110: Poor Pierre

Jason's Maxim. Fuck it up. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Good afternoon, Mr. Schulmeister. Good afternoon, Jason. We're finally recording at basically a decent time for me. This is actually a decent time for me, too. I kind of like this, like, later in the afternoon thing. Because you know why? In the middle of the morning, I had a server go down, and we'd have had to pause the show anyway.

Well, I'd like to say I was able to sleep in to do this later recording, but I was in Beverly Hills at 9 a.m., so that didn't work out. But here I am now. Well, there's no reason to ever go to Beverly Hills if you can avoid it, but 9 a.m. is even worse. Paychecks. That's a damn good reason. Oh, that is the only reason. There you go.

Yeah. So, speaking of paychecks, I have a little bit of a nepotism intro here today. Okay. I was going to put this on last week, but I didn't get the URL until this week. Friend of the show and our voiceover guy, Robert Glenn Fogarty, is looking for work.

And his voiceover stuff we do for fun, but his day job, he's a tech writer and an editor. And remember, he's Bob's your uncle. He is Bob's your uncle. He has been working for a company for like over 10 years and is a great editor.

I actually got him the job. I believe in him that much. But things have changed and now he's looking for some, he's looking for some coin. So, I wanted to throw out a shout out to Mr. Robert Glenn Fogarty and put a, uh, a URL in the show notes. You should check out scribblepinch.com if you're looking for an editor slash writer.

Now, this, this domain, I'm going to have to have some words with, with Mr. Bob over because... Hey, to be fair, it's, it's, it's rather hard to get a decent domain these days. He owns robertfogarty.com and robertglennfogarty.com. And I see when you need some scribbling and in a pinch. I guess if you're in a pinch and you need to scribble, call Scribble Pinch.

Check him out if you're looking for any writing, any writing stuff. He has been my, my live-in grammar troll and Nazi for over 25 years and one of my best friends. And I recommend him wholeheartedly. As do I. Bob's your uncle. Now, another one that we're going to pimp here today.

Now, we've, we've talked about Budaphy many times. Yes, love the app. Use it today. Have a story about that in a second. Okay. And Rowan has, is a Patreon subscriber. Yes, he is. Thank you very much. Uh, he's got a Kickstarter. Yes. I know. He actually, he actually sent us an email.

I was like, guys, you know, I'm sorry about this, but, uh, we've got a Kickstarter and, uh, we wondered if you could pimp it. And I'm like, it was already in the show notes, dude. We're going to, we're going to help you out because I just love what this guy does. And, you know, it's fun. It's called Cards for Mindfulness. And, uh, they're almost there.

Yeah, I see. Uh, you're almost there, man. So congratulations. I'm a big fan. I think it's a great product. Um, and he's a super nice guy. We've, we've had a lot of interactions with him. Great guy. So, uh, support him. If you're not doing the meditation thing, you know, time to do it. Oh, it's definitely. Yeah. No, definitely time to do it.

And these look kind of fun. So I will be tossing my hat in the Kickstarter ring. Uh, Jeff, I must, but I will. Right. So I was actually using Budaphy 2 this morning. Uh, I got home a little bit before we decided we were going to time out our show. Uh, so I've been doing, I've been really enjoying the walking meditations that they have on Budaphy 2.

And they're the only one that I hadn't tried yet. So I had to head down to the post office. So I popped it on and started the pro walking meditation called zap. And it's kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's a bit of a little bit more of a cheesy one. Uh, most of them are really, you know, just kind of focus on yourself.

The whole take on this one was get out of yourself, focus on the other people that you see and zap them with good thoughts as you're walking along. Okay. That's kind of opposite of my douche. Well, wait until you hear what happened to me on this walk. So I was trying to get into it and there's quite a few people around at Santa Monica, Venice and going down to the post office.

So, you know, I'm feeling a little goofy, but I'm starting to zap people with my good thoughts and, you know, Oh, Hey, Hey dreadlock guy, you know, good luck today. And hope you get some food or whatever the hell, uh, doing all the super nice thing, walking along, walking along, stop at the stoplight, boom, press the button. Wait, wait, wait, walk sign, get back to walking, zapping people in their cars.

Hey man, you know, good for you. Have a good day and almost get run over by a Prius. That, that ran a red light and stopped about two inches, uh, before smashing into me. So I zapped him with some different thoughts. Well, hopefully it wasn't your boot to his headlights.

Oh boy. Yeah. Good times. So the Prius thing continues on, but, uh, yeah, good on you Rowan love, but if I too, and, uh, best of luck with your cards for mindfulness. I, I urge people to check it out. Ab so smurfly. And another note to self, uh, I had a bit of an interesting day yesterday. Luckily I wasn't too busy with work stuff.

And also luckily I have 500 computers around. Unfortunately, my, I basically keep almost all my work stuff on one drive. I do have a backup of it. So that was able to get me through the day. Uh, but I was doing some updates on my PC. Um, there's a bunch of them that had, that had come up.

And at some point I unwittingly checked off on the run check disc on drive. It's a three terabyte drive and it took 12 hours. Well, you know, in all fairness, you did actually name the drive grumpy. Well, yes, I did name the drive grumpy, but I couldn't believe it took 12 hours.

I was shocked. Three terabyte USB disc. Uh, was it USB three or USB two? USB two. That's the problem. Yeah. 12 hours. My main computer was down and my main drive was down. Go spend a hundred bucks and get a USB three drive. Yeah, I know.

Uh, I'd say get a, uh, Thunderbolt drive or a Firewire drive, but, uh, you can't. So. Yeah. Are you ever going to get off that damn PC? Uh, yes, I, I've, I've got a lot of stuff going on. I think you, a lot of plates in the air, Jason, a lot of plates in the air.

I do believe you are going to get off that PC the day that our entire audience says we give up, we're going to use one password. Yeah. There's about as much chance of that happening. Yeah. Uh, well, no, I'm going to be traveling soon. And as you know, uh, I basically just take the Mac with me when I travel. So I'm, I'm all Mac when I'm mobile.

I'm just, uh, yeah, I got the big PC at home and it's all set up nice the way I like it. And I love windows seven. So we'll get around to it. Okay. Okay. Now you have always been big on the digital legacy and digital afterlife stuff to the point where you even created your own service quite a while ago.

Correct? Yes. Death vault. Death vault. The name might've had something to do with that failure. Well, I didn't actually launch it because I listened to too many people that said that name sucks. And I'm like, whatever. Yes, it does. I think it's great. Well, I'm going to say, I think that there is definitely a market for a company that does this full time.

Um, and I think it needs a bit of a cheerier name, but anyways, there, there, there is a niche here for somebody, some smart kid out there to start up something and not a fucking app and actual service people. Anyways, I found on recode.net, which is one of my favorite new sites, uh, a two part series that is basically planning your digital legacy and, uh, the writer Catherine Bohair, I believe I go French with it, uh, does an actually really good job of rounding up the various services

that most people out there are using, finding out what policies they have, if they have any, uh, including things, you know, like all the different wireless carriers and, and stuff like that. And the reason that I say this could actually be a really good service is these things change all the time. That's the real problem.

So you would actually have to really start up a business that just kept going around and around and checking things. There are some like legacy shield and a few others, but, uh, links are in the show notes, some really interesting stuff in there and, uh, really kind of uncomfortable subject, but considering I almost got creamed by a Prius again today, perhaps I should pay a little bit more attention to this.

This was, this was a nice like primer. It had a few decent bits of info and got people thinking about it. It's not too in-depth technically. And it does leave out about, you know, 99% of the entire spectrum of what happens when you die and all, you have all your digital stuff.

I mean, I researched this a lot when I was building that service and, uh, it's very complicated. That's one of the big problems. And the other issue is I wasn't VC backed, so I didn't have lawyers. I didn't have security experts. Um, yeah, because my biggest issue was the reason I stopped was, uh, I, I really was just worried about getting hacked.

Uh, and I came up with a lot of what I could have actually patented, uh, cool techniques for, uh, password recovery and all this other crazy stuff. But then again, I don't believe in software patents, so I didn't, but, um, this is a cool space. And I think it's only going to grow as more of the lay people get online and die.

Honestly, that's what we need. We need more death on the internet to actually solidify this space that, that proves our use case. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, it's, it's a very, it would be a full-time endeavor because, uh, the, the big problem is almost all these companies change their policies, change the links, change the URLs where various things are at basically willy nilly and, and relatively consistently.

So it's a, it would be a full-time venture, but yeah, this is a growth industry as it were. Oh man. And I also ran across something that I thought you might be jumping all over. Uh, you remember we talked a while back about in Brooklyn, uh, all of a sudden a, a 3d statue or bust of a Snowden popped up and people got all in a tizzy about it.

Yeah, that was my story. Of course I remember it. Well, there you go. Well, all, uh, a 3d printable version, uh, has been released of Snowden. So you can create an eight inch Snowden bust anywhere. Now, the only way that I would ever do this was, well, Hey, I can't do it because I don't own a 3d printer. Uh, if it was a Snowden bobblehead, if I could get a Snowden bobblehead to put on my dashboard, I'm in.

That would be awesome. I would totally go for that as well, but no, it's not. And, uh, yeah, I just don't have a 3d printer and I don't plan on buying one anytime soon. So neither do I, because I don't plan to, I've already had my 12 hour adventure with the drive yesterday. I'm not spending 12 hours to print out a Harry Potter wand.

Yeah. That generally looks like crap. So yes, it's not, it's not there yet. The Snowden bust kind of looks like it's a, like a Easter time chocolate bunny, chocolate bunny Snowden head. Now if there's white chocolate, I can get behind that. I like some, some white chocolate, white chocolates gross.

