an app and kind of sort of use it. That's it. It doesn't make you an expert. It doesn't make you anything. It's a very simple mental construct.

Just because you can use something doesn't mean you can make something. Period. That's it. If you're not making, if you're not creating, then you don't know what's under the hood. You know, just because you can browse the web doesn't mean you can make the web. And here's another, here's another little tip.

Just because you know how to use an Instagram filter does not make you a Photoshop expert. Or a photographer. Yes. They're completely different things, people. Yes. Trust me. I know you don't get paid as a photographer. So I really do. You don't get paid for anything anymore. That's the problem. I do really like this article.

It is very much what we've been saying, and I wish more businesses would read it. And it warms the cockles to see that people are finally starting to understand this, that just because you hire somebody that's young and attached to their iPhone all day long does not mean they know what they're doing. Yes. Okay.

Okay. So this next one comes, I got to give a hat tip to Kenny on Twitter on this one, even though I'm saddened. This is called Betteridge's Law of Headlines, which is everything that we've been, you know, I have to say, any headline that ends in a question, or I'm sorry, any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

That's exactly what we said. We nailed it. But it's been in use since 1988. At least that's the original reference that they can find on Wikipedia goes back to Hinchcliffe's rule. Yes, that is unfortunate. I was kind of hoping it was going to get onto Urban Dictionaries, the grumpy old geek's law, but no, no, well, we missed out on that when we were, you know, it has all happened before and it all happened again.

Yes. And speaking of, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook are, they're using the playbook of the last bubble and trying to take over the news and trying to buy up news startups and, oh, it's just, no one's innovating. No one is innovating anymore.

It's just, everything is being repeated again, because nobody has the time to sit down and get the fuck off the platforms they're selling. It's like, it's like a cocaine addict trying to figure out how, like, you know, particle physics works. You just don't, you can't do it. You know, don't, if you use your product and you're in this mind space where you can't even think, this is what just happens over and over again.

Yeah. This has all happened before. And now it's just, it's different platforms. You know, the names have changed, but it's the same game. I don't, you know, it's not good. I don't like this at all. And I don't really understand. I mean, you just don't like these social media guys trying to buy up news organizations.

I don't like news being consolidated in social media. I think that's a horrible precedent and, but there's no avoiding it because that is, you know, people get their news from Twitter and Facebook now. It's weird that Twitter would go after Circa because I do remember we reviewed that on this very show and it was a horrible app.

It worked for a little bit, but all you got was like one line sentences about what an article is and like a couple of them from different sources and it, for them, it makes sense because that's all you got was a sentence. You know, these people were distilling the news down to tweetable bites and they failed. They're going under and they need, they need a bailout and Twitter's like, we'll buy them cheap.

Let's go. And you know, that's what they're up to now. So I don't know. Yeah. Well, this is, this is just not good for everyone, but it's our world. Yay. Just a little follow up on the Tesla battery thing, 38,000 reservations for that damn power wall.

And then Elon Musk comes out and he's like, yeah, we got a bunch of these. We don't know how we're going to fulfill them. And I think people are getting them and not really understanding that they're not for what they think they are. Like they're buying the big ones thinking that it's going to be one thing, but the smaller one is for like a different, the purpose that they're looking for.

There's a whole bunch of stuff. There's battery technology behind it that they didn't really do in the press release because it's a goddamn press release. Yeah. But the Tesla power wall is basically the more expensive version of the iWatch or the Apple watch. It's if you've got shit tons of money and you want to look impressive, you have one of these on your wall.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah. If they, if they wanted to go from zero to buyer's remorse faster, they should have just got an Apple watch. Yeah. You know, they just did a press release. This is brand new technology. It's a very, yeah, of course it's very limited use right now.

I mean, it, this isn't meant for everyone, but the precedent is great. And what they will eventually do with this technology is amazing and world changing. We're just not there yet. Same could be said about the Apple watch as far as we know, because it hasn't gotten here yet.

And we generally don't speculate on shit that hasn't happened yet on this show. So yeah, we do. That's all we do. No, no, no, no, we don't. Okay. Speaking of shit that hasn't happened, let's talk a little bit about your podcast. Okay. Okay. Bring it on trolly boy.

Yes, I know a friend of the show, David Teeter and I got, uh, got on Jason a little bit yesterday because Jason relaunched his personal podcast with the bold claim that he has completely redone his workflow and he's rethought his life and he's basically moved everything around so he can ensure that he does this every single day.

And then he promptly within the same week, didn't manage to do that. Now I understand this and it was fun giving you shit because it's always fun giving you shit. And especially when, when Teeter joins in, because that's just a damn good time.

Um, but I totally get where you're, you're coming from and what happened. And my point is basically what happened was, um, every, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't even bother giving it a specific explanation because my, my grander point is we're all busy. Shit happens.

And, uh, the only thing that I would say is, um, we live in a culture and a landscape where if you state something publicly and then fail, you will get shit on. So don't make promises. You can't keep. Okay. Forget it then. I'm just leaving social media. I'm pulling a Joss Whedon.

I'm dropping the mic. I'm out because everybody says promises that they can't keep. Yeah. Okay. So let's move along. Let's move along. Yes. Moving along. So Josh Whedon did quit Twitter and, uh, uh, Twitter is a loud, shallow waste of time.

And I'm leaving too says, uh, what was his name? The Jeopardy guy that then became an online kind of celebrity of sorts. Well, speaking of, uh, speaking of a loud, shallow waste of time, this comes from salon.com and, uh, yes, Arthur Chu says, I'm a Twitter celebrity.

He's got 24.4. He made, he made a specific point of saying 24.4 thousand followers. And, uh, I'm leaving because it's just too much noise. And honestly, I got like a paragraph in and I'm like, okay, I've read this article before because I've written this article before.

And from what I know is nobody gives a shit and Brian will just, just, it's fodder for you to make fun of me next week when I have to get back on for a job and then just end up staying around for a while. And then I never leave. So I'm just saying from now on Irish exit, I'm leaving. That's it. I'm not going to say a thing.

Just walk out the door. And which is what this guy should have done. Um, the Irish are always back at the bar the next day from what I remember. Fuck you. Okay. French exit then taking the French exit. Okay. What's the French exit? Exactly the same as the Irish exit, but in France. Oh, well, being German, I believe the French basically roll over quickly.

Hey, now, hey, now, um, anyways, I, you know, it's again, all of this has happened before. It's all happened again, specifically with you. I don't know how many times you've left social media du jour and then come back to it. And the celebrities do this left, right and center.

And I personally, you know, you know how I feel about Twitter. I, I don't get it. And, uh, I don't, I understand why people leave, especially when they're, when Josh Whedon has one of the biggest movies in the world out and everybody's just tweeting, you know, Adam, like die scumbag. Well, why would you stick around for that?

My biggest pet peeve about this is because I've been listening to this, listening to this of the media and you just did it too. It's Joss Whedon. It's not Josh. There is no H on his name. It's like saying nuclear. Okay. But, uh, yeah, I see. I just don't care. Cause I don't, I'm not, uh, I'm not that big into him.

I know lots of people are. He's a celebrity. It'd be like me or you saying Kim Kardashian's name wrong. It'd be like, okay, I totally understand why. Who gives shit? Not that I'm equating him with Kim Kardashian because he actually does something. He actually, he actually produces content. Yes. So, um, anyway, I found an article on Wired this week, which is called why the best designers don't specialize in any one thing.

Now I'm putting this in here because our mantra about generalization is it, that's at the core of the grumpy old geeks. We are generalization specialists. Um, Hey, maybe that's a show title. Uh, so now that people, I mean, this guy has been around since the year 2000, he was one of the original designers of, uh, was it Slate or Salon?

Uh, I forget. Josh Payton is his name. He's been around since, uh, 2000. So he's not a kid, but it's like, this is a major article in Wired this week. And it just says everything that we agree with. So I just wanted to throw it in and say, uh, it's not just designers.

I just want people to know, no, you shouldn't specialize in anything unless you're a heart surgeon. Then if my heart breaks, come fix it. There are definite, there are definite cases for specialization, but I'm just, I'm talking more on the online technology space, know everything.

