112: Counting to Potato

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

Hello, Jason. Hello, Brian. How are you? I am doing okay. I am in a basement in suburban Toronto. Ah, I can kind of tell. Yes, it sounds basement-y. Sorry about that. No, it sounds very basement-y. We'll see what we can do in post. Yes. Good times. Yeah, so I'm doing very well. I've been in Toronto for a few days now.

Got to run into a couple of friends of the show already, so shout out to a friend of the show, Ted, the chocolatier, who gave us some chocolates. Gave you some chocolates. Hasn't given us some chocolates. Well, he maybe gave us chocolates, but you ate them all. I haven't ate them all yet, but we'll see how long it takes you to get to L.A. You may get some chocolate.

And a friend of the show, Kevin, who I had a couple Guinnesses with yesterday, so good to see him as well. So, yeah, having a good time here. Excellent, excellent. No, it's insane here. I am just, I'm out of my mind trying to pack. It's nuts. Yeah, well, you know, you decided and you're a self-proclaimed nomad from a long time ago, so you should be ready for this no bitching.

I'm a little out of practice. I am definitely out of practice. The biggest worry is the weather. Trying to get around this damn weather is going to be interesting. Right, right. Because, yeah, it's a little nuts out there. Apparently it is. I'll be flying over it when I go home, so. You can wave at me. When are you going back to lovely Los Angeles?

Not until next week, but so I've still got a good amount of time here. Some more time to drink a lot more Canadian beers. Oh, excellent. Good for you. Yes. Have a good time with that.

Yeah, so you remember way back, I don't know, who the hell knows what episode it was, but we talked about there was some study, or not a study, but a bunch of school kids in, like, Norway did some sort of thing where they took their Wi-Fi routers and they grew plants around it, and the plants near the Wi-Fi didn't do as well, and they were dying, and so there was a big worry that Wi-Fi is probably killing us all.

Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with that one. Yeah, well, not only did people really worry about that, the French government has decided that they're going to implement a ban on Wi-Fi in schools based on no evidence whatsoever, and the British government is doing something similar, and there's a link in our show notes to a very pissed off person who's written a lot about this, saying it's complete and utter bunk, there's absolutely no study whatsoever that has ever proved that there's any harmful effects of Wi-Fi, and stop being idiots.

Does this person work for the Wi-Fi Coalition? That's a good question, I don't know, but I like the fact that he titled his article Neuro Bonkers. Neuro Bonkers, okay, well, I'll definitely have to do a run-through. I do like the picture on the article from Better Call Saul. Yeah, that was very clever.

So this is a good little article, but yeah, apparently Wi-Fi is really, as far as we know, doing absolutely nothing bad to us, but that's not stopping governments from trying to protect us from something that isn't harming us. Yeah, well, I mean, it's early days with Wi-Fi, we've only had it for 10 years, we'll figure it out, you know, when our brains explode in 25 years.

Right, right. Anyway, yeah, I'll take a look at it. I have definitely noticed a difference, though, from when I sleep with my phone on my pillow with the Wi-Fi on and the Wi-Fi off. I mean, it could be, you know, complete and utter, just me psyching myself up about it.

Well, in the article, they mentioned something that there is increasing studies that are showing that there's something called a nocebo effect, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, which is you're thinking that bad things will happen, and then they do, even though there's no scientific basis for it.

Yeah, but I've also noticed it when, and I wake up the next day and I thought I'd turned it off and I left it on and I slept crappy, so I was kind of doing a double blind on myself by accidentally leaving it on when I thought it was off. So, I don't know, everybody else can go experiment with this. Just stick your phone to your head on Wi-Fi overnight and see how well you sleep.

I've never noticed a difference. Okay, and, you know, we've been talking about the future of robots and, you know, technology going, running amok. There was a good article I found this week from Peter Diamandis. You know who he is, right?

Yes, I do. Okay, well, he's got the world in 2025, eight predictions for the next 10 years. Right. Let's just run through these. $1,000 human brain. That's a bit deceptive. Well, yes, he's just talking about the actual computer speed and calculation cycles per second, which is the equivalent of the brain.

Right. So, you know, even though Moore's Law is running out, he's saying that we're going to have computers that are going to be that powerful in 10 years for $1,000. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that, but we'll see. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. The trillion sensor economy. Yeah, I can see that happening.

Unfortunately, yes, I can see that happening. The way that these guys are ramping up the Internet of Things is just going to be everywhere. As we've discussed many times, you will unfortunately not be able to buy a refrigerator that doesn't have fucking Wi-Fi in it. Yep. We'll see if your lettuce starts to wilt faster once you put Wi-Fi in your fridge.

Yeah. Perfect knowledge. With the trillion sensors, they say that they will just know everything about anyone, anytime, anywhere. Yeah, but that's just a lot of noise. Very rarely is it helpful. I mean, you and I have been case studies for that on this podcast. We've done the whole, you know, quantified self stuff and found out that a lot of it doesn't really fucking matter.