Oh, it's delicious. And I ran across another good, another good site this week. And I'm actually probably going to order some of these extinct startups.com. There are some legal issues with this as in who nobody knows who actually owns the logos, but it's a nice collection of t-shirts of various sites that have disappeared.

You can get your Napster shirt, your Groove Shark shirt, your secret men's shirt, your Silk Roads mentee. It's pretty funny. Dig. MySpace. And Dig's still around. That's the funny part. So is MySpace in theory. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's a fine idea, but they should have consulted their lawyers first because they say in the article in Wired, it's like, yeah, we're waiting for a cease and desist.

I'm like, uh, I really just hope they get sued out of existence. Well, I, well, I, I like the idea. I, my Technorati shirt's not up there. They make a Technorati shirt. I'm, I'm in, but Technorati isn't still an existing business, but. Isn't Elo basically just trying to sell their t-shirts now? Why don't they?

Yeah, that's all they should hop up on this. They've got funding. They could actually hire the lawyers to keep these guys in business and keep them from going to jail. That's true. No. Mm-hmm. And finally, hidden in my news, since I seem to have dominated the intro section, Top Gear is apparently coming back and Netflix did go give them all the monies.

Yeah. Well, it is reported by sources close to the matter. And they're going to call it House of Cars. Really? I don't think that they're going to do that. I hope that. I really hope that's tongue in cheek. That's a ridiculous name. And sure, it'd be fine while House of Cards is still in the, in popular culture, but House of Cards has probably only got a couple, maybe two years left.

So, and I expect if Netflix does bring these guys over to do a show, it will be long running. So get a better name, people. Yeah, definitely. And I'm sure I am. I am 100% positive. They probably threw it out there to see how, how, you know, much outrage there would be on Twitter.

And then they'll just keep changing it until there's less outrage and then pick one. I really don't care what the name is. Just get those guys back on TV together. Yeah, seriously. Well, they're doing the tour. Yeah, but that's only in the UK. And Australia. I thought that was a joke. No, go to their site. There's, there's dates in Australia.

Oh, okay. Well, good on them. Yeah. Mate. Come to LA. Damn it. Now, this story, it's called The Real Teens of Silicon Valley. It kind of hit the airwaves yesterday, like big time. And it's an interesting take on several teenagers who live in Silicon Valley now and are making their way, doing their startup thing at a completely ridiculously young age.

And it's, it's mind boggling, this article. I've got so many things to say about it. I'm going to try and just kind of gloss over how many problems there are with it. But, um, there's a quote from one kid. His name's Desai. He's like, while still in high school, he made an iPhone game that sold 50,000 copies.

And he states, who cares about grades after that? And my dad and I were talking last night about, you know, what these people are going to do when the power goes out. It's like, they've got no real skills. And what happens when apps are not downloaded anymore, which we have already covered in several episodes saying people just don't download apps anymore.

Yeah. You know, these guys are- The boom on that's gone already. You can't make a living doing an app developer. And it's, if you do, it's, it's the same game as being a songwriter. It's lightning in a bottle. You get one. You're super, super lucky. Yeah. I mean, what are these kids going to do? Rub their phones together for warmth when nothing else works?

Because you always have this tendency to go like, we're going all Mad Max and the world blows up. And what are they going to do then? Which fair enough. I'm saying when they have no money, when they have no money and they can't afford food and fire, what are they going to do? The biggest thing for me is that you and I have been doing this for 20 years and we have our own experiences where we've learned technologies that basically went obsolete.

It happens. I really, really good at flash development. Yeah. Is that doing shit for me anymore? Fuck no. It's dead. So you do need an education. You need to be able to have a wide base of education, see our entire last show, and you need to be able to pivot.

I mean, I barely code anymore. Most of my job now is because of my experience with production, my education, and I'm able to do all kinds of different things in different avenues of the whole product development cycle. Yeah. And we, you know, it took us 20 years to go through that entire cycle and learn everything in the business, how we can do it.

And these kids, you know, they're getting there like so young and getting this much press up front. And if these kids get funded, I just, I mean, I should be the cautionary tale of peaking early because like I got there, I was young and I wasn't even that young.

When I got my first hit, I was 25, but I didn't really start till I was 22. When would you say you peaked, Jason? 25. Okay. Just checking. Yeah. No shit. It's been a downhill road ever since. I mean, salary wise, I didn't peak till I was in my thirties. Right. And then that's been a downhill ride ever since, but it just screws with your head.

And these kids are just going to be, they're just like cannon fodder for these. Well, I mean, just take a cautionary tale from sports. It's all the 18 year old kids with no education that all of a sudden have $20 million and look how well, look at Dennis Rodman. There you go. Done. Yeah. Just go read this article and pull your own, you know, pull your own takeaways from it.

But it's just, it's kind of disgusting that these kids are going there and that there are these VCs out there that are kind of like pornographers, like down at the Greyhound station, pulling chicks off the bus saying, come work for me. You know, that's what it really kind of feels like to me. It just feels seedy and smarmy and just like, uh, what's the, what's the word I'm looking for?

Unresponsive or irresponsible, utterly irresponsible of these VCs to do this to these kids. Wait, hold on. Silicon Valley VCs are irresponsible. Well, yeah. Okay. I mean, honestly, if this was a, if this was a storyline on Silicon Valley, the TV show, it probably wouldn't get aired because it is so disgusting.

You're probably right. I mean, I only scan through the article because this just confirms everything that I feel about it anyways. And I just stay in school, kids. Yeah. Stay in school. Get a fast, wide ranging education. Learn how to do many, many things. Don't think just because you know how to do something right now and it's really, really hot, this is going to carry you through all your, through your life.

We all know that doesn't work anymore. You have to be able to pivot. You're never going to do the same thing that those days went out. My, my parents' generation was the last generation where you basically just did one thing your whole life. Yeah. No, that shit's over with. And you know, I got to change gears here.

Literally, figuratively. I went to the Ford dealership this week. We've talked about planned obsolescence a couple of times because I've had parts that break. Now on my emergency brake on my car, the little plastic thumb thing that, you know, pushes in the mechanism, I cracked. I'm like, okay, it's a 10 cent part.

Probably cost me 50 bucks in labor to put it back in. No, they will not sell you that little plastic part anymore. You have to buy an entire emergency brake assembly to fix an eight cent part. Yep. Are you out of your fucking minds?

My iPhone five battery that lasts exactly 35 minutes when I'm out walking now. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. But you can, you can actually still go buy that and fix that yourself if you wanted to. I cannot find a place to sell me this part so I can take apart my car because it's a, you know, a proprietary part.

You know what? Maybe I should go get a 3d printer. It would cost less than actually buying the emergency brake assembly. That is what a lot of people are using 3d printers for now. Like the shops have them now. You know, they just build out all these parts rather than having to order it from the manufacturers for ridiculous prices. Yeah. Yeah.

Land Ops lessons can bite my Wonka. Facebook has decided to finally roll out. They're eating up all the media application called instant articles.

Have you seen one yet? I have not seen one yet. Neither have I. So they have launched a feature called instant articles. Apparently it's only on their mobile app and only on the iPhone mobile app, but they are now hosting themselves journalism. You see, the only reason I use the iPhone Facebook mobile app is when I get a notice that somebody's actually replied to something I've said.

So I don't browse Facebook on my, my iPhone. But many, many, many people do. Yes. And to be honest, I don't browse Facebook on my computer either. So I'll scan it and give it like a one through just, you know, to see like the top 30 or 40 articles that are new, not with their goddamn newsfeed shoves down my throat.

And that's it. That's my Facebook reading. I spend much more time on Twitter. So if I run across one of these, I'll try it. But well, you were a bit of a Luddite in that way, because most people do get their news from Facebook and they do get it from the mobile app. So there's a bit of hysteria about this. In fact, the article that I'm referencing says Wednesday, May 13th, 2015.

That's the day journalism sold its soul. Yeah. You know, we've, we, we've covered this on many a show. And I think that the fact that media companies are putting their stuff on Facebook so people can read it without going to their websites was an interesting thing for us because, you know, why would they do it?

Because they need the eyeballs. But we never knew much about how the ad split was going to work. Yeah. And this article at least brings out some of the details of how the ad split's going to work. And it doesn't sound that bad for these media outlets now, no, and they get a pretty good cut.

And so far it's, there's nothing exclusive about it for now, which is fine because these articles can still be found on their own websites, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, I would just, uh, cautionary tale to you media companies out there that are dancing with the devil. Uh, remember all the small businesses that actually, uh, managed to become profitable because of Facebook.

And then all of a sudden Facebook pulled every, the rug out from under them and made them start to pay for things. Yeah. That's when, you know, their, their ad network came out and their ad network is amazing, but yeah, forget getting anything for free from Facebook. This is, and I don't even want to say, remember small businesses on Facebook.

I want to remember crack cocaine. Remember first one's always free. Yes. You get hooked and then, then that's it. Then you're selling your children on the black market just for a hit. And that's, what's going to happen. But the article also has an interesting take. On news agencies saying that, you know, they're having a hard time getting people to go to their websites to actually consume the news.

And if everybody just puts their news on Facebook and gets paid for it, that, that kind of splits news into, you know, a creation versus distribution channel. So it separates the two. So where like the New York times could just be creating news and sending it out kind of like, you know, the AP or Reuters problem there is they get most of their news from AP or Reuters.

So, well, it's kind of a chicken and egg problem, but it could keep them going longer without having to deal with paywalls and stuff like that. Again, cautionary tale. Remember what happened to the music industry when they separated content versus distribution. Well, that's up to you.

You tell me what that happened. I couldn't care less about the music industry, but you know it all. So you tell me, you know, as soon as the, as soon as the distribution went to third parties like YouTube and Spotify and all that sort of stuff, uh, music profits went down. Uh, they, they weren't making enough money to pay for the content creation anymore.