And just in life in general, it is more, life is more fun. If you know a little about something, we used to call it being well-rounded. Yes. Being a well-rounded individual. Well-rounded generalized specialist. Okay. We definitely have a show title. And on that note, I'm quitting the show, but I'll be back for the next segment.

Okay. See you at the pub. In the news. Bit Bit. My favorite toy in the universe, which I love to lose. Isn't, isn't this something that you've quit and come back to multiple times?

Fuck you. Just checking. I'm just saying, I'm sorry. I quit them because I lost them. Uh-huh. Because they're very easy to lose. I never had a Fitbit and said, I'm going to stop using my Fitbit. It always came around losing it. And I'm like, I don't want to spend another hundred dollars, but they're so good.

I would. And I did. And Fitbit is now going to IPO. Oh, well, considering all the money they're making just from you. Exactly. I think I completely funded this IPO myself, so I would like some stock, please. Yeah. Are you going to buy any?

Yeah. Actually, I think I might. I don't know. I'm not so sure about these guys, but okay. Well, did you see their numbers? Yes, that's all I have. Last year, they ran at a loss. Or two years ago, they ran at like a $50-some million loss. And last year, they were in over $100 million in profit. Yeah, but as we talk about a lot, they're playing that game where they're basically relying on, I mean, they're in a market that can easily be replaced.

They do not need to exist once everybody has an Apple Watch. Which nobody's going to have. So this is a major one for me. I think they need to bring their price point down to get in with these cheap misfits that the roommate has. And if they can start bringing that down, that'd be good. But Brian, come on.

This is Silicon Valley Mantra. They have first mover advantage. Yeah, yeah, whatever. I don't buy it. I do agree with you about bringing down that price point. I think that they should, because I would probably have one if they were just a tad bit cheaper. Because much like you, the one that you gave me that you had given up on was immediately lost in a bar.

Well, I didn't give up on it because I'd lost it. Then I bought a new one. Then I found that one, and I gave it to you. It was in the laundry. Group actively re-lossed it for you. No, thank you. So we're back to square one. I'm glad you had the wherewithal to put it back to where its original state would have been.

It's Schrodinger's Fitbit. Yes, it is. Now, my birthday is next week. Oh, really? It is. I didn't get you anything. Well, at least you don't have to worry about not knowing, because Facebook will let you know that it's my birthday, which is actually a great feature. I have always enjoyed that.

I don't enjoy it because, you know what? I never put in my real birthday. Ah, see? Well, I do. So it's no big deal. But you will be told when you log into Facebook that it's my birthday, which is nice. It's a good feature that I like. But I have noticed this. There's an article in Slate.

Has Facebook seemed really aggressive about birthdays recently? You aren't imagining things. Now, not only does it bother me that it basically doesn't go away, you have this notification on the desktop version all the time, as well as on your mobile version, but I started to get emails telling me that it was X and O's birthday today.

I am very vigilant about making sure that Facebook's notifications are off. I do not want an email for anything. And so that was a bit disturbing because I just started to get them. And I logged in and looked at my preferences and noticed that I had to uncheck that selection because it had mysteriously been turned on.

Yeah. Did you read the actual article you sent? Yes. Because they said that there was a bug in their notifications. Facebook says that there was a bug in their site's notification system, which sounds to me like complete and utter bullshit. Because as the rest of the article goes on to explain, the whole birthday thing is a very good thing for keeping people engaged and signed into Facebook.

So this is a bug that was very, very good for them. See, and you say I have the tinfoil hat on. Come on. I don't think this was a bug. This was a bug. I think this was... Facebook has a long history of tinkering with people. And this could just be another one of those things.

That's all I'm saying. That's all you're saying. But you've got no proof. And it's just a thing. No, of course I don't have any proof. And here's the thing. Now, the author of this article didn't even know when his own father's birthday was. So if he's not willing to even do the research on his own family to know when the man that squirted into his mom and gave him life was born, I just, I, he lost all credibility for me.

And way to make that super creepy. Thanks. No problem. You're welcome. So there's a good article in Wired called, what if your computer cared about what makes you smile? And you say, you say my last thing was super creepy. This is super creepy.

This is super creepy. Well, the specific Chrome extension that they're discussing called Smile Suggest is beyond creepy. Basically accesses your camera and links to the sites that you visit and basically will keep track of what you smile at and what you don't, which is very creepy.

Well, duh. This wouldn't work for me because I have three layers of black electrical tape over the camera on my laptop. So yes, no, a lot of people don't. And a lot of people, obviously people are using this thing, which is a little bit weird, but I liked the article once it got past talking about that specific iteration and kind of more into the generalization of what AI may or may not become.

So I just thought it was a good read. Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about AI shortly, but yeah, I just, no, I'm not really into that. I don't want my, I do not want my computer sitting there and judging my emotional state at any given moment. I really don't.

I'm right there with you, but unfortunately that is going to be our brave new world. Now talk about creepy. I do not want super spiders and people have figured out how to spray some spiders with nanotubes to make a new reinforced silk.

It is strong enough to catch a goddamn airplane. I love this. I think this is amazing. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. I'm sorry, but no. I mean, cause you know, at some point they're going to figure this out and they're going to be spider factories. Okay.

And gigantic spiders and Oh, scary stuff, but a very cool science. Oh man. Imagine. Okay. Tornado hits the Amazon data center and we lose Netflix. A tornado hits the spider factory.

And what does that do? It sucks all the spiders up into the atmosphere. And then we have super spiders living on everybody's house and we can't get rid of the webs because they're super strong. No, I see so many ways that this can just go wrong. Yes, me too, but still cool.

No, so not cool. There's nothing about this that I find cool, but what I do find cool is these guys have figured out how to make artificial muscles from onion skin. That's pretty intense. So they flex and contract at the same time and it's a very in-depth process, but what they're doing is they're taking the outer layer of an onion, dipping it in a gold solution and then putting electrodes on it and using that to basically become the membrane that could become the muscle.

It's very early stages on it, but you know, I am, I, I am welcoming our blooming overlords. Man, that's a stinker. That's funny. Okay. So Freightliner.

I'm just, I'm just going to move on because what this, I don't, we can't do this in the same room anymore because there would just be fisticuffs. That was all there would be. That was the worst joke ever. Okay. Okay. Freightliner. Freightliner launches the first ever road legal North American autonomous truck.

Now it's cool looking truck. Kind of, sort of bland, actually. It's well, but it's supposed to drive itself. Now I remember when I was a kid, I think it was season 10 of the Simpsons. It was a lovely episode called Maximum Homer Drive.

I don't remember that. Great title. Great title. But where Homer basically figures out that every truck on the road already is autonomous. So they should have given a nod to Homer, at least in this thing. But yeah, it, uh, it can't drive in bad weather and they can't drive at night.

Um, so I, it's, you know, it's a step in the right direction, but if, if anything can get, you know, a semi to be better on the road, I'm in, I would much rather have semis be autonomous than, you know, taxis because I've almost been killed by more semis than I have taxis.

Yeah. I mean, if you read up on the industry at all, it's, it's rather terrifying. I mean, they're basically, most drivers are being pressured to do these incredibly long drives. They're almost all on, you know, the legal truck stop speed. Uh, it's, it's frightening. So yeah, sure. I'm okay with this.

Yeah. Yeah. If, if, if actually, if there was one sector that we wanted to work on for autonomous vehicles, long haul trucking is, is the smartest because I mean, those guys are just everywhere. And if they can bring the fuel efficiency down even better. Yes. So I'm all about this. I'm surprised it's Freightliner, but Hey, we'll take what we can get.

Um, and we talked about the Washington post last week and I wanted to put this one in because you know what they are, they're, they're winning. They're winning the internet journalism game because they have an entire segment now called what was fake on the internet this week where they basically just do a roundup of all the bullshit and fake outrage and manufactured stories that, that, that was on the internet this week.

I love this. This was a very good find on your part. And I am definitely going to be reading this every single week. Congratulations, Washington post. It's sad that we've gotten to the point where basically the Washington post has to do a Snopes on other news outlets. Yeah. Well, I'm glad somebody's doing it besides Snopes.