Oh, yeah, but he's talking about a quantified planet. Right. You know, with everything being tracked. It's like, okay, what is the exact temperature and barometric pressure on 24th and Main? And what was it over the past, you know, give me a graph going back 10 years and all that crap.

Well, you know, there's data and then there's interpretation of the data. So knowledge requires perfect interpretations, and that's not going to be solved by just having a shit ton of data. Yep. Eight billion hyper-connected people. That's just terrifying. Yeah, it really is.

I mean, remember when just AOL was allowed to get on the Internet and how that kind of, like, you know, there went the neighborhood with everybody on the planet? Oh, geez. Yeah, that's a lot of Twitter trolling. Disruption of health care. Not surprising they're going to say that. Thank God, yes, that needs to happen.

Yeah, out of all of these, I think that would be the best one to have. Augmented and virtual reality, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah. Early days of Jarvis. Hmm. We'll see. This is basically talking about Jarvis from Iron Man. Yeah. You know, your own personal AI system.

We'll see. I mean, you need a lot of those $1,000 computers, I'm betting, to make that work. Yeah, totally. And a lot of your privacy and data being shared in massive mainframes. Yeah, and then his last one is the blockchain. It's, you know, that's part of how Bitcoin does transactions. Yeah, yeah.

You know, governments are going to have to allow that one to happen, and that's going to be a battle. Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting list, but I think, you know, the one thing that reading these predictions and all of just the news we've been talking about in our discussions about what's coming, I've been having like this personal dilemma where it's like, I really have to kind of remember that the internet we have today and the one we'll have tomorrow is never going to be as cool and as fun as the one we used to have.

Well, you've got to ask Jason. Don't live in your glory days. Don't be that high school quarterback guy that ends up just sitting on his couch drinking beer with his hand down his pants remembering the old days. Oh, no, yeah. Well, I definitely am not that guy, but it's, you know, you just have to adapt more, and you just have to be ready to adapt, and just keep looking forward.

And I, you know, yeah, sometimes I do get nostalgic for the old days. I like, I like the old days. They were fun, but. Look, what I like, I like that article because it was actually somewhat positive. It put a really good spin on things, which is not something that we've been doing much recently. Well, yeah, I don't think we've ever been positive.

I think we've made attempts, but, you know, most of our stories about the near future are kind of doomy and gloomy. That's true. Yeah, so it is definitely a positive one. That's why I liked it, and that's why I threw it in here. Now, on another interesting note, including gloomy notes, there's the next two articles you put in.

Well, one of them, actually, we'll talk about that one, but from Wired, there's an article with Google's plan to eliminate human driving in five years. I've been saying it's at least 10 to 15 out just to get through regulations, but they're trying to push it through and get it out in five. Well, like, you know, like we talked about last week, the first truck is already rolling.

That's automated, and once you get these things going, they tend to go geometrically. I think five years is somewhat frighteningly reasonable. Yeah, yeah. Once I read the article and thought about it some more, and it looks like the tech is there. That's the crazy part. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I even heard today that Apple is, once again, there's some rumors floating out there that they're going to be launching their own iCar again. You know, people keep saying, no, they're not going to do that, or they're going to buy out Tesla, but it sounds like they may be pushing forward. A lot of people think it might just be a dashboard that goes in pre-existing cars so they don't piss off the auto industry.

Who the hell knows? But I think the reality is, yeah, unless you're driving out in the hinterlands, if you're in a major city, it's going to be almost all self-driving cars now. So all you people with your shiny, happy Uber jobs, good luck. Yeah. You can get a job as a robot maintenance for the local McDonald's.

Now, I found this article in Jews News. I don't even know how you ended up there, but okay. I don't know. So it was purported that McDonald's is actually opening a robot-run restaurant in Phoenix the weekend of the 4th of July. That's incredible. I'd almost make the road trip.

Then I kind of did my due diligence and found the source material. And this comes from the governmentslaves.info, a nation of sheep ruled by wolves. All righty then. Yep, yep.

And then if you look at some of the other links that they have in just the, you know, like, what is it, articles like, you might like, recommended articles. Okay, okay. See, also, a pictorial conspiracy at Denver International Airport.

I'm looking around, seeing if I can find anything with chemtrails in it. Is it the Denver International Airport where the lizard aliens are supposed to be living? Ah, who the hell knows. I mean, we talked, there was the Wired article we talked about last week, which is, you know, these companies are pushing that direction.

So there will be a robot-run McDonald's in the future, and probably the very near future, just not the 4th of July in Phoenix. Yeah, I mean, we literally talked about this robot in particular. So what it looks like is they took an article from CNN from way back last year.

I don't know if this is like a spoof article, because they've got quotes from people in here. I don't know. This, I didn't have time to do the full due diligence on it, because as soon as I saw that it came from a conspiracy theorist, like government hater website, I kind of put the kibosh on it. But we're going to put it in there, because you just have to go check out Jews News.

Yeah, I'm going to check this out. Maybe this will be my new favorite site to get articles from. I don't know about that, but give it a shot. Yeah. So let me, I'll be an Apple fanboy for once a little bit here, Jason. Let me talk a bit about my iPhone 6 experience. I've had it for approximately four or five days now.