And we already have that issue in journalism. We already know that there's not a lot of great content creation out there. And, uh, this is just going to further that because a lot of the money is comes from the distribution and owning the ad channels yourself. So, yeah, but you know, with the music industry, there were two shifts there. There was the shift into digital and away from physical, which, which means the distribution killed mainly the record store on that one.

And that changed a lot of things. So, you know, there, there are multiple variables at play in that. We've already, we've already switched news to digital. The pay, the print edition of news is all but dead. Everybody knows that. So this is like how distribution is going to happen in the digital only realm. I just seem to remember you screaming from like episode one through 100, that if you don't control the distribution channel, you're screwed.

Well, I might've been wrong. I don't know, but I can tell you what is wrong is, is putting your trust. In somebody else with your content where you, you know, they're in a pickle. They can't, they can't afford to keep going at the pace they're going and still produce the news.

So they're, they're desperate right now. Facebook's throwing them a lifeline because they know they're desperate. I just, I, you know, I think at this point with Facebook taking over the news, we're all going to lose. There's going to be a short-term gain for these, these news agencies, but you know, Facebook's, it behooves them to keep these agencies alive.

So to give them enough money so they can keep going because it's content for them. So they don't, that, you know, that you don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but you also don't want to, you know, beat it in gold. So give it what it can to sustain itself and kind of go from there. Yeah.

All right. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I think this is, this is a wait and see, but I was really surprised at the terms where, you know, the news outlets can put their own ads in. They keep the 100% of the, of the profits from those ads or now. And if Facebook puts an ad in when they, if they don't have inventory to place in those articles, then Facebook only takes 30%.

Right. For now. For now. Yeah. And as soon as they roll out Facebook's ad platform and be able to buy ads on those instant articles from Facebook's ad providers, I'm sure they're going to take another cut because then they're running, you know, the, all you can, the self-service side of it, using their data to do the targeting because Facebook still owns all the targeting information.

Exactly. It's good to be Facebook. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I don't care for them, but they're, they're doing, they're doing it right as far. If you're Facebook, they're doing it right. Yes, they are. And, uh, speaking of doing things right, I have a feeling that Apple's new music service will not be doing things right.

Uh, it's going to be launching soon. Uh, there's an article in our show notes on recode again. Um, and given the inside information that I have about this, this is pretty spot on. Um, they're going to offer, they're not going to offer anything free a la Spotify or the proposed YouTube one that's going to be launching pretty soon either.

Uh, they are kind of going the title method, which is a free trial period. And then you have to pay, which worked out so well for title. Well, title just suck. Okay. I don't know if beats, you know, V Apple or whatever they're going to call it as they roll it out, if they're going to suck as much as them.

But that's a, that's a, that's a different topic, but title just suck. Yeah. And then Apple's going to have something along the lines of a SoundCloud sort of free service where you can upload samples of your songs. I don't know why they would bother with that since they already have that built into their infrastructure with their iTunes store where you can just play 30 second samples.

But no, no, no. This is so you can sell your music through their marketplace. What they're going to do is they're going to, they're going to turn the music store into a model just like the app store. So you can sell your music, upload a sample. People can buy your music. I'm sure through that system or like roll it into their streaming service.

Somehow there's got to be something, something like that. Cause you know, they see a rock and then they want to figure out how they can make an app store around it. So that's interesting and not really particularly welcome for me because, oh boy, that means everybody, every jack off is going to upload all their songs.

I mean, my biggest issue aren't any good. Yeah. My biggest issue with this whole thing is, are they really expecting iTunes to be the gateway to all this stuff? Because iTunes is one of the worst apps ever written. It is such a kludge. It doesn't work on PCs almost at all on the Mac.

It's spotty half the damn time. And it's like, if that is the gateway to all their new music stuff, it's, it's terrible. They need to really put their might behind fixing iTunes before they do all of this shit. Well, they're never going to do that. I'm really hoping it's going to be a separate app because iTunes, like you said, is so kludgy already.

Plus it's all going to get also confused. Like I'm already trying to figure out the difference between the music that I bought versus the music that I imported versus, and now there's going to be the whole streaming thing. And how's that going to tie in with the music that I've already bought? And how am I going to know the difference between what's going on, particularly on the iTunes app on, on mobile, which is a fucking piece of shit.

And I can never figure out what is synced. What isn't, uh, it's a nightmare. No, yeah, their, their whole app ecosystem around just their music offerings is, is a, is a total nightmare. They really need to break it out. I think into separate apps because using iTunes as their main hub is just a nightmare.

I mean, they need something where you can sync music apps, books, whatever to your iPhone. That's it. You know, that's your sync station. Then they've got the PlayStation, which is trademark Sony. So forget that. But, uh, however you want to, however you want to word it, you know, the, the music app and then whatever else they want to do.

Like I, like iTunes radio is still built into, uh, iTunes right now. And I, I like iTunes radio, but they just need to, I'm sure that's going to go away as soon as this thing comes out. Gotcha. Okay. You know what? This is more Apple news than I've ever wanted to do on this show. So let's, whatever fan boy, uh, do you keep calling me a fan boy?

I don't have a watch. I get, you know, I'm not getting a damn watch. I grew up. All right. So Rhapsody, uh, Seattle based streaming music service that's still out there, uh, has lost $8.9 million in the first quarter. Yeah, they're, they're done.

They're done. They got a loan for 10 million. The only interesting thing about this whole article is that loan for 10 million from real networks, which I didn't even know still existed. Real networks is basically the owner of Rhapsody. They're like the main shareholder. They created Rhapsody came out of real, I believe. Yeah, it must've.

So I just, I just haven't seen that name in that logo in a long, long time. Very long time. It's the real player. That was always the worst of the streaming stuff back in the day, man. I, I, I remember doing a demo for them for internet world. I think it was in 96. I think I've told the story on the show before, but, uh, uh, when I had to do a meatloaf demo and this was when you could trigger events from the real player in a, in a separate frame.

So I had this grid of six frames and like two hidden ones at the bottom playing meatloaf song. And then in the four frames, it would play different clips from the video and then create a montage, you know, and then like go back to different pieces. It was fun as hell to make, but I had to listen to that damn meatloaf song so many times that, yeah, I'm, I'm done with real and meatloaf.

I love meatloaf. I mean the meal. Oh, I love making meatloaf and eating meatloaf, but I just don't want to listen to me to some meatloaf. Not me either. Although meatloaf and fight club was pretty damn good. That's true. Yes. Bob's got bitch tits. So, uh, this is, this is up your alley.

The Santa Monica council, uh, city council votes seven to zero to crack down on Airbnb in a quick unanimous vote. The council approved rules that will ban most short-term rentals in the city by prohibiting the rental of an entire unit for less than 30 days. That's crazy.

I've, I mean, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago and it's just finally been passed and I'm a hundred percent behind this. I, I, I want this stuff to happen. You, you got to play the game. You don't get to get away with it and there's an interesting side rule. If you want to do home sharing quote home sharing, uh, where you rent out the couch, a bedroom or like a backyard unit, you can do that, but you have to go get a business license and pay Santa Monica.

They're 14% fealty. Damn right. But why can't you do that with your, your whole home? You know, I figured there's gotta be a loophole here. It's like, okay, I'm going to rent you my apartment, but you cannot go in that closet. I didn't rent the whole home. Then they can't go into that closet. I forbid it.

So that's not the entire home. I mean, that's a, that's a very simple loophole. I'm sure there's going to be other ones. People are going to fight this tooth and nail, but what it comes down to is the city just wants their tax. Yeah. Give them their tax. Put in the regulations, put in the taxes and make these, make these, uh, you know, web 2.0 disrupting entities, uh, play the game like everybody else.

That that's what it all comes down to. So yes, this is a bit draconian and a bit harsh, but it will get fought and they will meet somewhere in the middle, which is the way that the rest of us have to play the game. Yeah. That's all. That's all I'm asking for. Exactly. And again, the city doesn't care about your safety, the tenant safety, none of that shit.

They don't care about you. All they want is their money. So just, you know, Airbnb, all the other services, get on this and just figure out a way to just hand them their money. Take it out of the, the price point. Since you control the money that goes from the renter to the, uh, rentee, you know, just take it out in the middle and hand it to them.

And I know they've done that in other cities, so they just need to make that the standard and, and cut these deals with all the cities and municipalities up front and just get in front of this whole thing. Then there will be no more problems. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So moving to, to, uh, something that's actually just kind of silly, uh, found this article on, uh, on slate and it's a conversation with the COO of the gift platform, Giphy, uh, which

made his case that gifts are superior to words and the article asked, will words soon be replaced by gifts, a debate in words and gifts. So, uh, standard rule, there's a question in the headline. So what's the answer, Jason? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

But it's a fun little article. And yeah, there's, there's more and more, you know, gifts can, once we get to the point where there's, there's better applications that are built into our phones for this stuff, I tried out a couple, I can't remember what their name are. It's not quite there yet, but I can easily see these replacing emojis because they're fun.

A lot of them are really, really fun. I will point out one, uh, little thing though. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. 90% of the gifts that are really interesting have words on them. Yes. That express your point. But also welcome to 12 years ago, 4chan.

Okay. Oh yeah. Or every other message board. We've been doing this forever. This is, this is so far jumped the shark. The fact that there's an app out there, out there now that lets like, you know, the unwashed masses do it, meaning that thinking that it's like a big thing, this is a dude, this has to be paid placement.

I mean, you know, the CEO of Giphy or whatever didn't actually participate in the conversation. It was two seasoned writers from Slate that did this and they made it funny because they know how to tell a story. Yes. It's funny. But, you know, but here, I mean, dude, what if ISIS starts actually communicating in cat gifts?