Yeah, me too. Me too. This is a great read. Uh, highly recommend that people check this out, uh, weekly. And I hope they keep this up in interesting news. Uh, we've just got open source going real world. Chipotle has completely revealed its guacamole recipe to, to me and to everyone else and its competitors as well.

They're doing quite well, but they decided to, here's our recipe, take it and do what you will with it. Just like WordPress. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah. Not sure how this got into the technology news of the day, but, uh, open source going real world, Jason. I'm trying to make it interesting.

I'm sorry, but recipes are the OG open source. That's what they are. This is not like, you know, it's, it's a fucking recipe. No, recipes are mediocre guacamole. It is. It is the, the, the secret recipes are what built the fast food empires.

There's a, you know, the, the Coca-Cola secret recipe. It's stored in something like Fort Knox. You've got the, you know, you give me KFCs, you know, give me their original recipe and then we'll talk. But guacamole, come on. No, to be fair, Chipotle's guacamole is rather delicious.

So if you're a guacamole fan, I suggest you try it. I personally like to kick it up a bit by putting a little sriracha. Well, they also should have some tomatoes in there and they should, you know, I, my guacamole is a little more exciting than Chipotle's, but then maybe that's why, you know, that, that, that, that's why I have to run to the border 30 minutes after I eat it.

But, uh, cause it's not exciting enough. I get bored and I have to have a sit down. I don't know. Yes. Have you made it yet? Are you going to? Uh, no, because, uh, mine's better. See? So what's the fucking point of this? I don't, I don't know. Okay.

Cause I like to make you talk about Chipotle. Hey man, I've, I've turned down the poop jokes just because you got, you get pissy at me every time I make fun of it, but so I'm just go ahead. Moving on. All right. So we have a headline that is a question. So you can guess what the answer will be by the, uh, soon to be in urban legend site, uh, grumpy old geeks law.

Okay. Uh, can you still become YouTube famous? No, of course not. Of course not. No, no. The game's already been rigged and the people that are there are there. So it's an interesting article on recode talks about basically same things that we've talked about, which is you've got about a five minute window for these kinds of new technologies where you can get in there and become a star.

And then it gets gamed by the entire system as per usual. So no, don't try. This is the life cycle of new medium. You know, this is why you saw everybody running to vine. This is why you see everybody running to Periscope and you see everybody running away from Meerkat that there is a very small window to become famous on these.

Now, the interesting thing is I've actually been hanging out on Twitch because, you know, I mean, they're not new. They were just in TV and then they got bought for over a billion dollars by Amazon. But, uh, Adrian Curry, the, the really beautiful woman who won the first season of America's next top model.

She's the one that does all the basically semi-naked Instagrams, right? Yes. Uh, she and her boyfriend do like a three hour morning talk show and I'll pop in every now on again and they're hilarious. They're really funny. And I mean, it is, it is NSFW, but, uh, yeah, you definitely want to have headphones and probably want to like have another window to kind of move over because she is very scantily clad most mornings there.

There's a lot of boobs. Yeah. I wonder why that's so popular. Not full on boobs, but still, it was interesting to watch. So I, you know, I, I, cause I'm, you know, I, I like to see what the kids are doing nowadays. And it's interesting that Twitch is starting to move away from just doing the gaming platform. So just like everybody else, they want to be everything.

Yeah. They're just a video platform at some point, but you can give people, you know, people who are on there in real time, you can give them tips like money, which is kind of interesting. I mean, there are a couple other services that do it. You can tip people Bitcoin or Dogecoin or boring coin, whatever coin of the coin of the realm is coin of the realm is, is whatever is in vogue today.

But it's, it was just neat. And, uh, I don't know. It's just one of those things I just randomly came across cause she was tweeting that, yeah, we're live. So I'm like, uh, I'm bored. I'm writing code today. So, or setting up a server. I'm like, okay, I'll put you on, see what's what. And it turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. Okay.

And, uh, what's not entertaining, I think, is this, this feud in the media about Twitter, Periscope, and piracy that came out of the fight last week. Um, it's, Periscope is going to have a lot of problems and this is just one of them.

Um, this is a bigger issue because we don't really know how to handle piracy to begin with. And the fact that during the big fight that some people cared about a bunch of people, you know, he had to pay a hundred bucks or whatever for the pay-per-view, a bunch of people turned on their phones and Periscope the fight. This is, I, this is nothing new.

The problem here is the fact that you think that they're going to have a long-term problem because Periscope is going to shark fin like every single other one of these damn things. Yes, it is not going to be a Periscope problem, but it is a problem in general by whatever's next.

Um, this is an issue. We used to do this on See You See Me. I mean, we've done this on every video platform we have. There is, the problem is people just don't care enough to deal with it and it's not a scalable issue because people lose interest.

I mean, if this was a scalable issue, we'd have figured it out by now, but 20 years going on video on the internet with people being able to broadcast what's on their TV to somebody who can't get it. You know, you know what fixed that? BitTorrent. That's what fixed it. I really disagree with you on this.

See You See Me was, the difference is See You See Me was you and me and a couple other people like, you know, our good friend Wendy who actually designed their logo and without mentioning names, this is the dude that actually built a lot of the code on that and then blew all the money on strippers and gambling in Vegas because that's what happens to non-social geeks as well as NBA guys from the hood because, you know, you just don't know how to handle your money.

See You See Me was such a small, tiny, geek-built community. This is all mainstream now. This is not just us sitting around in the basement coding that are, you know, pointing our See You See Me cameras at the World Cup feed from 10 years ago. This is everyone. No, it's not. And it's a big deal.

No, it's not. There was like a million people doing this thing. That's not everybody. It's scalable. It's going to become a bigger and bigger problem. And we really do have to look at piracy and how this stuff is going to work in the future. It's just too easy to copy things now. People are too lazy.

I'm telling you right now, you can start a Google Hangout and put that fight up and had like 20 of your friends come in and watch it. Nobody talks about that. You know why they're talking about Periscope in this? Because it is the new hotness. Everybody wants to talk about it and it gets headlines. You are so not listening to me.

I'm not making any argument about Periscope. I'm talking about the general concept. I don't give a shit about Periscope. Periscope just happens to be the title in this article. I'm talking about the bigger problem. This is not a bigger problem because I'm telling you right now, the laziness factor is always going to come into it.

This is not going to be a scalable problem. All right. Well, I disagree with you, but it doesn't matter for us because our shit's free anyways. Exactly. You come along and you prove me wrong sometime with somebody who has lost actual money from streaming something over a video on demand service like Google Hangouts or Periscope that they can show actual loss of numbers that are significantly higher than any of the other piracy streams like BitTorrent.

And when that day comes, I will say I owe you a beer. But that day is never going to fucking come. That I disagree with you on. I do think it's going to come. It hasn't happened yet, but it will. No. Okay. Never going to happen. But what has happened is San Francisco has hit a new record for rent.

The average is now $3,458 a month. To live around all that dog poo and man poo. No, yeah. The man poo is the problem. I wonder if we can do the math like three plus four and put it against the alphabet and figure out how 3,458 actually spells man poo.

You know, like they used to do with the Lincoln and Kennedy comparisons. I bet we could tinfoil hat up an algorithm that would make 3,458 spell man poo. We probably can. So anyway, the trick here is just don't move to San Francisco.

Yeah, don't. That's a lot of money to live somewhere where you're going to be miserable. Security? Ha! Now, I hate to beat a dead horse, but I'm gonna. Just a little bit.

The WordPress dead horse. Jetpack and the 2015 default theme. Yes. We're completely vulnerable to a DOM-based cross-site scripting attack. This is not your run-of-the-mill bug. They shipped this with their defaults.

Yeah. Oops. Now, we talk about it. We talk about open source now and again. You know, the problem with WordPress is they are a mishmash, a kludge of open source across the board, and there was an example.html file in one of their icon font folders.

Yeah. And they're not the only person that uses this. Now, since this icon font is an open source project, I would like to know who's doing the due diligence right now, this very moment, to find out who put that file there and why.