I love this damn phone. Yeah, I told you. I got this shoe in the first day. All of a sudden, yes, it feels like, it feels just basically the perfect size. The iPhone 5 feels tiny and insignificant now. And the battery life, oh my God, I'm so happy.

I mean, granted, I was like at the tail end of the iPhone 5 battery life. So, you know, it was getting ridiculous, and I would have to basically charge every 30 minutes. But I, you know, I left the in-law's house at 10 a.m. yesterday, and I didn't get back until midnight, and I was down to 40%.

Not a single charge all day, using the phone all day. Unbelievable. So happy right now. Yep, and see if you'd have gotten the 6 Plus, you can probably go all week, because the battery in that thing is even better. I have to get cargo pants the size of Texas to fucking put it in my pocket. The 6 is fine. I don't need the Plus.

I think you people are insane. Yeah, well, I got it for the camera. Right. Well, I'm glad that you will not be bitching about your iPhone 5 anymore. No, no more. I will start the bitching for the iPhone 6 battery in approximately, oh, what, say 52 episodes from now? Okay. Give it a year.

So, yeah, speaking of being on the road, there was another article in Wired that I saw that it's an older article, but it's really fun. It's Meet the American Nomads of Walmart's Plentiful Parking Lots. Yeah, I read through this, and I thought, this sounds like my version of hell. Yeah, it's kind of that way, but it's cool that, you know, if you needed a place to crash for the night that Walmart will let you stop over and park there.

I don't know if that's any safer than, you know, parking in the hood, but who knows? It was just an interesting read. I'm not sure how Walmart really plans on. I mean, this seems like a strange policy to me for Walmart to have, because I just randomly just scrolled through this article, and I stopped on a picture of Sal.

My wife threw me out because I'm a drunk, says Sal. I drink too much vodka, and there he is living in a Walmart. Yep. See, Walmart wants him there, because then he can go in the morning when he's out of vodka and go buy some more. And get his jug of pop-off. Yep. Oh, God, that stuff is vile. That stuff is so vile.

I have been poor enough. Park in Walmarts to have taste? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, it was just a fun read. Like I said, it's an older article. They may have changed their policy now, and they are beholden to the local, you know, municipalities laws about where people can stay overnight.

But since I'm going on the road for four days. I was about to say, you can plot your journey. You can find Walmarts and stay at them every night. Well, the thing about my trip is, I have to avoid a lot of places right now that are, you know, being flooded and tornadoes and crazy weather.

And I think all of those places are like, you know, the home of most of the Walmarts. So, they might not even be there by the time I drive through if I went that way. Just a bunch of people in Walmarts canoes floating in a lot. Yeah, and I got my backup ready. My backup, in case my phone does die and I can't get on Google, I've got no Wi-Fi.

I have my Rand McNally 2015 Road Atlas of the United States. It is huge, and I love it. Congratulations, that's still in business. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I love map books. And this thing is just massive. So, if I get lost on a country road, I've got fallback.

So, this week we're kind of running on a short schedule, but we wanted to get an episode out. So, this isn't our standard, you know, full show. But, you know, we know you'd miss us if we were gone for a week.

Yeah, and Jason never lets us take vacation. Hey, I agreed to Christmas this year, so. Just because you looked at the numbers from last year, nobody listened. Nobody listened. It was a complete and utter waste of time. And to be fair, nobody's listening now, but it gets worse. That's true. So, I ran across an article on TechCrunch called The Bank of Facebook.

Yes. And it's talking about how Facebook basically wants to own, you know, monetary transactions. And I think everybody does. You know, it is honestly the holy grail. I mean, that's, you know, half of Apple's Apple TV and everything that they want you to get in their infrastructure and do the payment processing.

That's a big deal. Yeah, but I mean, Facebook's, like, talking about peer-to-peer stuff. Kind of like, remember, CashTag? Yes. So, and if you do still have a CashTag account and you want to go send me some money at, what was I, at CashTag GoFuckYourself? I believe that. I think that was mine.

Yeah. But it's a good read. Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, I mean, it's going to take a Facebook or somebody like that getting behind something to popularize it. I personally would never, you know, hand over my financial reins to Facebook. But if they made a good partnership with someone and that third-party company took off and I had other ways to access it, such as their own secure app or something like that, that would be a good thing.

I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, I just see Facebook going for the long play here. They're looking at, once they get their, you know, internet everywhere going with emerging countries and can facilitate micropayments in those countries, they will basically own the economies there. Right, you know, then I can finally get that money from that prince of Nigeria.

Exactly. You can get your $999 million. Actually, I've noticed there's been an uptick in those emails recently. I hadn't seen one for ages. And I checked my spam folder a couple days ago and there were like three or four of them in there. So they're back. I never see spam because I still use Gmail for my mail.

Right. But I also, I've noticed when I look in my spam folder, I'm getting a lot, there's a lot of false positives now. Yeah. So a lot of my, a lot of my actual mail I'm not seeing either. So I think that's a problem. Yeah, that is a problem. So have you ever heard of Richard Prince? I have not.