I mean, it's, we're all lost. How is the NSA going to track it? Are we going to have operation catnip? Are we going to have like new Snowden releases on, on how to, you know, deconstruct the, the winky and a Giphy to actually find out if they're going to attack somewhere? It's all silly. It's cute.

Very cute read though. Yeah, it was a good read and I enjoyed it. So, uh, I'm big on investing and I believe you've, you've delved into the market a little bit now these days as well. Jason, I bought, I bought Apple, I bought 20 shares of Apple, which is all I can afford.

And I probably have to take it back out now because I'm broke. Okay. Uh, well, there was an article on slate about a web reading bot that made millions on the options market, basically based on, on studying a bunch of tweets. And then the bot just went out and purchased things and made a shit ton of money.

Yeah, that's that, that makes me sad. Well, this has been going on for quite a long time. I'm not terribly so interested in this particular article. I back in the day was super interested in some of the strides that were being made by Kurt, by Ray Kurzweil, who wrote one of my favorite technology books ever.

The singularity is near when humans transcend biology. Uh, he's a big believer that we will, you know, hit the singularity and have AI within our lifetimes and, you know, basically live forever, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things he obviously hasn't seen Ex Machina or the Avengers.

Well, that's he has a slightly different and, and much happier take on, take on this stuff than most movies do. And I kind of hope he wins because his version is kind of good. No, not going to happen. I told you like nerds, they follow their favorite sci-fi. And if their sci-fi is dystopian, we're getting, we're getting Skynet.

Yeah, I know, but, uh, I'm going to hope that we are. But one of the things he talked about in that book, and then he actually started a company called Fat Cat, uh, was that he could, he figures through algorithms, he should be able to consistently beat the market. And I got super interested in that back in the day. Cause I was like, I love technology.

And if I can make money being one of the first people that realizes that this stuff kind of works, I'm in. Unfortunately, the software has never been released commercially, which is sad. And so we don't know if it actually works or not. He's a gazillionaire. So I bet it works. He is a gazillionaire.

It'd be nice if he released it, but, uh, that sent me down the rabbit hole. It made me realize I want to read this book again. And, uh, I also found a really great article that basically went through a bunch of his predictions and sees and, and test them against what's actually going on in 2019. And, uh, basically he's been spot on on almost everything.

We'll see. We'll see. When, what, what is the year that AI is supposed to hit? When is the singularity like 2025, 27? 2025 or 2027. It's right around there. So as long as you, uh, you keep working that Fitbit, Jason, you might be around for it. I hope so. I hope so.

Anyways. And I, and I hope, I definitely hope he's right. He published the singularity is near back in 2005. It's now 2019. One of the things that is not 2019 or sorry. No, he predicted, he predicted, sorry. He predicted these things would occur by 2019.

Okay. My bad. So, uh, one of them was computers are embedded everywhere in the environment inside of furniture, jewelry, walls, clothing, et cetera. We're getting there very, very quickly. Right? Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Okay. Okay. Number two. He, he, he predicted the internet of things with, which in 2005 was really not hard to, to predict.

Oh, so, okay. You're going to be that guy. Yeah. I'm totally going to be that guy. 2005. Bruce Sterling was already talking about, um, what is it? Like shoes that would deconstruct themselves and phone home saying, okay, my, my souls are done. And then they'd send you new souls and then you ship the souls back and they would get recycled.

And I forget the name that he had for the individual items of production, but they all had chips in them and they could talk, they could talk to the, you know, the home base. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's been a, you know, a, a very constant, uh, the Amazon button that you can press when you run out of laundry detergent. Not quite. Unless the laundry detergent could press the button itself.

Uh, prediction number two, people experience 3d virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas happening. We've got Google glass. We've got a, what's the hell's that name of that crazy company? Well, we also had Oculus Rift. We had that back in the nineties. We had people doing 3d and VR.

Jason, you never get the point. It would be that it would be widespread. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. All right. I'm moving on. I'm not going to bother with this. I'm just going to say everything anyways. Oh God, I've turned into Brian. How sad. Except I'm right. You've turned into me.

Perfect. Exactly. Speaking of Fitbit to, to keep myself up to, up to speed for the singularity. There's a new lawsuit that, uh, some jag off. It says that Fitbit overestimates sleep by 67 minutes per night. He's trying to build a class action lawsuit around this.

Okay. Okay. Whatever. Whatever. This is a problem with, uh, with our society is we're just so litigious. It's ridiculous. Yeah. These sensors cannot track sleep. They track movement while you sleep. And I, I've, I've tried the Fitbit sleep test.

I've tried every sleep band from the instant they were in, you know, put on the market. I've had tons of these sleep bands. Not a single one of them has been accurate. So, I mean, this is just like somebody jumping on the, let's, let's make some money without working bandwagon. Yep. I agree. Um, and now we've got, we've got Flickr news.

Did you ever think that we would have Flickr news again? No, no. I mean, you're the only person I know that actually ever talks about Flickr. I was a huge fan. I was there in the, at the inception when they started up and I had one of the first paid accounts and I loved it. And they have just at every turn have just failed miserably.

Once it got sold, it has been just a nightmare. And for some reason, I don't know why I still have an account, but I went and checked out this new version that they rolled out. Uh, it's, it's God awful. It is unbelievably terrible. So I'm just going to get rid of it, get, get it out of my life.

But here's the one trick that you can use Flickr for still. That's really, really fun. If you have an Apple TV, go get a free Flickr account and get like a, set up a joint account. If you have like multiple people in your house, so everybody can upload pictures to it and then use it on your Apple TV as your screensaver.

Okay. It's a fun, easy way to actually get some value out of Flickr and use it in your home, in your, in your home of the future. But this story is there's a backlash because Flickr is auto tagging photos and putting metadata on photos via their algorithms.

And apparently it's very bad. There's somebody like their algorithm tagged a photo of Auschwitz is sporty. Things like that. Right. That's not, that's not good. So, I mean, just here's my thought. Delete your Flickr account. And move on because there's, there's other things in the world to do besides yell at a dead photo company or not doing something right when they haven't done anything right in over a decade.

Very true. Security? Ha! Hack of the week. Mobile spy software maker, M-Spy, has been hacked. Hmm.

Yes, they make a very dubious product that lets you spy on your kids, your loved ones, your partners, whatever. Anybody you can spy on, they say that we can help you. Great. They got, they really got busted. This comes from Krebs on Security.

And he got sent a link to a Tor-based website with several hundred gigabytes worth of data taken from mobile devices running M-Spy's products, including some four million events logged by the software. It's, it's crazy. Yeah. There's lots and lots of stuff in there.

Apple IDs, passwords, tracking data, payment details on some 145,000 successful transactions. Oopsies. This, I think this comes under karma. I think, I think this is basically karmic hack of the week. Well, the problem is though, it isn't just the people that, uh, that, uh, purchased the software that got their stuff leaked.

It's the people that they were spying on. So that's kind of bullshit. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Splash damage. Mm-hmm. I believe lawsuits are in order, but it's really hard for them to find out who the people are that actually run M-Spy, which if you cannot figure out who's running your spying software, I'm thinking maybe you shouldn't purchase it.

Probably not. It's probably not a good idea. I wonder if they got it on the Android store. By the way, they're going to be cleaning that up. I've heard that and that they're going to start doing Apple style, making sure, vetting apps, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll see. Yeah, they've already started that. We covered that about three weeks ago.

Oh, good. Yeah. The thing, the new thing is you can pre-order apps that aren't out yet, which I'm like, okay, why? Uh, I don't know if you saw this article. It's called In Defense of WordPress by Matthias Ghenior. Ghenior? Ghenior? Ghenior? Ghenior? Yeah. That's Matthias.

I don't know. Anyway, this has been sent to me a couple of times. Yes. And it's, uh, it's, it's a, it's an article saying that everybody that's talking about how bad WordPress is, is wrong and should be quiet. Um, and he's talking about how bad the Drupal updates are and a couple other updates.

He's saying that the WordPress update mechanism is stellar and everybody should be grateful that WordPress exists and that they have built this update mechanism and I'm going to introduce Jason's maxim. Okay. Okay. Oh, Jason's maxim. We're really trying to get on our dictionary, aren't we?

Compare dog shit to elephant shit. All you like. You're still left with a pile of dog shit. Fair enough. I, this article saying that, that, that this is better than that when they're both shit doesn't mean shit. So here's, here's one thing I want to point out. He writes, and to think I questioned it at launch, and this is his quote in my new air quote, what happens when your auto update breaks all sites?

What happens if an update is pushed that introduces more vulnerabilities or back doors? What if WordPress.org is every, okay, check your work, every compromised and attackers can influence that update. And then he goes on to write, none of these scenarios happened, at least not yet, but word yet, but wait.

But WordPress's track record is solid. Now, now enter me bullshit. I say bullshit because yes, it did. Every single one of these recent vulnerabilities is because they were in the core and they were pushed with an update.

And you know why the internet doesn't break? Why everything doesn't go to shit? Because there are people like me and you, Brian, who get up in the middle of the night and have to deal with this bullshit on a weekly basis. So, you know, when you send this crap to me saying, Oh, WordPress is great because they've got an auto update feature now.

Yeah. Just because you spray for breeze on a pile of shit doesn't mean it's not going to stink in the morning. Sorry. And by the way, I don't have auto update on anything. Not less WordPress, not my phone, nothing because sorry, bad shit gets pushed out. We experienced that all the, all of us old timey windows users know that this happens.

You wait and you wait because sometimes that thing that just got pushed out will dust you. I mean, granted, we rant about the fact that people don't update their WordPress sites, but forcing people to update them or pushing an update that then turns on auto update.