I can tell you who's doing that, Jason. Who? Absolutely no one. Oh, okay. I thought you knew who put the file there. Yes. Nobody's doing the forensics on this. And well, I hope after they hear this show, because we know that all of the WordPress security experts listen to our show.

Yeah, but this was a big one. And I mean, we had, what, three security patches within 27 hours for Jetpack, three for WordPress over the past week. I mean, this is ridiculous. Yeah, they've been coming in fast and heavy. Fast and furious.

And the problem is, it's not going to stop, because it is such a piece of giant bloatware now that is run by people who just are just terrible programmers. I'm sorry, go read the WordPress code, as the first guest that we ever had on Grumpy Old Geeks, Rudy Deshaun, put it.

He's like, they're just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, aren't they? And yep, that's pretty much it. Yeah, and you know, I picked up actually two small clients over the last two weeks, and you know what? Guess what? WordPress sites, both of them. Oh, I'm sorry.

Isn't it awesome? I have gotten more questions about WordPress recently. Oh, actually, you know what? I'm going to hold off on that, because I believe we have an upcoming segment to talk about that very issue. But anyway, if you do have a WordPress site, or a hundred of them, like most of us do, make sure they're patched right away.

Yes, get on there now. Now, we're going to run through the rest of these real quick, because this is just kind of fun. NSA's, or I'm sorry, yes, the NSA's bulk collection of phone records is illegal, says the appeals court, a federal appeals court, by the way, and they're saying that 215, which we talked about before, the section of the Patriot Act that NSA used to justify their bulk collection of all our phone records, is actually illegal, and most likely unconstitutional.

I'm sure it is unconstitutional, but they just don't want to say it, because of all the problems. So, fight215.org, which we talked about, like on episode 106, still up, the vote's coming up, go put your two cents in. Although, at this point, I don't know if it matters, because we now have legal justification over why this is bullshit.

Yeah. We've got a link in the show notes to the ACLU post, why today's landmark court victory against mass surveillance matters. And it runs down the list of why it's actually very important. Now, I would have to say that Kevin Mitnick, much like myself, agrees that this probably means fuck all.

Yes, that would be my overall point, yes. Yeah. Okay. And it will make zero difference whatsoever in terms of what our government does to us. Yeah, take it with a grain of salt. We have things on the books now, but here's the other interesting thing. I saw this this morning, a searchable database of members of the intelligence community has been posted online.

So, people are actually starting to kind of fight back using the tools we have. This guy, MC McGrath, is using basically Google, LinkedIn, and just very basic algorithms to find people who are in the security community using the keywords from the Snowden documents for the different programs they had, like X-Keyscore and the like.

And it's very interesting. Yes. It's quite funny. It's very funny. Yeah. Good job. And the funny part about this is, by doing those matches and finding these people, they've actually found more stuff that wasn't in the Snowden docs in other programs that these people are putting on their resume saying, yeah, well, I know this one too.

I know that one. Okay. Yeah. Hey, fuck it. I know them all. Let's go. So, we're getting more insights out of what is going on in the surveillance community by just doing standard searches that anybody can do.

And they're making tools to make it easier. Yep. Very cool. I thought that was the shit. So, yeah. Check out, there's a link to Naked Security who gives us a rundown of it. But the site that you want to go to is transparencytoolkit.org. Links for all these will be in the show notes at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 109.

And transparencytoolkit is a pretty cool site, but I do just have to mention, if you're going to have a hero banner display thing on your homepage and have two graphics in there, make sure you actually have two graphics, not the nice NSA logo and then nothing on your second one.

There's the deal. They are transparency toolkit, not competency toolkit. Yes, I see.

Comment of the week. We would like to thank our new Patreon subscribers. Kyle Roderick from the Transmission Podcast is our latest Patreon subscriber. Check out Transmission at transmission.am, broadcasting live five days a week. And I'm actually wearing my Transmission t-shirt right now.

Dork. Yeah, I know. Thank you very much, Kyle. But it is comfy as can be. Also. Thanks, Kyle. I actually do. I've listened to the Transmission Podcast. It's a very good one. So listen to it, people. And our subscriber, Flash Jervis, has actually upped. His monthly Patreon donation.

We're apparently that damn good. Really? Yeah. Thanks, Flash. I didn't even know you could do that. That's awesome. Come on, people. Get on it. You can change your donation anytime. Up, not down. Preferably up. Yes. Okay. We want a checkbox on Patreon that says no downvoting.

No downvoting. And we also got a straight up PayPal donation from Daniel Schultz. So everybody, thank you. We really appreciate you helping us keep the lights on. Yes, we do. Thank you all very much. In addition, we have a new five-star rating and review on iTunes.

Funny and insightful, says Patrick Conley. It's always great listening to smart guys riff on stuff they really love talking about. These guys are pretty funny, and you can learn quite a bit of useful stuff following them. Definitely two thumbs up. All right. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks, Patrick. And yes, if you would like to help keep the lights on, go to patreon.com slash GOG, or you can go to our website, click a PayPal button if you want to do a one-time donation, and we still appreciate your iTunes five-star ratings and reviews.

You guys have been awesome with those, and just keep it up. We appreciate it. Thank you. Now, a frequent commenter to the show, Lawrence Lee, writes, Back in the day, I'm way older than you two grumps, some people said that the telephone system was the most complex thing that man had ever created.

No one knew what it could do or what it would do. Well, my princess phone never got it together to take over the world, but now I read this article from the BBC by Chris Baraka, The Number Glitch That Can Lead to Catastrophe. And again, I must wonder about the wisdom of believing computer scientists who maintain that safe AI can be developed.

What do you think? Well, Y2K comes to mind immediately. Obviously, yes. So this is an article that is, you know, this is honestly a really good article about how integer overflows work. Yeah. It doesn't get too deep into the weeds, but the way memory is allocated and 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit processors, how they can handle large numbers, and when they can't handle large numbers, how things can go wrong.

Yes, things break. And we're coming up on, was it 2038 is when, because right now a lot of things on computer systems use Unix time, which is basically the number of seconds from January 1st, 1970. Which is ridiculous. I don't know why we haven't gotten around to actually changing that.

I know, I know. Most people, most programmers used to, you know, base everything on that because it was always there. And, you know, I probably stopped using it like seven or eight years ago, but there are still people out there that deal with that and, you know, keep Unix timestamps in their MySQL databases.

And things are going to eventually break. But, you know, as we said with Y2K, we'll get around to fixing it by then. Sure. Yeah, how'd that work out? Yeah. So, as far as it comes to AI, no, we're screwed.

Yeah, we're totally screwed. There's no way it will ever be safe. It can't be. By the very nature of it, it's not going to be. Well, we don't know if it'll be safe or not, but it's not going to be controllable. That's the main point. Yeah, once it gets into the wild, which we'll talk a little bit more about later, things can go wrong, I'm sure.

And, I mean, look, we've been dealing with this in sci-fi for ages. And the one thing that I've learned about reading so much sci-fi is people that read sci-fi want to make the things come true that they read in sci-fi. Yes, that's why I changed my iPhone sounds to the communicator from Star Trek.

Exactly. Well, I mean, you look at the Razer phone. The Razer phone was the analog to the Star Trek communicator. So, we had that. Now we've moved on, and our iPhone will one day kill us. Yes, pretty much. I do want to take a quick issue just with the initial premise from you, Lawrence, which is some people said the telephone system was the most complex thing and blah, blah, blah, and your princess phone never got it together to take over the world.

I would argue with that because distributed computing and the internet still went over the telephone wires. For some people, it still does. It is true. We had distributed BBSs, bulletin board systems. That was all done with my little phone jack in my room that my parents were nice enough to give me.

So, yeah, I don't know about that. I would say that the phone lines had quite a significant impact. So, soon we will have AIOL. That's, whoa, hey, look at you. Lawrence also sent us a link to a pretty cool article called Elon Musk, the world's raddest man.