He is kind of a vile artist because he likes to steal. He really likes to steal. And he just had an art show in New York that he was basically selling other people's Instagram photos for 90,000 bucks a shot.

Now, yes, this is horrible. And, you know, I like it as a reminder of the fact that Instagram photos aren't yours. You don't own them. I did think that, however, that either Facebook slash Instagram owned them. So I'm a little surprised that he was able to take them and put them on sale and, you know, not have Instagram slash Facebook say, uh, no, no, no, no.

Okay. First off, you own your Instagram photos. They are your property. They are your intellectual property. He got around it by quote unquote, uh, modifying them by putting in fake comments. And that was enough to get past the, the modification copyright rules to allow him to sell them.

Cause he's been sued before and lost. And then it was, or yeah, he, he, he basically was sued for taking, I think they were cigarette ad photos and just basically cutting out the people and moving them like an inch to the left. Right. And then was reselling that as his own art and he got sued.

He lost, but then it was overturned. Well, let me, let me pause it. What my other thing just on the outside looking in and, you know, having my own dalliances in the art world, knowing various artists and photographers such as yourself. Um, yeah, this guy's a douche bag, but who's more douche, the douche that buys his art.

Very good point. He would not be there. He would not be a footnote in history and he would have given up on his career if there weren't idiots buying the shit. True that, true that. So there you go. The people that buy this shit are the douche bags. Just opportunistic idiot. I think this is an economy of douche right here.

We've got, you know, the provider and the consumer all in, all in the same bag of douche. Yes, I agree. I mean, that's just, this guy's ridiculous. And the fact that people are buying his work is ridiculous. Yeah. It's still, it's mind boggling. This guy's vile.

Um, so there was a really interesting video on CNBC about how basically San Francisco is losing talent now because the housing prices have actually gotten too high for the rich kids anymore. And they're, they're moving on. They're going to Austin, Boston, Portland, Seattle, sometimes Chicago.

You know, that a lot of that is what fueled Silicon Beach, uh, which is my, you know, my own backyard, Santa Monica and Venice, where a lot of the tech companies have located or opened up new offices. And there are tons of young people moving down from San Fran to Silicon Beach. And then what immediately happened is the rents started to skyrocket here.

And that is what will happen in Austin and all the other places where people are going. So, you know, it's a chicken or egg again. You know, these guys are getting out of San Fran or Silicon Valley coming to other places. But as soon as there's a, there's enough people there and that's hit a critical mass, the, uh, the landlords look around and go, Hey, we can raise rents.

Yeah. They, they come in, they, they basically bleed a place dry and then move on. And they're, they're, they're, they're techno locusts, but I just thought it was fun that people are actually starting to leave, even though they're, you know, gazillionaires up there. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I, again, I've never understood that if I made my gazillion, I'd be out anyways.

I wouldn't stay around trying to make more. Yeah. Yeah. But a lot of these guys are kids that, you know, doing their first startups and they've got their funding, but I mean, if the housing prices are that bad, you can't even bring in your own talent. That's the, that's one of the problems. Yeah. So if you get, you, you get funded, you need to bring in 10 engineers and those 10 engineers aren't going to start off at, you know, funded, like super funded status, but still need to need a place to live.

That's, that's, I'm sure that's going to factor into this, this whole problem. Right. But that's where the, that's where, you know, dreams are made my ass. Yeah. Firefox is out with a new version. Yes. I've, I've heard about this. I I'm still on Chrome and waiting for a good reason to maybe switch back to Firefox.

And I think you're about to provide me with one. Yeah. They've got a new, basically a new feature called tracking protection, which turns off all of the third party crap out of the gate. So it's not loading external JavaScripts for ad networks and in such like, and it's saying that it in speed test, it's up, up to 44% faster.

That is not surprising at all. That is non-trivial and it is absolutely not surprising as any single one of those could, you know, hang the DOM load or just basically give you the beach ball. And, you know, people can actually build a webpage properly where it doesn't actually affect the DOM load.

But I don't think many people know how to do that. No. You know, that's, that's called paying attention to details and learning your, uh, learning your craft. Yeah. You know, nobody bothers doing that anymore. And, you know, wait, hold on a second. This is a, this is bad because we, as, as a collective society have determined that we do not want to pay for anything and everything has to be funded through advertising.

So we cannot be turning these things off. Oh no. God, no. Forbid. For shame. How are we supposed to make any money? You aren't going to pay for shit. So, you know, we enter into this, uh, contract with content providers saying that, Hey, we get to look at your stuff and in turn, you're going to sell us to somebody else.

Yes. And this, this breaks that contract, even though I don't remember ever signing a contract. Uh, we personally didn't, you and I were always very good at paying for things. I think the Napster fuckhead is the one that made this contract. Forced down our throats. Well, it's actually buried in the terms of service that nobody ever reads.

Oh, by using this website, you agree to be, uh, sold, packaged and turned into Soylent. And, uh, that's all that. So it's legal pages that people always give us in Microsoft word. And then we have to convert to HTML and get rid of all the squiggly character bits. Formatting back in.