I got in a huge Twitter fight with Matt Mullenweg over this and he basically just threw up his hands and walked away because I was right. I'm like, if you turn this shit on and you start sending out crap updates that break all my plugins, you're going to break my website. And this is not why I use software.

I use software to get a job done. It's not because I want to have the latest flashiest version or plugins. Granted, I want security updates, but I want to just be notified and say, Hey, right now there's a new security update. Go get it. But that's not the premise of this article. The premise of this article is saying WordPress is a okay.

Leave them alone. No, WordPress sucks. On that note, I have been, or I am trying out a bunch of different CMSs that can replace it because I really want to get away from just, I actually want to get away from database based CMSs.

I want to get back to a flat file architecture because as software keeps updating, as PHP gets updating, uh, OS is all this stuff, you know, in 10 years, we're not going to be able to run the same stuff. So if you stick to the basics, that stuff will run a hell of a lot longer than trying to deal with all this crap and having to keep it updated.

Because if I do die, I would like my stuff to live on. And if I have to hire somebody, you know, post-mortem to keep my website up to date because the goddamn WordPress auto update put me in a, you know, put me ass to the wind for a security hole. Jeez, I could go on for hours, but I need to breathe.

Okay. Yeah, let's not. That's enough WordPress. Everybody knows we don't like WordPress. No, but just stop sending me this article because this guy is wrong. Wrongy McWrongenstein. Okay. He's wrong. So Fujitsu ships the first phone with eyeball scanning authentication. Yeah, that's what could possibly go wrong.

Oh my God. This is the best video I've seen in a long time. It's all these people that are frustrated because they can't remember their passwords and like the old guy go, I don't know. And this little cute girl walks in and she just looks at her camera and gives it a seductive gaze. And then everything opens for her.

And then it's very, very Japanese, but it's also very like late night TV infomercial. Like I never knew that it was so difficult to strain pasta, but in those commercials, it's just how difficult. Oh, it's so hard. You need this stupid $29.99 gadget. Oh, by the way, those gadgets are awesome.

The pasta, this pasta straining pot is awesome. I love that thing. Of course you have it. Of course I do. I got it at a garage sale for like two bucks. Okay. But it works really well. But back to this, they say that, uh, you know, they have really good ways of doing fake detection.

Like, you know, okay, well we can put a light in the eye and the pupil has to dilate. Um, pardon me. Uh, this is a very simple, simple problem. Let me, let me explain to you how we do it. I take a picture of your eyes as you're just looking at me with my 37 megapixel camera that I bought for $17 at Walmart.

Go home, get a piece of rubber, print your eyes on it, steal your phone. And when the light comes on, I push my two fingers from behind the rubber to make the black part get a little bigger. Problem solved. I just, I just, I figured that out while I was reading the article.

Imagine what real, real security people can do. Come on. You don't even have to go demolition man and take their eyeballs out nowadays. You just take the damn, uh, just take a picture. That's like the people who can take a picture of your fingerprints now and print them from a high, you know, high resolution camera. Well, it was the same thing with Dell.

Dell was going to roll out the, uh, or no, it was Intel that was going to roll out the facial recognition locks on laptops. It's stupid. Oh yeah. No, it's dumb. So there was a story about a wire transfer company employee for the company Intermex that, uh, got fired because she uninstalled the GPS app that tracked her constantly.

And she stood up for herself because she's like, you're, you're tracking me on my off time. That is basically uncool and illegal. And they said, get the hell out. And she's suing them and good for her. Good. I, yeah, I agree with this completely. This is a really creepy precedent to set. We, you know, you cannot allow this stuff to stand.

We must not cross this line. Okay. Mr. German. Hmm. We know a thing that's true about that. Losing. Um, anyway, a home automation protocol. Z-Way is vulnerable to remote attacks. Shocking. Have you heard of Z-Way before?

I have not. I have not heard of this. And I've done some relatively extensive research into home automation and I had not heard of this company. Yeah. Z-Way is like the controller and abstraction layer for a software that handles the Z-Way protocol, which is what I think it says 35 million devices currently have it installed.

It's kind of like a nice backend. It's kind of like Amazon web services for home automation systems. So you can basically buy their software and use their APIs to control your lights, your locks, your garage doors and all that crap. And the problem here is that they have, the company has kind of come out and said, um, we're not doing any, uh, any kind of authentication keys or there's no auth or anything like that.

What we're relying on is you to have a secure home network. Now, now I, I have to say that my tea didn't come out of my nose when I, when I read that. I'm like, okay, okay. You are just the laziest motherfuckers I've ever met in my life.

That's okay. Uh, how many people do you know that have a secure home network? Raise your hand. Listeners out there, raise your hand. If you have a secure home network. Actually, believe it or not, as opposed to say, uh, most of my friends who will never use one password, most of them do at least have a password on their, on their, uh, wireless networks because they ship with them now.

That's true. So, but if I'm at your house and I lift up your router and I like take a peek under its taint, that's, that's where the password, it's the password taint because right underneath there's the sticker that has all of the information you need to connect to that router. So if I'm at a party and I find your thing, I look at it, I'm like, oh, I'm in your network.

Okay. They never, people never change that. So I don't, I don't consider something that is shipped with a default password that even if it's unique and generated by the provider to be secure. All right. You agree? I agree. Okay. That's good because, uh, default credentials have led to a massive DDoS attack on, uh, home routers.

Of course. That's right. So there's a huge botnet out there right now that is, uh, uh, under like the attacks underway because people have left the default passwords on and you can scan, scan for open ports, uh, for HTTP and SSH. And people are just having a heyday with these.

So, um, what was the name of that damn company? I've never heard of this company. So it must be a smaller company. I wish it was Cisco for Christ's sakes. That would have been awesome. Uh, primarily California based company, Ubiquiti, which is spelled in, in web 2.0 style, U-B-I-Q-U-I-T-I.

So if you have a U-B-I-Q-U-T-I, I'm just going to call them U-B-I-Q-U-T-I-S. That's a, that's a better name. If you have an U-B-I-Q-U-T-I and you've left the default passwords on, you're probably running a botnet right now and sending a couple gazillion pieces of spam every day. Yeah. Awesome. Oh, now coming back from our normal rants on people not changing their passwords.

This one I just thought was fun. The U.S. Army is serious about developing invisibility cloaks. Oh, why the hell not? They just made a force field. Uh, yeah, yeah. This comes from Defense One, one of my new favorite sites to read. Uh, the U.S. Army is basically has a, uh, a prize out there right now and are taking bids for companies that can develop an invisibility cloak.

Didn't they do that on Top Gear with the car? No. I seem to remember that. No. Well, this has to run like out in the field, has to be able to, you know, be solar charged or whatever, but there's, there's a lot of caveats on how they want this thing to work and it's not there yet, obviously.

That's why they're, uh, really kind of, so they tell us, well, yeah, Harry Potter's got one. So the army has to have one. You'd think that's right. Well, I'm just worried about like, you know, when John Q law in 10 years gets like the military's decommissioned invisibility cloaks, we better have self-driving cars because you're fucked in a speed trap with a guy that's invisible.

You know, seriously. That's true. Oh man. I just, I love that one. I was like, okay, we're, we're getting to, we have force fields and invisibility cloaks and you think that we're going to use AI for good. Come on. Well, you know, dare to dream. Yeah.

Dream, Jason. Uh, United Airlines has a bug bounty program now. I don't know how I feel about that. Uh, well, it is for their website, not for their planes. You will go to jail. If you try and find a bug bounty on a plane or bug on a plane to get your bounty. Uh, the, the interesting thing about this is they're not giving out cash.

They're giving out miles. They're giving out up to a million miles. If you can do a remote code execution on their servers, you get a million miles. If I can hack an airline, I don't want to fly on their planes. That's pretty much it. You know, it's like, okay, I have a million miles and it's just like, oh Jesus.

And you know, I kind of wish Virgin America would do this with that. And that's exactly what they say at the end of this tech crunch article. They're like Virgin America get on this. And I'm like, I couldn't agree more because I love flying Virgin America, but United, I do not want to spend a million miles on a goddamn United plane ever.

I don't want to spend 3000 miles on a United plane. They're the worst. And they used to be the best. And now they're just terrible. But yeah, this is like, just hand out cash. Like everybody else. I mean, what do I get free wings and peanuts to go along with this? You don't get peanuts on planes anymore. People have allergies. Comment of the week.

A super thank you to our new Patreon subscribers, Liza Nolan and Calby Mundy. Thank you. So Calby was in a previous or mentioned in a previous episode when his wife wrote that great article, Life of Layoff. Remember that? I do. I do. Yes. Well, I'm happy to announce that they are both gainfully employed for now.

So they are subscribing to our Patreon. Well, thank you very much, guys. And I'm glad that you're currently employed. Yeah. Liza is actually my troublemaking friend, too. I'm really going to miss when I move to L.A. in a few weeks. But and she was mentioned on a previous show as well, because she's the one that uses one password, just not one password, the program, just a single one password.

Yes. So we love you guys. Thank you. And we've also got a PayPal donation from Tedford Mails through our PayPal button on the website. So thank you, everybody. Thank you very much for help keeping the lights on. And if you would like to donate to Grumpy Old Geeks and give us a hand, go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com and on the right hand side, click on the Patreon button or the PayPal button.

We will appreciate it greatly. Yes, we do. Thank you very much. We got a comment on our website from Jason. Not you. Not me. Not you. Comment is my 10 year old son, Alex, asked me, how do you code things? I'm a hardware guy, not a software guy. I have no idea where to lead him to get started.