Now, I think Elon Musk is probably a supervillain who is just in his larval state, but so far this is a pretty interesting read. So, the link for that will be in the show notes. Just definitely check it out. It's going to be a series where this guy basically gets to go to all the places where Elon makes his, you know, supervillainy and interview them and interview him.

So, it'll be very cool. I'm not sure about the world's raddest man, but I would certainly argue that right now he is the world's most interesting man. And he probably drinks Dos Equis. Probably. So, Lawrence also asked, this is the end of Lawrence, the Lawrence segment on Grumpy Old Geeks.

Is there a better way for me to drop you notes about things I think you might find interesting, meaning the contact form on the website? Or maybe just as soon I didn't bother you. We appreciate being bothered. You can always use the contact form on our website. I believe Lawrence is one of our Patreon subscribers.

And you can always chat with us there as well. Yeah, Patreon, you know, you're always going to get first dibs if you're a Patreon subscriber and send us notes there because we check that every day. The email stuff, we always check. But seriously, go to Patreon. Give us a buck, people.

Give us some feedback. We'll take your stuff. Yeah. But all roads lead to us. So you can tweet us. You can send us notes on Facebook. You can email us on the contact form or you can send us notes on Patreon. We get everything and we love to hear from you. Yes, we check them all. So it does not really matter.

We got a note from Herb. Remember, Herb, we talked a lot about, he wrote in and talked about books and how he reads a lot of them with his son. And I suggested Ready Player One to him by Ernest Cline. And he wrote in to say we were right about it. So thank you. And you're welcome. We appreciate the positive feedback.

Yes, we do. And yeah, of course we're right. If you haven't read it yet, read it. It's an amazing book. And I believe his second book is coming very soon, correct? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, I remember talking about it and I think it comes out a little bit later this year. So very much looking forward to reading what he comes up with next.

And Nick Carvalho writes, I'm trying to promote my friend's business and was going to use WordPress until I heard you guys talk about it. What would you recommend? Love the podcast. Keep up the great works. Well, that's a goddamn great question, Nick, because there is no real replacement out there for WordPress right now.

You can use Squarespace, which is, you know, a dumbed-down page builder, which, as we have famously called it, an unintuitive fuster-cluck. Yes. You've got the more complicated versions of Joomla and Drupal, which are just major league CMSs, also just as impenetrable and poorly written.

Yes. Nowadays, honestly, learn HTML, make a static website. That's my recommendation to everybody now. The question for Nick really is, you know, what's your skill level? And then it becomes, what's the budget?

My first choice would always just to be build something myself. I built my own CMS, basically, for a lot of my clients. And I implement that if they pay for it. And it's great. And it's not hackable, really. I mean, of course, it's hackable. But it's not like WordPress. It's not an issue.

I built it from the ground up. I did all the coding. And I find that to be the most enjoyable part of what it is that Jason and I do for a living. I love it when I get a client that lets me build something from scratch. But that is very rare these days. And as you can tell, you know, Jason and I both use WordPress for a lot of our clients because, A, that's what they want.

B, that's what they're paying for. And C, you don't have a choice because there's nothing else out there. What, you're going to put your business up on Wix? Yeah. And so you have to look at all those different factors. Honestly, I think it's more fun. If your skill level is low, just learn basic HTML and CSS and a little bit of JavaScript and jQuery and build it from scratch.

You will learn more. And when you move into different CMSs, then, you know, you'll have a better skill set on figuring out how they work and why they work so poorly. And it wraps up really neatly with the discussion that we had at the beginning of the show about the millennials. Learn how to build this stuff from scratch, and that knowledge will go with you everywhere.

Indeed, indeed. So we got a note from Swell Schultz. How can I watch a little bit of Dark Mirror? And I'm assuming here you mean Black Mirror, the, you know, the disturbing BBC series. We've talked about on the show before. The first two seasons are available on Netflix.

It's Netflix US. I don't know what the global Netflix availability is because I don't know where you're from. But the Christmas special, you can't get anywhere except, I think you can buy it on DVD from Amazon, or you can just troll the backwaters of the internet, and it might just happen to be around there somewhere.

I'm sure the friends from Sweden have it. Indeed. That's exactly how I found it. And we got a note from Miranda at mermaid.net. Dear Grumpy Old Geeks, thank you so much for your podcast. I love listening to your thoughts about how tech is shaping our world for better or worse. Worse, generally.

I started listening to your podcast two years ago when I quit my web design job in Illinois to move to California with my boyfriend. Hey, she's from your state and in my state, Jason. Well, soon to be my state. Yeah, soon to be yours as well. Immediately after leaving that job, I missed the constant programming, banter, and music talk of my quirky boss and teammates.

So, of course, your podcast filled that gap. Also, since you mentioned Frank Herbert's Dune quite frequently on the show, that's my fault, I wanted to let you know about the parody version of the book in which giant worms are replaced by giant pretzel monsters and the spice is, of course, replaced with beer. National Lampoon's Dune, spelled D-O-O-N, link in the show notes.

Happy reading and thank you again. Thank you, Miranda, very much. I have read the National Lampoon's Dune way back in college, so it was very funny. Oh, you have read it? Okay. Yeah, yeah, I have. It's funny. It's great. Okay, cool. I didn't know you'd actually found it.

Yeah, so we have a link in the show notes if you want to go check it out and get the paperback and a link to the Wikipedia article. Yes, and thank you very much, Miranda. We're happy that we can replace your old bosses. So we have a comment here from Pierre Diaviso.

He's the creator of ReadMe, which was the first iOS app that incorporated Spritz for speed reading e-books. Yes. They have an all-new version, and he says it fixes a lot of the bugs and issues that I had with it when I reviewed it back. I think it was on Grumpy Old Geek 65, Not Your Parent's Sex Toy.

Yeah, I remember that one. I didn't have time to give it a full review this week, but here's the deal. Pierre was very cool, and he gave us a few codes to get a free version from the App Store. So this is iOS only. Here's the deal. If you want a code to get the app for free, which, I mean, it's a $2 app, but we'll give it to you for free.

Email us at podcast at Grumpy Old Geeks, and first come, first serve. Did you want to try this, Brian? No, I don't. So we have three codes to give away. Yes, we have three codes. I've been trying to get used to Spritzlet just on the desktop, and I'm definitely not going to use it on my phone.

So we have three. Three. We have three copies to give away. One, two, three. Here's the catch. If we give you one of the codes, we just want a short review. We just, you know, a couple sentences, make it quick, make it quippy, and I'll do the full review next week, but I want to hear what you people think.

So we'll give you the app for free. We just want to hear what you think. So this is our first crowdsourced iOS review. Yeah. I'm too lazy. I'm outsourcing my reviews. Yeah, I know. You rat bastard. So yeah, it'll be in Software Apps and Gadgets next week.

Oh, shizzle. Yes. And thank you, absolutely, everyone. We love the comments. I'm always happy when the comment section of this podcast is long. The comments must flow, Brian. They must flow. So keep sending stuff in, because yeah, we got nothing last week. We're like, what the hell?

Where'd the peoples go? And this week, we are awash in comments and questions. So any questions you have, any comments, send them to us. We will get to them, for sure. At the library.

So last week, I mentioned that I was going to pick up that book, The World Beyond Your Head, on becoming an individual in an age of distraction by Matthew B. Crawford. Yes. Yes, you did. Let me ask, did you actually get a physical book? No. Or is this right to you, in your head, while you were walking around, distracted?

When I was getting my 12,000 steps yesterday on my lovely, shiny new Fitbit, yes, I listened to the entire thing. I listened to a 16-hour audiobook yesterday, and I did it on 2X, because we were time-constrained.

And I said I was going to do it, and I did it, so bite me. The thing about it is, it made my brain hurt. This book is so chock-full of the science of individuality, thought processes, what makes us human. I mean, it's an incredible read, but I am going to go back, and I'm going to pick it up in print.

Because I have to go slow with this book. I mean, honestly, it's dense. It is dense, and my brain hurts a lot. All right. I'm going to have to definitely get this then. But yeah, this screams something that actually needs to be read, not listened to, to me.