Fun times, fun times. So, but, uh, the problem is even though it's faster, you're still using Firefox. Yeah, that is an issue for me. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't had a good reason to use Firefox in a long time. And the last time I checked it out and was trying to use their page inspector just to do some debugging on it.

They've got this really cool new page inspector, but it is almost impossible to use. Yeah. It's, it's crazy. It's got 3d in it and all this kind of crazy stuff. And I'm like, I just want to know where, which CSS class is causing this thing to shift four pixels to the right. Like I do not need, you know, my, my webpage blown up into three dimensional blocks that I can spin around, you know?

I'm just going to find out what font this is. Yeah. This isn't a fucking dire straits video. Come on. Sting comes out in like block four. Oh, did you see the, the sting thing on Jimmy Fallon where they did the acapella Roxanne or the barbershop quartet Roxanne?

As, as we discussed last week, I don't watch Jimmy Fallon. I, well, you said there were short bits that you would watch. So. Okay. Yeah. That, that one has not crossed my YouTube viewing. Uh, I came across my Facebook a couple of times this week and it was actually pretty cute, but Sting's looking a little creepy now. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. He's bald with a beard. Yes. And he walks around with a loot. What do you expect? Yeah. Well, fortunately we were, this was loot free. Oh, thank God. It was looting free. Uh, so Eric O'Muro. Oh, geez. I hate pop-ups.

I'm not going to sign up to your newsletter, people. It should have been Firefox. Oh yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Well, actually that wouldn't have helped this one. But there was a, um, a site called my red book that's been around for a while. It's kind of like, uh, you know, a Craigslist for porn or not porn for hookers and prostitutes.

Isn't that just Craigslist? Same thing. Used to be. Remember that these guys kind of came on the scene after Craigslist kind of shut down their adult connections or whatever the hell they used to call it. Okay. So this guy actually is going to jail though, which is crazy.

He got, he has to forfeit $1.28 million in cash and property and is going to spend 13 months in prison. He made that much money. Oh, that site was huge. Okay. No, they were, they were big on the scene. Um, it's just victimless crime. It's ridiculous. Oh yeah. Prosecuting this guy for just putting up a fucking service that let people fuck.

I mean, well, you know what? Because the city wasn't getting their licensing money. So, you know, you had to get, you had to get a vagina permit. Well, you can make it legal and then you can tax it. Then I think we're all a-okay. Why don't we just get on that? We've got bigger fish to fry here. Let's move on. I just want to know why Craig Newmark isn't in jail because he, he, I'm sure he sold more poontang online than anybody in the history of the world.

Probably. Yeah. I'd say so. Security. We have a hat trick of hacks of the week. A hat trick. So there's three of them. Go for it, Jason. All right. Uh, the first one, uh, speaking on the adult side of things, adult friend finder, which is, you know, a thinly veiled, uh, avenue for prostitution as well.

Yeah. I was about to say, isn't that the exact same thing as, as that my red book or whatever? Pretty much, pretty much. But, uh, dating sites that approximately 4 million people have had their accounts, uh, stolen all their information taken. And it's, this is a bad one though, because the opportunity for blackmail with this information is a little higher than just your regular Facebook.

Yeah, I suppose it is. Right. I mean, I guess the only thing that would be worse is that a dating site for married people. Yeah. Well, a lot of this, this, they, a lot of people do use adult friend finder for that. Okay. Yeah. No, if you're looking for extramarital hookups or, you know, rent boys or whatever you're looking for on the side, yeah, it, that info is in here and it's tied to their billing information.

So they have the way to correlate between the real person and the account. So yeah, if you're doing extramarital hookups, Hey, uh, you're going to send me five grand or I'm telling your wife. Right. That's, that's how bad that, that kind of hack is.

That's why, you know, it's a little scary on that one. Unfortunately, I'm not a, an adult friend finder member, so I am safe. Okay. Well, hopefully I am too. Who the hell knows what I did back in college? Oh man. And this one, uh, this next one comes from the register and it's a entitled a black hat hack trick wallops, popular routers.

Okay. Now, the interesting thing about this is it's not really, uh, that kind of new of a type of hack because what people can do is if you leave your router password set to the default, like we've talked about before, leave your ports open. People can own your router and they can, they can also put, they can put malware on it or that if they want to run a botnet, like we've reported in the past.

But the other thing that they can do, which is really crafty is just change your DNS settings. So you're running through a malicious DNS server every time you surf the web and what they, and then they, you know, grab your credentials when you go to like a banking site and then forward you onto the real site. But at that point, then they got your credentials and they've got, they put in a, you know, a name server that is run by them that goes to their fake websites.

If you like want to go to PayPal, it'll auto route you to, to their PayPal page, which looks exactly like PayPal. You put in your credentials and then, uh, they have the info and then they can forward you back onto the real PayPal. It's like nothing happens. And if their DNS server goes down, they've got the fallback. So you still can get on the online.