He is very computer savvy and he keeps pointing out what is wrong with games he plays and wants to know how to change them. Thus, how do you code? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, guys. Your show is great. And it's nice to find a podcast with like minded people. Well, thank you very much, Jason. Wow. Well, first off, I hope you heard the first part of the show.

So make sure that he stays in school, even if he does make a nice little app that sells a couple thousand copies. Do not let him go to San Francisco. Do not let him go to San Francisco. Or Austin or Seattle. Unless you already live there, then that's fine. But no, keep him. That's fine. Keep him home. Well, what sounds right up your son's alley since he's into gaming and wants to mess about with them is let's give a shout out to a friend of the show, Tara, who's heavily involved with this program called Connected Camps.

Go to ConnectedCamps.com. It's highly based on, I believe, Minecraft and basically hacking and programming it. So that would be a very interesting resource for you to check out. And also check out Code.org, which has some nice kid-based learning programs that basically get you into coding.

So those are two really great resources to start with and see how they go. And also you can do it like we did back in the day is find a problem. If he wants to learn game coding, go buy an O'Reilly book. Sit him down. Let him go through the book and get the deep understanding from start to finish on coding on something that he's interested in, like specifically, if he wants to dive into a specific thing.

I based like 90 percent of my early career on a book I bought called Pearl in 30 Days. That served me well. That's true. I think 10 years might be a bit too young for that level, though. Well, I was in my 20s, so I had the mental age of a 10-year-old nowadays. So, you know.

Still, still. Hey, I have graduated to 13. I've hit puberty. Anyway, I really do check out the Minecraft Kid Camp that Tara does, and I know they have some online courses on there as well. And that's a good way to start because it's basically all just gaming and hacking into a game and kind of getting into it that way.

So that's a good start. And yeah, the books and doing it yourself. That's a great way to do it, but probably when he's a little bit older. Yeah, and there's also a lot of JavaScript libraries out there now that are specifically game libraries that you can get and run locally. So you can actually do game building, like a game and world building on your computer without having to actually like get a server or anything like that.

We used a couple of them at BLT when I was there, and they were super cool, and they were free versions. And I know that one of our JavaScript guys had never programmed a game in his life and went through the tutorials over like two months and came out with a game that we actually released with the Total Recall movie, you know?

Very cool. Yeah, there's fun, cool ways to do game programming out there now for sure. And there's always Flash. Ooh. I thought we liked Jason. Why are you telling him that? Oh, that's funny. Don't do Flash. Don't do Flash. So last week we talked about Pierre from the ReadMe app.

Yes. So I got zero takers on our free codes. All right. Nobody wanted a free code. So I'm going to read his comment real quick here, and then I'm going to do the review by myself because nobody wanted to join me. Or me. Or you.

Thank you. Sorry, Amanda. Intrepid co-host. I couldn't even get into Spritzlet, so I didn't need to try another one. You actually don't need another e-reader. I do because I'm slow and pedantic. Okay. Pierre writes, about a year ago, you did a segment about Spritz and ReadMe, our e-book reading app.

Totally trashed it, if I remember correctly. Water under the bridge. No, really. Your criticism was quite valid. We've been working on it for the past year, and Spritz have also worked on their SDK, and it's pretty amazing right now. There's no more Cylon effect, which means he actually did listen to the show because I called out the Cylon effect.

When reading, since you can now change the color of the Spritz view, blah, blah, blah. ReadMe is also available on Android. Okay. We don't care about Android. There's just too many updates to tell you here. A picture says more than a thousand words. A video is like 24 pictures a second, so go check out the videos. Please consider making another segment, Revisiting ReadMe, giving your honest opinions on the current version.

Now, Jason. That's important. If you have any questions, just let me know. Now, Jason. Okay, Brian. Be nice. We'll see. Okay. Pierre, I got some bad news for you. I honestly do. Since we didn't get any takers, I am doing this myself.

So here it is, soup to nuts. First issue, convoluted interface. To get the books on my phone, the easiest way, I assumed, was the Dropbox method. Okay? You know, Dropbox, great, great API. No problem. Nope. I had to put in my credentials in the app.

If an app has an API like Dropbox does, I shouldn't have to put in my credentials. It should auth me over OAuth, API, whatever auth that Dropbox is using. No. So I had to go to one password manually, copy my username and password, go back and forth a couple times, and put it in.

So now I'm worried that README has my password, but it worked. And then I had to go change my Dropbox password after I was done at the end of this whole thing, which was a pain. So that's the first UGG. Okay? The fact that I had to manually put in my Dropbox username and password.

You have the left-footed UGG now about the right one. I get the book into the system, load it up, and it scans the book, and it takes about a minute for it to scan the book. And I was going back to the book that I originally used this app for, which was the Morrissey Autobiography. I'm thinking, okay, I'm finally going to get to this book.

So it opens up. You're going to try to speed read Morrissey? Yes. Because if I don't, I will cut my wrists and maybe cut my head off. I don't know. All right. It opens up, and I'm like, okay, where's the spritz? I don't see any spritz. This is spritz-free at the moment.

And so I'm looking, there's dual hamburger icons, one on the left and one on the right. I'm like, okay, well, I'll go left first. Open that up, and I see a little spritz thing. I'm like, okay, I'll click on that. And what that then does is cues me to create a read-me account. Second UGG.

Okay, now we have two shoes. We've got two accounts here. By the way, I'd rather suggest you do Motorhead if you're going to read something fast, not Morrissey. I didn't know Motorhead had a biography out. I'm sure there's a book about Lemmy somewhere. I should have done the ministry one. Oh, that was actually a great book, dude. Yeah, I should have done the ministry one.

Okay. So I go through the hoops. I create the account. And it sucks now because I have to create the account in the app, which means later on, I'm going to have to add it to one password manually, which means I'm going to have to do a password reset because there is no way in hell I'm going to remember the password that I just entered into this thing later when I'm done and go back.

So UGG three, I'm now a three-footed UGGer. All right. Okay. And get that done. Nothing still regarding spritzing. I'm like looking at the screen. I've got like the penguin logo up. Nothing. So I try the right hamburger.

I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm hamburgering it up right now. There's spritz options for like the color and then there's colors for the reader. So I pick black for the reader and just leave the rest alone. And so then I get adventurous and I just say, screw this. I swipe into the book and I get to the words and I'm like, aha, new icon right at the top of the page.

I click on that. Then spritz finally opens up and it starts spritzing. I'm like, woohoo, I'm good to go. But it starts off at 250 words a minute. Now as a, as an advanced spritzer, I prefer 700 words a minute, right? I'm good to go. I scroll down to 700 minutes.

It's like to do 700 words a minute, you have to sign into your spritz account. Okay. At this point, I'm like, Jesus Christ. So I go, I go back to one password. I look for my spritz account. I come back and I realized I don't have a spritz account. I used Facebook to log in.

So I'm like, okay, click on the login with Facebook button. Now, you know, in iOS, when you click login with Facebook, it usually opens up the system Facebook interface and it goes through the app, both of which I have set up. Nope. This gives me the web style login. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

And I'm like, okay, well, you know what? If I put in my username and password, I'm going to have to change it anyway, because I don't trust these people. I don't know them. So, but I'm due for a Facebook password change anyway. So I go for it. Go back to one password, copy my, you know, 32 character email address, because I have a very secure email address.

There's a 35 character, actually. Copy it. Go back to the spritz app, try and paste it. And you can't copy and paste because it's locked out. Oh boy. At this point, I throw my phone against the wall and have an aneurysm. So that would be the fifth ug. Actually, I skipped an ug in there.

There's so many uggs. I am, I am over ugged. So, so Pierre, Pierre owes me a new iPhone six and the medical bills that are associated with my aneurysm. And, uh, I will be sending you a bill in the mail. And I never even got to read like more than one word of Morrissey. Okay.

So yeah, needless to say, the app did not meet my expectations in any way, shape or form. And I still have yet to read the goddamn Morrissey book. And, uh, oh Jesus. Uh, I would like Apple to have a delete with extreme prejudice option.

All right. Well, I bet you weren't expecting that, Pierre. Nope. Nope. Sorry, Pierre. Uh, I, you have so many barriers in front of me getting to the point of what your app is, which is spritzing my book. I bring my book in. I want to spritz it. I don't want to have to sign up for an account that is a paid account, by the way, with read me, it's like, you know, two bucks a month.

And which is, you know, bullshit. Um, cause I just paid for the app. I don't want, I don't want you to sync my stuff across devices. I have one device with a book that I want to read. Let me bring in my book. Let me spritz it use modern APIs. So I don't have to put my password in because I don't know you from Adam and I've had to change all my damn passwords because of it.

This is like, you know, this is just app interface building 101. This is, I mean, it's like, it's, it's seriously kindergarten time here. So Pierre, I wish you the best. I hope you fix this stuff because I need an, I need an ebook reader that works with spritz.

You could have been the one. So take another year, go back and fix it. All right. There you go. We got another message. Apparently it's going to be bag on app developer comment section. Sorry. We got another message from an app developer.

This is from Peter Kuhar, who actually is the main guy behind Argus, which is an app I use every day and all the time. So he wrote in through our website with a link to basically get Argus on, on for your iPhone. He said, hi, I love listening to your podcast.

And I just heard you guys talking about the Fitbit on episode 109. We have get fit slash walk more app called Argus that you guys should try. There's even an Apple watch version. One of you has it right. Thanks, Peter. Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter.

I think we, I think you need to be, I think Peter should be referred to as Peter's PR person or PR, PR social media person. Because I'm pretty sure Peter didn't do this. Peter's PR social person. If you listen to our episodes, you know, I use Argus. I've talked about it many, many times.

Every time the Jason talk goes on and on about his Fitbit, I just go, I've got Argus. It works fine. I have my phone on me. So number one, I already got it. I've already pimped your app a gazillion times on this podcast. Number two, if you were listening to our podcast, you'd know that neither of us have an Apple watch.