Yeah. And see, I broke my rule because I wanted to get it done, and my new Kindle didn't get here until the middle of the week, and it was just crazy. But anyway, we'll talk about the new Kindle in the next segment. But I think you will really dig it, because there are basically studies that back everything up.

This is more of a science-y book than it is an anecdotal book. And it's interesting, but it's one of those things where at the end, it just, like, makes you just want to be a nihilist. It really does. Well, I'm already there. Yeah. So, okay, skip step one.

Move directly to step four. And I really want you to read it, and then I will get a print version of it, and we can kind of go back and circle back on it. Because this is, remember the Jared Larnier book? Yes. I can't remember the name of it right now. Me either, but that was rough.

I never actually even finished it. Okay. Well, I think you'll finish this one. It actually gets easier as it goes on. The beginning is the hardest. The first half of the book is the hardest part to get through, because it's just full of these crazy deep concepts on, you know, just the makeup of the mind. Right.

And how we, I mean, it gets down to how we interpret visual signals and turn that into thought, and how, you know, groups perceive colors. You know, it's just how groupthink works. Like, you and I both look at a tree, and you know, what do we see, and all this stuff.

It's a lot deeper than I thought it was going to be. I didn't know what I was signing up for when I bought this one. But it's definitely very, very interesting. And go check it out. And when I get the time to be smarter, I will, maybe I'll read it on half speed. Maybe.

I actually just ordered it, because, you know, I'm not in an age of distraction or anything. So I did that while you were talking to me. Exactly. Okay, I'm glad that you are not distracted enough to have your muscle memory. Oh, the other really interesting thing is, when he's talking about, you know, how we're dealing with mass advertisement and mass distraction, how it is basically homogenizing people in general, their personalities, how everything is just kind of going towards, like, the mean

of just no thought, you know, and I think about it, it's like everything is trying to achieve stasis. Well, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about how there's no subcultures anymore, and I see that as a real-world application of the homogenization. Okay, so here's the deal.

No more Dune for you. Go read this book for next week, and then we will circle back. All right. All right, the HVAC guys here, I gotta go. Okay. Lenovo, Jason, of all people, just put out a new laptop that is pretty damn kick-ass.

It basically beats the Apple MacBook on everything, and it has ports. Well, there are two things that it doesn't beat it on. Style and the fact that you have to run Windows. So those two right there negate everything that's in it.

For me, the Windows 8 is the deal-breaker. I hate that damn OS, and I will do anything to not use it. The design, well, not so much. I would give up design for ports. Nah, not really. Well, you're an Apple fan. I'm shallow. I'm the Kardashian of the group here.

I just want it to be pretty. Make it pretty. Make it pretty. Actually, I will never buy a MacBook, because I do like my ports, and I love my MacBook Pro, and I love my MacBook Airs. But this one just doesn't do a damn thing for me. Everybody I know that's gotten one says it's amazing.

They love it. But I'm like, how do you plug shit into it? I'm looking at my computer right now. I literally have six things plugged into it. Yeah. Honestly. I cannot go without ports. I just can't. Yeah, I've got power. I've got Thunderbolt. I've got audio out, and I've got two USB.

And probably I've got a, yeah, I've even got an SD card plugged into the damn thing. So I've got all sorts of stuff. So yes, ports for the win. Ports for the win. Now, if you don't have Apple stock yet, this might make you consider going and getting some.

Slate put together a rather funny little video that goes through how much the Apple Watch is really worth. Now, starting at a price of $350 for the basic bare bones model, they ran through all the parts that are involved, and it came out to a grand total of $83.70. Which is actually higher than I thought it was going to be.

Me too. I thought it would be a little bit cheaper than that. Yeah, but, you know, $83. And then you figure, you know, oh, let's say $80 million in R&D plus tooling and die casting to get all the parts done. And, you know, whatever, however Johnny Ive decides to, like, say, aluminum today.

Yeah, this seems like a pretty good deal. And it did come in under what their normal profit margin is, or over their profit margin. They're not making as much as they normally would on a product. No, that's true. It's very surprising for Apple. So, you know, the initial impulse is, oh, my God, it's so little.

And I was like, oh, they actually spend a little bit more than I thought they would. I was amazed the screen was $20. All the sensors are like $2, $3. I'm like, oh, that's cheap. But, yeah, the screen was $20 alone. Yeah. Anyway, something that is overpriced that I recently got, I got the Kindle Voyage.

Did you really? I broke down and got one. You know why? Because I got a really good review from Dr. David Teeter. And he's somebody I trust with his reviews. And I got it. And I was a little dismayed when I got it. Oh, no. It's about the same size as my damn iPhone 6 Plus.

Right. See, I'm just, I just use my mini. I use the app on my mini. That's it. I don't need a Kindle. Well, the thing is, I use my iPad Air to do a lot of reading. And it does get a little heavy, even after a while, because you have to rest it on your pinkies. And I lose feeling in the end of my fingers after a while.

And it takes a couple days to come back. That's kind of a problem. And I also like the Kindles. I like the e-ink for long-term reading. It definitely is better on my eyes. And since this one's backlit, it's 300 dpi. The page press sensors are kind of neat.

You know, a little feedback when you change pages, which is nothing but a gimmick. Yeah. All in all, I really like it. The only problem is when I opened it and turned it on, I had two not dead pixels. I had like hyper pixels that were just giant bright lights, you know, coming at me.

So I'm probably going to have to return this for another one, but I'm going to keep it for the next couple of days. Try it out and figure out if it's actually worth keeping because, you know, for the price. So yeah, it's 200. Do you $200 like it? It was, yeah, 220 because I got it without the ads. Right.

So far, I can say no. I will definitely say no. It is not worth it at this point because it is just a little bit too damn small. I wanted it bigger. And yeah, for that price point, I just get a regular paperwhite and get a bigger one. Oh, and by the way, Amazon, don't call them special offers.

They're ads. They're fucking ads. Do you want your Kindle with special offers or without special offers? Fuck you. They're ads. But what I did get that I really liked this weekend, I got the Amazon Basics Portable Power Bank. Like, you know, you got me into getting those little, like, lipstick batteries.

Yeah. And they were pretty cheap. But this one, this is like a 10,000 milliamp hour little brick. It's like your personal little Tesla battery that you can carry around. It is. And, but the thing is, I mean, yeah, the, was it the, not the MeeFies or whatever.

There are a couple of different brands out there, but they're expensive. This one was 30 bucks. Yeah. I'm actually ordering that right now. Yeah. This looks good. And here's the thing. It's, it's got, you know, got, got your little bars on the front. So I, I ran down my six plus charged it up to a hundred percent and I was down to three bars out of four.

That's not bad. No, it says you can charge a five S like four and a half times or five and a half times. And which, you know, when it comes to the six plus is a little different, but yeah, for the price point, I gave away my little lipstick one. Oh yeah. It's like, well, this one lipstick ones, as much as I love them, they don't last very long.

They only, I'd say about six months and then those things kind of die. So I'm hoping that this, this will last quite a long time. It's definitely very cool. And, uh, I, I need this badly. So yeah, this fits in my backpack. Perfect. No, pick it up. It's not, it's not super heavy.

It's got a nice matte finish to it and it comes in a little baggy. I think you'll like it. I'll be getting that. Uh, unfortunately I had to go spend more money on software this week. Uh, fantastic L2, which I've talked about for the iPhone and the iPad. I've used those for a while, but in trying to schedule everything in my life, because I just, if I don't schedule it, if it's not on the calendar, I'm a lost soul.

I'll wander around and just stare at the ceiling all day and going, what should I do now? Because I have 800 things to do. So, so did you forget to write down your vapid podcast the other day? Fuck you. It was in the calendar, but I was hung over and depressed. Uh, but anyway, the, uh, I got, I got the full suite now, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and I couple it with to do us because I've got to do us pro, which lets me sync my to do us calendars with fantastic L.

It's great. I've got everything. You okay. Yeah. Sorry. Something fell. I'm like, shit, he shot himself more software to buy. And, uh, so far it's working out great. I'm, I'm loving it. I've got everything pretty much scheduled down to the minute, except for the HVAC guy that came today.