Yeah. Very, very crafty, very evil, but this is why you need to change your damn, you know, default passwords. Yes, but that's not going to happen. But Hey, I just, I just tell it like it is, man. I just tell it like it is. Story is that the, uh, the guy that kind of found this out is a cyber crime vigilante known Caffeine, which I believe after last week's episode should be your hacker name.

Caffeine. My hacker name is the professor. I'm sorry. Okay. Sorry. My bad. Uh, the IRS has been hacked. Oh, yeah. Oh, sad. Oh boy. Yep. A hundred thousand accounts, uh, basically through, uh, a simple web app hole.

This was no like crazy hack, but yeah, over a hundred thousand taxpayers, uh, their data's in the wild now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, it could be worse, but, uh, you don't want this sort of stuff happening with the IRS unless you kind of pray that they go in and just delete you from their records.

That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that would be very nice. Uh, can I please not exist anymore? IRS pretty pleased with sugar on top. Yeah. No, if, yeah, if we could get somebody to go in and just hack and, and, and wipe the database, I'd be down for that. But no, this is them just taking the info and the info they got, you know, it's so easy to get this info on anybody nowadays.

It's not hard to get somebody's tax return if you really want to. So this is, you know, it's bad. We don't want anybody being able to hack into the IRS systems at all, but this is not in the, in the grand scheme of things, this is kind of a nothing. No, but it's just fun that the IRS got hacked. Yes.

Yes, it is. Screw the government. Right, Jason? Down with the man. So just a quick spoiler alert this week for at the library, we're going to be talking about, uh, seven eves, the new Neil Stevenson book here in a second.

And if you don't want to get ruined, uh, skip ahead about five minutes. Yeah, that sounds about right. Uh, normally, you know, we would just kind of talk a little bit about generic stuff about a book, but, uh, this was so damn good. I think we do need to, to discuss some of the, some of the details.

Yeah. And that will basically ruin a lot of plot points. Yeah. Yeah. I picked it up, uh, right before I left, uh, for my flight for Toronto. I tore through it the entire flight. Um, I've stayed up until about two in the morning, every single night reading this. It was damn good. Um, and I, I love this book.

I mean, I, to me, it felt like a real departure for Neil Stevenson because this was kind of hard sci-fi, kind of almost Greg bear ish. Um, and he usually doesn't write that, um, you know, long, you know, detailed descriptions of technology and, you know, the various methods used both now and in the future to get around in space and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, uh, absolutely fantastic book. I, I loved both aspects of it, both the, the, you know, what happened right now. And then what happens 5,000 years from now, it was great. So, yeah, I really liked the run up to when they did the cutoff to, and then skipped ahead 5,000 years.

I love that part of the book, the first two thirds of the book. Right. And I love the science that he was using, even if it's pseudoscience, you know, like I look at something like the Martian who that guy really researched what it would take to stay alive on Mars. Yeah. And I don't know if Neil Stevenson did that amount of, you know, prep on it.

It wouldn't surprise me if he did, because he's just that kind of guy. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, what, uh, if you read that the very end, he talks, you know, it's just thanks to people. Uh, he did get pretty deep into the science and pretty far. I mean, obviously not Martian level because the Martian was kind of really literally meant to be read as this could really happen.

And here's how, uh, not so much with this, but he went pretty deep into it. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I just, I went through that first, those first two thirds so fast. I just could not wait for the next page. Yeah. And when it got to 5,000 years in the future, it lost.

It lost me for a while. I couldn't, I couldn't get into it. And finally, like about halfway through, I finally started to, you know, kind of get back into it. And then I really loved it up to the end. Yeah. It was, it was, uh, you know, uh, to be kind of punny, it was a, it was a rough reentry when you get that 5,000 and it took me a few pages as well.

I was really lost and I had to keep going back and figuring out which, you know, which Eve was which and what the, what character that was, uh, to kind of sort out what this whole, you know, separate race of humans was supposed to be like or based on. Um, I love the concept of, of that whole thing.

And, and just these kind of races being, uh, being genetically modified to be certain, certain aspects of humanity, which was really, really interesting to me. Um, I, the overarching theme of the entire book, which, which I don't think I've ever read in a sci-fi book before, uh, was human fallacy and bureaucracy and how bureaucracies can screw things up, um, and take the best intentions and just kind of fuck them up.

Uh, and I love that aspect of the book as well, cause it was a constant sub subcurrent on it. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think what it really came down to for me, at least going into that third part was you've got somebody who's just given you several hundred pages of characters that you've actually really grown to like and hate.

And then all of a sudden everybody's dead. You're basically starting another book. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it was great. I mean, I really liked the way he tied it together. I thought it was a really interesting concept that, uh, you know, these, these seven, these seven women are the only survivors and, and they're going to basically, they're all fighting with each other or there are certainly factions and now they're breeding their offspring to basically continue that battle through the rest of humanity.

Yeah. It's, it's a, definitely an interesting concept and well worth the read. I really definitely enjoyed it. And if you're a fan of Neil Stevenson or, or you like this book, uh, we have a link in the show notes to an interview that he did with Slate. Um, you may, you know, spoiler alert here again, too.