And in fact, Jason continues to say he'll never have one, which I don't believe. But I am quite firm on that. So, so thank you for writing us. I do love your app already. And I think as penance, you should go now donate to us on our Patreon. Absolutely.

For making us give you give you pimpage for absolutely no reason. You need to go to patreon.com slash GOG right now and make amends for your faux pas. Yes. So thank you all. And honestly, Pierre, feel free to do the same because that was a hell of a lot of good advice I just gave you.

I agree. Yeah, we should definitely donate for that. Look, we appreciate any and all comers, but maybe a little bit less on the social PR people trying to get their stuff pimped on the show. Yeah. And just because you send us a link and a coupon doesn't mean that we're going to give anybody preferential treatment. I just want to make that absolutely clear, as I think we've demonstrated this time.

We love, we love apps. We love coupons. So if, if, if you are, you know, dead set to send us something, we will give it an honest review, an absolutely heartbreakingly honest review. Oh, poor Pierre. He'll never listen to us again.

Software, apps, and gadgets. Lily is such a lovely name, really. Isn't it? It's, it's a pretty name. It makes you think of, well, funny. Lily Tomlin and the West Wing. Well, I wouldn't associate Lily Tomlin with pretty, but funny.

Yes. But it's a nice name. It doesn't make you think that it's a little camera that's going to soon kill and assassinate you. I know this thing. It's, it's been everywhere. It's at Lily dot camera, which is another domain. Oh Jesus. You people in your goddamn TLDs. So at Lily dot camera, and it's just a L I L Y.

There's this new camera. It has been making the rounds everywhere because it's on sale right now for $500 and it will go up in June to the thousand dollar price point. And I'm thinking the thousand dollar price point is the one that will actually hold enough weight to put the claymore mine on it. So when you strap the tracking dongle onto your target and you just go Lily assassinate, it will follow them and fire the claymore and boom, Bob's your dead uncle.

Bob's your dead uncle. Yeah, this is one of those things that like earlier in the show, I was having hope for humanity and the singularity and AI, but now this thing just looks like it's, uh, this terrifies me. It'll kill you. Yeah, it will kill you. And you know, uh, what was the old, uh, Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons movie?

Oh gosh, I can't remember. Oh man, I had it earlier and I lost it, but this is like, they, they were, you know, thinking small because they had, they had autonomous killer drones that would, uh, you know, basically go on, they, they had a hole in the car and they'd put them on the road and they would zoom up and, and try and kill, kill people.

Now we have them from the air. We have death from above and Lily, Lily is the first real, you know, consumer viable assassination device. Oh boy. Yep. Good times. It really wouldn't take that much to, uh, you know, honestly in an afternoon, I could turn that into that thing into a flying death machine.

Yeah. You know, and those are the kinds of people that are going to buy it, unfortunately. Yeah, probably or hipsters, but you know, I mean, honestly, you put it on somebody's car, Lily comes by, you throw it in the air, you got a pack of thermite in it and it just drops the molten thermite through the top and it, oh geez, there's so many ways to kill people with this thing.

All right. I don't want to think about it anymore. Moving on. Speaking of things that hipsters are going to get, uh, Sony put a Bluetooth speaker and an LED light bulb. Why? I don't know. I think this is awesome. I want this. I want this in every room of my house. When I'm walking from room to room with my giant phablet in my pocket, my music will just bounce from speaker to speaker.

It's, it's like a poor man's Sonos. It's ridiculous. I love it. And it's not really a poor man's Sonos because one speaker is 200 or one, one light bulb slash speaker is $200. So if you want this through your house, you're going to might as well just buy a damn Sonos.

Yeah, that's true. Sonos have come down quite a bit. Plus I seriously doubt that the sound quality on these can be that fantastic. You can't put a speaker in a goddamn light bulb and have it sound good. Oh, I'd beg to differ. I've got that little, I told you that little Bluetooth speaker that I got from target that a little like $30 now see if this was $30, it'd be a thing, but a little $30 Bluetooth speaker I got, it sounds amazing.

And this one, I bet this would be decent. I think your idea of sound quality for music versus mine are completely different spectrums. Well, I'm not even going to go into that right now. Okay, moving on. Humanity Weeps' Candy Crush Saga comes pre-installed with Windows 10. This is an Arts Technica article talking about, uh, yes, Candy Crush being pre-installed with Windows 10.

You thought Solitaire ruined people's lives. There's a lot of software that comes pre-installed. You just don't run it. This is Candy Crush. This is, this is like putting a bag of heroin, a needle in a lighter and a spoon on top of the, on top of the EULA.

It's like you, you must shoot up before you open the EULA. Maybe again, I guess I just don't have this gene in me, but a Candy Crush has been around me for a long time now. And my only, the only thing I know about Candy Crush is that really cute commercial with the grandma that smashes candy.

That's all I got. Okay. Well, I was like on three level 300 of Candy Crush. Now I'm on Soda Saga. I'm like level one 80. I have uninstalled it from my phone in my iPad, which is someday I'll get bored and I'll put it back. But yes, it is a life ruiner. Do not put this on.

The upside is most people won't use Windows 10. I don't know about that. We'll talk a bit more about that next week because I've got some thoughts on the various different levels that they're rolling this out on. So you've been, you've been testing, right? I have been, and I actually really like it. So we'll see. But I haven't launched Candy Crush yet.

Okay. Have you traded in your iPad mini for a Surface yet? No, that will probably not be happening, but I will be installing Windows 10 probably on my main system here. And it may keep me from switching to complete Mac even longer. We'll see. Of course. Of course. The day you get a Surface is the day I get an Apple Watch, which means I don't think either of those is ever going to happen.

I'm going to the store right after this show, and I'm going to take a picture and send it to you.

Media Candy. I'm fucking excited. Manamana. Yeah. ABC Muppets Prime Time coming back. I'm so excited. The trailer is amazing. I was, I die. I die.

You know, I was really, really kind of on the face. I'd seen so many people linking to the trailer, and I'm like, oh, God, this is going to be terrible. I was worried. I was so worried to watch it, and then so happy. I'm sorry. There's a Muppet bitching about the 405.

That's great. As soon as I saw that, I'm like, oh, shit, I'm in. I am so in. I am in with every fiber of my being. Yeah. It looks like they're just going to do a bang-up job. It looks way better than the movies were. I cannot wait for this show. I'm super excited.

The story behind it, actually, I should have put that link in the show notes. The story behind how this came together so quickly. And this guy's been trying to get it done for like 20 years. It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And I cannot wait to see this. And then as a super flashback, since we've brought up Flash a couple times, the first thing that I ever built in Future Splash, which then became Flash, was the Muppets website way back in the day.

That's awesome. That's awesome. I was actually working on the Muppet Fan-a-thon when I was at BLT. I was working on the back end for that. And the front end was Flash. And the developer for the Muppet Fan-a-thon in Flash was our good friend of the show, Trent Hamilton, who does our iOS app.

Well, look at all the seven degrees of Muppet bacon. That's right. That's right. Don't say bacon around Miss Piggy. Oh, yeah. No, I'm seriously looking forward to this. And you said that somebody was trying to push this through for 20 years. Was it Brian Henson? No, it was a guy that worked with Jim Henson.

Or basically, he got his career start with him. I blew it. I'm not having the link in here. I read it yesterday when I first saw the trailer. Okay, well, you can go find it and we'll have it in the show notes at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash one one zero. Yes. So I've got a couple of podcasts I want to talk about real quick.

Fuck you. The Defocused podcast. It's by Joe Steele and Dan Sturm. Sturm. They're two VFX guys who basically deconstruct movies. And it's hilarious.

They took apart the Avengers movie, which I actually quite enjoyed. But all their points were valid. I just went in knowing it was a popcorn movie. But these guys work in the movie business and they see things that we don't see. Right. And it's really fun to listen to. And as a, you know, a movie guy, I really, really enjoy their show.

It's, it is actually pretty funny. It's very techie. And yeah, if you like movies, you like nerding out on the tech behind them and the VFX stuff, this is a great show. Honestly, it is a fantastic show. And their Avengers show was longer than the movie by like about a minute.

But it was still worth the entire, entire experience. Definitely check them out. Right. Okay. My other podcast I want to talk about, do not snore because you like this one. Okay. I got you. I'm literally pointing at my microphone right now.

Planet Money has a great series now about machines replacing people. Oh, very topical for our podcast. And yes, I do like Planet Money. Yeah. Have you, have you listened to these yet? I have not. I have had the week from hell. What I, what I love is they start out with the Luddites and who the Luddites were and the history of the Luddites.

I knew this story, but their take on it is, is very well done. And it goes to Luddites, humans versus robots. And when the machines come to town and when the people start to actually, you know, start making good money by knowing how to run the machine. So it's a really nicely plotted out story so far.

So there are, there are three episodes and links will be in the show notes. Check those out. They're really fun. If you don't listen to Planet Money already, which I, I'm not a money guy, but I was also not a car guy and I watched Top Gear. So you should listen to Planet Money because they're really well done. They are very well done. I agree. Have you had, have you had a chance to see a ex machina yet?

No, I haven't had a chance to do shit, Jason. Okay. Well, once you do, then go read the article that'll be in the show notes called more human than human. The making of ex machina is incredible robot. And this one I really liked because I found out when I was watching this movie, I'm like, how the fuck did they do that?

This, this girl in who's the robot is just, I mean, the, the effects on her, they're so beautiful and so well done and so seamless. And the, the crazy part about this is not one green screen was used in this movie. Not one. Really? So that is like, when you watch it, just remember no green screen.