But now my house is cool and I'm not sweating anymore, but I got my lovely little moleskin works. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. My moleskin is holding up my, uh, my MacBook pro because the stand I have is crooked. So that's where my moleskin goes. Um, quick short update on the, the spritzlet.

Yes. You said you've been using it. I've been trying to, and I can't stand it. I'm not going to lie. I just, it's not the product itself. It's not spritz. It's just any of these things. I, I guess because I'm a pretty fast reader anyways, I'm, I'm very quick and I kind of have my own mental way of doing this that I've developed over the 42 years of my life where I, I just, I can't do the one line thing popping in front of me.

I, I like to have the whole thing, see the paragraphs and I just read fast myself. So yeah, that's the thing. I'm a slow reader. So for me, this has been great, but I noticed that there was, uh, with my reader work workflow that I mentioned last time, like I'd star things in reader and then just re-scan them and pop them over and then run them through spritz.

Yeah. A lot, I'd say almost 30% of the websites I go to have a problem or spritz has a problem parsing them. I think I've noticed that as well. I was getting frustrated because I was reading things and I was annoyed with the process anyways.

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. And that, I think I lost a paragraph. There's no way that that went from this to the, and that sort of stuff was happening to me a lot. So I, the easiest solution now, I still use reader instead of starring them and going back later, everything gets thrown into Instapaper. Spritzlet works flawlessly with Instapaper because there's nothing there but the body of the article.

Oh, very cool. Yeah. And that, that cut off even more time because now it's like, okay. I, if it's, if it sucks, then I just delete it. And if it's good, then I just move it over to Hackpad. But yeah, Spritz plus Instapaper is great. And that's what I really just wanted. All I, you know what? I could have skipped the whole Spritzlet thing if Instapaper just had implemented Spritz.

Right. Instead of having to use their own proprietary thing. But you know, I spent the money. What the hell? Too late. Too late, man. Give me something to talk about.

Media candy. I saw a movie this week. Okay. I saw Ex Machina. Oh, did you really? I loved it. Okay. No spoilers though. No spoilers. Because it's on my list big time. Yeah. Go to the theater. See it in the theater.

It was awesome. Now, the thing is, I went and saw it at the Yorktown theater over here, which they apparently had completely rebuilt since I've been there since last year to see Godzilla, which I hated. Now, my friend and I get there. We walk into the theater.

Everything is different. Full kitchen. Like, you know, massive kitchen. The entire ticket booth is all touchscreens, which is cool. No people. You just go up and touch screen and get your tickets. Right. We go into the theater, all lounge chairs, giant leather lounge chairs, assigned seats with trays that you can swing out with electric, you know, reclining and everything, and an emergency call button for the kitchen.

I shit you not. That's insane. I mean, I understand that theaters have to do this now to get people out of their houses. I mean, as soon as, you know, everybody's got 52-inch screens at home now, and the movies are released, like, within three days, so you can just watch it at home. So they got to up their game to get people out.

They have definitely upped their game. Now, there are side effects of this, okay? Like, people putting their feet up on things or treating it like they're home and annoying the hell out of you? No, no, no. Well, you can't put your feet on somebody else's back because the aisles are so big. The recliner does make a little bit of noise, but that's not the problem.

I kicked my feet back. I was excited. I'm like, dude, just hit me if I start snoring. The problem is, two seats down was a gentleman who was having his lunch. Yeah. Okay, in a silent theater, mastication is a problem.

Yeah, there's that. It's fucking gross. And then there's the smells, too. I always complained about that when people would bring their own food onto a plane. I'm like, are you kidding me? Well, the only problem there is that I just kind of get hungry, and I didn't hit the button because the other problem is the big button for the kitchen, they don't turn the lights down on it.

So you have over your shoulder this giant spotlight. The spotlight is then picked up by the giant white table that swings in front of you like you're at a cafeteria, which just lights up the whole theater. Now, when I go to the theater, I like it dark. Extremely dark.

This just made it really annoying. Last problem, when you have leather seats with 30 people in the room, it gets very squeaky. People moving around like, so what you're saying is basically you want to stay at home and watch the movies again now.

I am fine with staying at home, watching the movies, because I can go to the kitchen without a light over my shoulder. And if the person next to me is eating too loud, I can just throw a pillow at them and say, shut the fuck up. I'm trying to watch a movie. And yeah, but the upside was it was only six bucks.

Well, that is pretty cheap. Yeah, we went and saw a matinee, and it was only six dollars. Yeah, it's about the exact same price to rent a movie in HD now on Amazon. It's still six dollars more from going to Sweden, but. Yeah, that's true. So that's what I did. I rented the Imitation Game, because I finally decided I should probably watch some of these movies that are really good and interesting and up our alleys.

And it was good, interesting, and up our alley. I liked it a lot. Okay, now how did it compare to the Stephen Hawking movie for you? The acting and all of that in the Stephen Hawking movie was much better, but the Imitation Game, I loved the story, and it was more science, and it was more interesting.

Okay. So that's it. I loved the story Imitation Game a lot more. If you're familiar with Turing's life at all, you'll like it. It's good. No, I loved it. I loved that movie. And, you know, Benedict Cumberbund or whatever the hell, I thought he was pretty good in it.

Yeah, he did great. And, yeah, just the whole thing I really enjoyed. Yeah, it was a great movie. So if you have not seen it yet, like me, get on it. Now, what I didn't enjoy was the fact that Simon Pegg's new movie, I had to go to Snapchat to watch.

Well, no, you didn't, because those premieres, those exclusives, are never more than like 24 hours these days. I think it was 20 minutes. I honestly think it was about 20 minutes. Because from MTV in the UK, you had to go get the quote-unquote world-exclusive trailer, and you had to do it on Snapchat.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. No, not going to happen. And it took about 30 seconds to find it on YouTube. So we have links to both the story about Snapchat and the YouTube trailer in the show notes. But it looks cute. It looks cute. It's kind of like Bruce Almighty meets The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like most things that Pegg does. So, of course, I'm going to check this out when it comes out. Yeah. I haven't seen his last movie, which was kind of, it didn't really look very good. And I heard it wasn't very good, so I skipped it. And what also doesn't look very good is that Hulu is trying to make a TV show from Myst.

Oh, geez. Really? Just imagine explaining this to your kids, if you have kids. So this is a TV show based on a video game that came on a CD-ROM long before you were born. And then the first they'd be like, what's a CD-ROM? And then, you know, just the whole premise of it.

It doesn't really kind of lend itself to TV. It wasn't that great of a video game. It was revolutionary. But as far as gameplay went and story went, it was pretty shallow. Yeah, it was revolutionary because of the visuals at the time were so stunning and the amount of effort that went into the whole look and feel.

How that becomes. You know what? There have been movies based on dumber things and TV shows. So the scary thing about this is actually Myst is probably the last computer game I've played. Oh, you're weird. I haven't played a game. I remember buying Myst and playing it.

Hey, I guess you'd play Plants vs. Zombies for a while. Okay, yeah, I guess that lasted about a week. Yeah, and the thing about Myst was it was so immersive that, you know, you could only beat a bunch of the puzzles just by figuring out audio puzzles.

So you had to have your headphones on, dark room, and listen to the audio cues to get through half the game. And it's like, how are you going to translate that into a TV show? Didn't we already have this as a TV show? I think it was called Lost. Yeah, probably. It's about the same. Now, another new quickie coming out here.

Sense8. Sense8? Yes, I watched the trailer for this and I am intrigued. So this is by the former brothers Wachowski and now the brother and sister Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, who was of Babylon 5 fame. It's a Netflix original coming out June 5th.

Yeah, yeah, it looks interesting. No, it definitely looks interesting. The only disconcerting thing is we have two trailers in our media section with shirtless buff dudes. Yeah, I saw that you put those both in. I was going to drop in the trailer for Magic Mike 2 for you as well. Oh, okay. Was that XXXL?

I have no idea. That's all you, Jason. See, you live with people that make you watch The Notebook. I've lived with people that made me watch Magic Mike. I have seen Magic Mike. It was not good. So unfortunately, hopefully I will not have to see Magic Mike 2, but I have a feeling that since I'm moving back to California, Magic Mike 2 might be in a lazy Sunday somewhere.