If you don't know what Neil Stevenson looks like, he might be a little freaked out by the photo they used. Okay. He's gotten scarier and scarier over the years. Yeah. It's looking pretty scary. So yeah, I mean, that was an absolute fantastic, uh, fantastic book. And I can't recommend it enough.

If, uh, if you're a fan of this podcast, you will love this book as well. So pick it up immediately and go read it. And I have an incoming book alert. I just saw this. Oh my God. Today. And you got all mad at me last time because you couldn't get your autographed copy. So I've got a link in the show notes.

Christopher Moore has just announced his new book is coming secondhand souls. It'll be out August 25th. Link in the show notes to purchase the autographed copy. Like I did for serpent of Venice. And Jason was pissed off about. Yeah. This is a sequel to a dirty job, which I thought was okay. It wasn't his best work, but it was still a pretty damn good book.

I mean, he doesn't have anything, but pretty damn good books. Exactly. It's when you write something like lamb, um, everything else is going to pale somewhat in comparison, even though it's still really damn good. Yeah. I was going to say he peaked early, but lamb was like his eighth or ninth book. Yeah. He was, he was definitely a pretty prolific writer before lamb came out, but man, he knocked it out of the park with lamb.

Oh yeah. That's still probably my number one favorite book of all time. Oh, absolutely. I like dirty job. I mean, it wasn't, you know, like you said, it wasn't the most amazing of stories. I do like the characters and I'm glad he's revisiting them. And I think, you know, he's, he's definitely matured as a writer. So it'll be interesting to see what he does with the characters now.

So definitely. I'm going to go order it right now. Yeah, me too. Software apps and gadgets. So I've got, uh, just two iOS apps. I want to talk about this week, and I think I may have talked about them before, but I just want to kind of revisit them because they're actually very important to me.

You just ruined my comment because I was going to say, I know you've talked about both of these before. So I overcast is the first one, the podcast app. I've used it. I've left it. And then I kind of went back to it because there were some aspects of it when he finally made some updates to it that made me originally dump it.

The first one was the fact that as soon as a podcast would finish playing before he would delete it. Yeah, that's a no, because if I want to go back and re-listen to a little bit of it, which I generally do there on most podcasts, there's going to be something in there that I want to like write down or that I'm just not in the moment where I can write it or something.

I want to go back later and get the info out of it. Yeah. And he finally added that in. So now it's my go-to player. Also, he's got that smart speed feature that will search for silence. So it scans ahead and it searches for silence in the podcast and strips it out.

So it kind of screws up comedic timing on some podcasts. I was about to say that I don't know if I'd necessarily want that. Well, I listen to so many podcasts. I just looked at my stats right before we started the show. Besides using like speed boost, you know, because I can go up to 1.75 or 2x to listen to a show if somebody's talking really slow.

The smart speed feature has saved me 36 hours since I started using the app. That's a lot of dead air. Right. So that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I'll let a few jokes go by if I can save that much time. How many jokes have been stomped on because of this?

You know, not that many. Not really. Yeah. Because not many funny people do podcasts. Yeah. I mean, I listen to a couple like serious comedy podcasts, but it's not really they're not really doing standup routines, you know, so they don't have to have that kind of timing. Just the jokes themselves are funny. So it's you can get it for free and then to turn everything on, it's five bucks in app purchase.

OK. The terrible thing is the color scheme is white and orange, which is just hideous. No, thanks. I hate orange. The other app I want to talk about is Dark Sky. Now, I have talked about this before, but I remember at the time it was it cost like two bucks or something like that, but it really didn't do much of anything except give you a pretty picture.

Well, the whole the whole point of it is that it's hyperlocal, so it will tell you within like two minutes if it's going to rain and it has gotten way prettier and way more accurate and it saved our barbecue the other day. So I just wanted to wanted to mention it said, oh, it's going to start raining in one minute.

And I'm like, don't put the charcoal on. And we waited. And sure enough, deluge. Rain ending in seven minutes. And it was a little off there. The rain ended in about six and a half minutes. But then we just fired up the barbecue and we're good to go. And so I'm really hoping that it's going to help me on this drive that I got to take.

So if it can if it can do it on the road, I don't know how it's going to fare in wide open spaces because I think it needs like local data in the cities to really be accurate. Because I noticed in San Francisco when I first got it, it was spot on accurate. But in Chicago, not so much, but it's gotten a lot better.

Right. It'll be super useful to you when you get to L.A. Hey, it's 75 and sunny. Hey, it's 75 and sunny. Hey, it's 75 and sunny. Well, that's why you never that's the only thing. You never open the app unless it gives you an alert that it just sits in the background and does its thing. Right. So it's four bucks. Well worth the four bucks.

If you're in an area that is fairly congested and you have rain and snow, it helps. Very cool. I think we've established through the history of this podcast that you are a movie guy.

I am. I am not so much. You know, you don't like movies. You don't like games. I don't know what you actually like besides beer and trivia. Dislike movies. It's just I don't get around to watching them very often. When I do watch them, I like to do a segment I call Drunk on a Plane Movie Reviews.