That's amazing. Even just from the trailer. Yeah. And she didn't wear a green suit either. There was no frog suit or any of that stuff. So when you watch it, just know how, how much work went into doing this movie. I love the trend of the real world effects. I mean, that's, that's one of the big things about Abrams and, and the star Wars reboot that I'm really excited about is he tried to avoid using CGI as much as possible.

So I love that. So if you listen to the defocus podcast a little more, you know, they're called practical effects. Oh, whatever. Practical effects. It's not my world, man. Yeah. So the last thing I have is I saw a trailer for a movie called dark star HR Giger's world. Hmm.

Okay. I love Giger. I used to Photoshop Giger like things back in Photoshop too on my two CI. So this looks really interesting and he's just a, he's a crazy dude, man. I wish I had that much talent. I really do because his home is like, you know, if I could sculpt and paint and draw like the way he did his house in his Giger world, that would be the way I would love to do my house, but I'm a talentless, you know, bumble fuck.

So, you know, you look at, look at some of his younger pictures striking resemblance to you, Jason. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Just saying. Douche. Sorry. Uh, no, I'm a huge fan as well. And for you youngins out there, he's the guy that, uh, designed alien. So that's, that's, he's a very dark, amazing art.

I mean, I used to collect his books. They've all gone by the wayside through multiple moves and, and kind of not being creepy dark guy anymore, but, uh, his artwork is absolutely amazing. Unbelievable. So I'm, I'm somewhat interested in seeing the film, but I'm more interested in just going back and, and looking at all of his artwork again.

Yeah. I want to just learn more about him and it's, it's going to be in German. So you should be off Deutsch happy. Yeah. Yeah. I was so check it out. I'm looking forward to it. There's a link to the English version in our show notes in our visual segment of the week on the podcast.

Oh, are we doing another flip bucket ad? Uh, yeah, that was great. Um, no, I ran across this in slate. It's a workspace pod, uh, that will help you focus in distracting open plan offices. One of the best parts about not being a, a, an office drone for the last 20 some years is I've mostly missed out on the open office plans that have gone everywhere, which I find horrible.

Uh, so this company called steel case makes these funky little pods. I actually really like how they look. I wouldn't mind having one of these in my house. I just, this looks like a douche pod. It looks like a douche pod. Yes. Um, yeah, I, I wish there was a standing version.

That would be nice. That would be nice as well, but it's, it's pretty cool. I, I, it's good design. It's, it's very Apple-esque. Yeah. You know, in the photos, everybody's got their, uh, their Macs in there. So it's a, it's very cool. So the link is in the show notes, grumpy old geeks slash one 10, uh, because this is the visual segment.

This is the visual segment. So to go along with this, I had a visual comment, which you'll have to see at the show notes. Yes. And well done. Well played to you, Jason.

One of the coolest things I've ran across on the internet recently came from the LA weekly, which is somewhat shocking. No offense to the LA.

Well, some offense to the LA weekly. Obviously that's a dig on the LA weekly. Anyways, they put up a great, a great article. These 15 isolated tracks from famous songs will blow your mind. I love the clickbaity title, but, uh, beyond that, it's actually really great. I mean, uh, YouTube has been full of these things for years.

Um, engineers running across it. People just finding these things, people leaking them, whatever. Uh, they're absolutely fantastic. The Rolling Stones give me shelter vocals by themselves. He gave me, gave me goosebumps. Uh, Stevie wonder superstition on clavinet isolated was unbelievable. Uh, the Beatles helter skelter lead vocal, Paul McCartney, basically inventing punk rock and heavy metal singing in one go.

Absolutely fantastic. Like some of these are just great. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm going through them now. Um, oh, they got a good, did they have a Van Halen one? The Van Halen ones I heard were really good. Yeah. David Lee Roth. It was, it was definitely really good. Um, did they have any queen ones in here? I don't care. I didn't see a queen one, but the, the Nirvana one, actually, this smells like teen spirit, raw vocal from Kurt Cobain.

Absolutely stunning as well. Okay. I recommend everybody, if you'd like this stuff, go get, uh, there's a, a version of under pressure. That is really good. I mean, obviously it's really good cause it's under pressure, but, uh, it's just listen to those two go back and forth. It was just like, wow, that's amazing.

So I've got one too, and it's called 12 ways to be a completely bitter and miserable musician. I found this on Muso blog, which I'd never heard of before. And it was posted by a guy named Dave J Mason. And this could, you don't even have to have musician.

You could just take out the word musician and I was going to say such a gorgeous article. I love it. This is just, this is right in our wheelhouse. Yeah. I saw that you put this in the show notes and then I went and read it and it is very funny. And yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with being a musician.

This is just how to be a grumpy old geek. Yeah. Whine and complain, focus on what sucks. Argue about absolutely everything. Compare yourself to other musicians, uh, blame everything and everybody else. I'm Brian, um, regularly criticize other podcasters, Brian, uh, watch more TV, Jason.

That's me, uh, refute that somebody else might know something. You don't Brian, uh, quit when you make a mistake. You don't do that. That's neither one of us. No, never charging blindly ahead. Practice sustained bitterness.

Definitely. Brian live in the past. That's me. Yeah. Uh, enter into a continued state of pessimism and anxiety. Anxiety. That's both of us. So, yeah, okay. Fair enough. Yeah. But, uh, the, the words that go along with those titles are, are definitely worth a read.

So go check it out. It's definitely a fun read. Check it out. Closing shout outs. Big shout out to, uh, Wendy Marple, my business partner and her side project flip book it, which is, uh, currently dazzling people up at the maker fair in San Francisco. Crazy thing about maker fair this year is it is their 10th anniversary.

Wow. 10 years of those crazy people. I went, I went to maker fair one and two and, uh, yeah, it was, uh, it was a makery. I felt very steam punky when I left. I think I had a, you know, steam leg and a monocle on my way out, but yeah, it was, it was a, it was a blast.

It was a ton of fun and, uh, maker fair is always a good time. If you can go, even if you're not a maker, it's still fun to go see what the kids are doing nowadays. Yeah, totally. If you're up in the area, you should go, uh, going on this weekend and go find flip book it. And actually friend of the show Tara is up there as well with her kid hub. So go check that out.

Yeah. I saw that. Definitely say hi to Tara and Wendy. Yeah. And, uh, let's see, uh, another shout out sort of to Zane Lamprey, who we, we have a love and hate relationship with. Uh, we love his older shows and we hate his kickstarting adventures. Uh, but he's down, uh, down the street from me at Lincoln fine wines tonight, uh, pimping his monkey rum.

So I'm going to swing down there and say hi to him and ask him where Jason's drinking jacket is. Yeah, definitely. Uh, he said it's, it's cleared customs and I sent him, I actually sent him a change of address on Kickstarter just today saying, send it to LA because I'll be there soon because I don't trust them to get it in an envelope in here in the next two weeks.

Probably not. No, no. But, uh, yeah, I tell you what, definitely go down and pick us up a grumpy old geeks autographed bottle of monkey rum. And then at the, at the next, at the next meetup that we'll be having soon, because I'll be out there when we're all back, uh, we will have people down and we can do shots of monkey rum for our, our meetup.

Well, that sounds very cool. I will actually have him sign it to the grumpy old geeks. Excellent. Uh, so speaking of travel, cause I like, I'll be out there. Uh, we are going to be in a bit of a state of quantum Schrodinger flux for the next two weeks. You're going to Toronto.

Yes. I'll be here for the next show. Yes. That should work unless you have to deal with, you know, was it Rogers? If you get a Roger ring from Rogers, technically next week, we're, we're going to have to record early because I fly on Friday. Okay.

That's what it was. So we're going to have an early show, which means the news might not be as topical, but it will be out earlier. Unlike today's show, which is coming out later. Yes. The week after that though, you will be in Toronto and I will be in parts unknown because I'm driving across the country. Yes. So we'll see how that works out.

So we may even potentially something Jason has never wanted to do ever in the history of life might have to miss a show. Yeah. Uh, episode one 12, what might actually be a little delayed. So we're going to play that one by ear. I'm, I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to get to LA with all the storms and I'm not going over the goddamn Rockies again.

I've done that too many times. And I know somebody that was there like last weekend and got caught in a snowstorm. I am not getting in another goddamn snowstorm. Yeah. You're going to want to avoid that, but we've, we've been relatively lucky in the, the history of the show and that when one of us is traveling, the other person generally isn't.

So the flexibility is there, but with both of us, uh, having kind of unknown schedules and things being up in the air, things may not pan out. So we will do our best, but, uh, be ready for it. Yeah. I'm trying to get a hotel somewhere outside of Oklahoma city.

Cause I can get to Oklahoma city in a day, a long day, but then I'll have decent internet and I should be able to engineer the show from there. So, but barring that, uh, we, yeah, we might actually have to take a week off for the first time ever, ever, which I don't like. I don't, I don't, I don't approve to be fair.

And, and for the record, you did say we are going to take off the Christmas week this year because nobody listens anyways. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, the holidays are now the holidays. We we've learned our lesson. Well, I've learned my lesson. Yes. You've learned your lesson. I was always like, I don't have the time to do this and nobody's going to listen.

You're like, we have to do it. That's, that's my Walter and Statler voice for you. Dude, that's cock punch worthy right there. I'm telling you right now, you better have a couple of shots of that monkey room. Cause it's going to hurt. I'll be swinging that bottle around. So you're going to stay away from me. I am bringing my shotgun to LA so we can have a chat about that at some other time.

But anyway, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo and you can follow me on Twitter at jason.com all spelled out or at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schillmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Funks. We'll talk to you next week. Grumpfield 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. Go to grumpfieldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars.

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Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpfieldgeeks.com slash 110. Oh, lucky Pierre. He ain't so lucky today.

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