Yeah, good luck with that. Enjoy. Breathe a nipple. Stephen Colbert. Yes. Did something extraordinarily cool. Okay. He funded every DonorsChoose grant request in South Carolina.

Oh, that's pretty badass. Because he's been a DonorsChoose fan for a long time. And me personally, I've been a DonorsChoose fan for a long time. Back when I did Metblogs and was kind of hanging out with Tim Ferriss, he got me into it. And I think Metblogs, we donated like $5,000 over the years to them.

So I'm a huge DonorsChoose fan. And I literally have a stack, a foot-high stack of drawings from kids that they sent me after we funded their projects, which is super cool to get that stuff. So I can't even imagine the size of the stack of drawings that Stephen Colbert is going to get.

We're spending $800,000. That is crazy. Good on you, man. Yeah. Yeah, he looks strange with the beard, though. You got to check out the picture of him. The picture is a little, yeah. Check out our show notes and go to the link. And Stephen Colbert looks a bit like a mountain man.

But yeah. I was thinking Mel Gibson. Or Mel Gibson. His not good face. Oh, no. And just because I have to put this in here, Hackers, 20th anniversary Blu-ray, finally coming out August 18th. They're 13 days late for my birthday, but still close enough.

I am so happy this is coming out on Blu-ray. God, I hope they do a good job with it. What are these Blu-ray things? They're little picture discs that if you blink really fast, like make things on the screen. Oh, is it like that what Miss came out? Yeah, kind of. Oh, okay.

Interesting. Yeah. But they're blue. I don't see many of those in the wild anymore. I see a stack of them right next to, well, where my TV used to be because I sold it. And now I just have a Blu-ray player and no TV. Right. Yeah. Hackers was a great movie. So that's pretty cool.

And speaking of movies that basically hit our age range perfectly, we all remember Vacation. Yeah. The Trip to Wally World. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's not, now, it's not a remake. And the trailer's out now. It's, Ed Helms is basically Rusty, the son, who now has his own kids, and they want to redo that trip because he remembered it so fondly from his childhood.

The trailer looks pretty decent. I know, Jason, you're going to say this is totally going to suck, and there's a high chance that it will, but there were some really good jokes in the trailer. There were a couple. There were a couple. What upset me the most is Anthony Michael Hall is still a working actor.

Why is he not Rusty in the movie? Because he's not a good working actor. Oh, come on. Dead Zone was great. He's got it. He's still got it. Yeah, he should have actually been cast for this, but they went with Ed Helms. At least I hope they, like, throw him in as a cameo somewhere, just as a shout-out.

They better. They should have all the people from that cast in as cameos. Just in the background, you know, doing something silly. But, yeah, there were a couple cute things, but all the jokes are in the trailer, so, you know, what's left? Well, we don't know that yet. We're hoping that it'll be good. I've worked in movies.

Let me have a little hope. Look, man, I worked in movies long enough. All the good jokes are in the trailer. Trust me.

The web's not dead. Oh, no, it's not. I think we need a segment called Hero of the Week. We have Moron of the Week, and I didn't want to put this in there because she is not a moron. She is a hero. Her name is Emily McDowell, and these empathy cards for serious illness have been making the rounds on the social medias, and I love this.

She has made some incredibly cool cards that are very, very funny, and I highly recommend you checking this out. And if you have anybody in your life, unfortunately, that you could give this to, you should. Okay, so here's the deal. Yeah, these are cards that are made for people who are extremely ill.

Yes. And as we all know, we all have had friends that have been down that road, and it's always difficult to talk to them. You never know what to say. She has put all of the things that we wish we could say on these cards, and they're amazing. Yes. Definitely. Worth checking out.

I mean, I'm really sorry I haven't been in touch. I didn't know what to say. Pretty much sums it up. Yeah. It's an amazing card. Or you can go the funny route, like, one more chemo down, let's celebrate with whatever doesn't taste disgusting. These are great cards. Brilliant idea and a good honor. And she deserves all the recognition she's getting for this right now.

Indeed. Indeed. And have you ever heard of the Beasley Street Gazette? No, I have not. You should check it out because it is, well, they call it the newsiest news you ever knew. And there's a great article in here called Exposure Now Legal Tender for Photographers, which says there's a change in the law that lets people who want exposure buy things with that exposure,

which goes back to everything we've always talked about with people say, hey, if you do this website for me, you'll get exposure from it. You know, we've got a big brand name and, yeah, you can get something from it. So it's a tongue in cheek article that's pretty, pretty funny. That is very funny. Yeah.

Love it. So the funny thing is when I was going through the site, checking out other ones, they had the exact same article, almost word for word, but for musicians. Yeah. It's actually on today's top story for me right next to the legal tender for photographers. Beer and exposure now legal tender for bands and musicians.

Exactly. So, yeah, check out BeasleyStreet.com. Link will be in the show notes for this article. But there's some pretty clever articles. They have been added to my RSS reader. Yes, I am bookmarking. Closing shout outs. I mentioned previously Rudy Jashan, who was making fun of WordPress with us as our first guest on Grumpy Old Geeks.

He's got a really cool video of a talk that he just did called Getting Started in VR with JavaScript. Yes. It's a little half hour video, and he just talks about, you know, kind of the basics of coding VR with some of the JavaScript libraries for things like, you know, the Oculus Rift and other platforms.

I love Rudy. He did it. He knocked this talk out of the park, and I just wanted to give him a shout out for it. Very cool. And I also want to give a shout out to Resistance Pro Wrestling, which I will be at Saturday, tomorrow, May 9th, down in Summit, Illinois. Come on out. Hang out. Colt Cabana will be down there.

And the Chicago Tribune even did an article about it. So, it must be news. So, yeah, I do this every now and again, and I'm the DJ. So, don't hang me, please. But it's a bunch of fun. It's pretty cheap. You can get tickets at the door. Just come hang out. There's beer and wrestling.

Lots of wrestling. All right. I like the beer part. The rest of it, I didn't even understand a word you said. But Jason will be there and go and make fun of him because I can't do it in person, at least not for another two weeks. And I want to give a shout out to the Aussie Pie Company. We had a little glitch in the matrix with our podcast, and Jason had to take care of something.

So, I walked down there and got a delicious sausage pie, which took care of my hangover. Oh, my God. I could use that right now. I don't have a hangover, but I'm just hungry as hell. Oh, this place is good. When you come down here, it's on Main Street here in Santa Monica. I think they have a couple other locations, but you're going to have to check it out.

Their stuff is just delicious. I cannot wait. Thank you so much. Okay. So, that's about it. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo. You can follow me on Twitter at Jason.com, all spelled out, or at JPD.me. And I'm Brian Shulmister, and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

We'll talk to you next week. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show. Not 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, really appreciate it.

We also appreciate your iTunes ratings and reviews. Go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars, but better yet, tell a friend about the show. The more, the merrier. Music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Tidal.

Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at Patreon.com slash GOG, and get 10 exclusive tracks. You can also find us at Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks, or Twitter.com slash GOG Podcast. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 109.

We're going to WALL-E world. We're going to WALL-E world.

This is Christine Ko from the Edit Your Life podcast. Decluttering is tricky for a number of reasons, and one of the big ones is the physical act of getting stuff out of your home. And I have a great solution if this is the case for you. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which helps get unwanted items out of your home or business.

The process couldn't be easier. Just pop in your zip code on the website and see what the next availability is. When I did this on a Sunday, there was same-day pickup available in very short order. All you need to do after you book your time is point at the stuff you want gone, and their friendly team handles everything else.

Lifting, hauling, and sweeping up when they're done. It's an easy, fast way to reclaim your space without breaking a sweat. This is also a genius option if you have older loved ones who are downsizing, but the moving of stuff is a key hindrance to the process. Once your items are loaded into the truck, they recycle the recyclables and donate the donatables, so as much junk as possible is diverted from landfills.

Are you ready to check this out? Book your free in-person estimate today. Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com. Again, that's 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com to book your free in-person estimate today.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.