Okay. That is when I tend to watch movies on a plane and usually drunk. And at this point, this flight out here, I watched Kingsman, The Secret Service. I had heard not that much about it. I was vaguely intrigued and it was certainly better than any of the other options on my little movie playing device in front of me that was in the way of my Jack and Coke.

So I popped it on and watched it and God damn, it was a good movie. Good, good. I'm glad you liked it. It was really funny and it was shockingly hyper violent. I was not expecting that at all. I mean, Quentin Tarantino-esque eyeballs being impaled, hands being chopped off, an entire room full of 100 people being killed within three minutes in the most graphic way imaginable and still yet very clever and very well done.

My only complaint was Samuel Jackson's character because Samuel Jackson just can't fucking not be Samuel Jackson, even when he's trying to be by affecting a lisp in this particular movie. But he's still Samuel fucking Jackson. Yeah. The lisp threw me off. I actually watched this last last night because I saw you put it in the show notes and I grabbed it and man, I love this movie.

I just loved everything about it. Yeah. If you are sensitive at all, do not watch this movie. But if you don't mind a little bit of the old hyper violence, it's good stuff. Oh, my God. I got to say the Sam Jackson's female bodyguard with the prosthetic legs that are swords.

Yes. Whoa, that was good. That is definitely Tarantino level like holy shit moment. Yeah. Over the top, just ridiculousness. So, yeah, you know, it was good stuff. I really enjoyed it. No, I was definitely a fine find. I thank you for that one.

I was I was every time you do a review of something, you usually shit on it. So I'm glad this was not one of those times. No, it was good. It was good. I liked it a lot. So we'll see what I'll have a drunk on a plane movie review next Friday as well. Excellent. So, you know, I listen to a gazillion podcasts and one that I listen to is one called show me your mic.

It comes out of good stuff dot FM and Chris ends, I believe, is I think the host. I was on it a long time ago. I was back on it when I was swearing the the, you know, the goodness of USB microphones and we'll see things have changed. It's been a while, but I still like it.

And there was this guy, Aaron Mankey on there. He's done a podcast for five by five about working from home for a long time, but he's got a new podcast called lore and it's really damn good. All he does is he writes stories about like monsters like Dracula or werewolves or asylums and things like that.

And just basically does a 20 minute podcast with it, with really good music beds. And it's amazing. I hate him because he's like, yeah, it takes me a couple hours to do this. And then I'm getting, you know, 20,000 downloads. I'm like, fuck you, you bastard. But I highly recommend checking it out if you want, like just a good short.

Like I said, they're 20 minutes, but well produced podcast. It's extremely interesting. OK, because he writes he writes like horror fiction on the side, but he's a graphic designer by trade. OK, so the site's really well done. He does. He puts a lot of care into his product.

He actually is one of those guys that pays extreme attention to detail, which I love, obviously. And I think it's one of the great new shows that I found. So definitely worth checking out. Yeah, it looks really cool. I'm going to give this one a listen. Yeah. And I'll have links for the podcast as well as the show me your mic episode where he talks about his process in the show notes this week.

Cool. Were you an Entourage fan? No. Were you just not a fan or did you actively watch the show and disliked it? I watched the show and it's not so much that I disliked it as I live it and I don't need to watch it. I can't find watching it entertaining because it is my fucking life.

OK. And it made my skin crawl. I mean, Silicon Valley is close, but somehow I just managed to still just laugh hilariously. But the movie slash music entertainment industry thing was was too much for me. OK, so this is that's the thing. The way you feel when you watch Entourage, that's how I feel watching Silicon Valley.

OK. But I was a huge Entourage fan. I love that show. And the movie's coming out on Wednesday on June 3rd. So I will be in the theater first first screening for sure. All right. Yeah, I'm not I can't. I never got into it. So people seem to love it.

And yeah, I've been hearing a lot about the movie coming out. And I hear that, you know, the cameos are just ridiculous. Mm hmm. Yeah. Speaking of Silicon Valley, did you see it this week? No, no. Oh, international. And my HBO app will not let me watch it from here.

Well, I have mentioned on the show many times. Private Internet access, our VPN that we at the Grumpy Old Geeks prefer would let you watch it. Yes, I know. I know. So $14.99 a year. There's a link. There's a link in the sidebar on Grumpy Old Geeks dot com. Sign up now. I will be catching up when I get back home.

You got to watch it next week and talk about a little bit. But they they basically took the piss out of Kevin Rose on this episode. And it was hilarious. And he was apparently flying and didn't know anything about it. And he's like, what's everybody tweeting me about this Silicon Valley thing? Somebody sent me a clip. And once he saw it, he got the joke.

He was pretty, pretty cool about it. Awesome. Yeah, he wasn't a dick about it because it was it was pretty funny. They really kind of they gave him a good dig. They did what they do. So have you seen this new Inside Amy Schumer short with Bill Nye, the science guy?

I have not. I saw Making the Rounds today, but I have not watched it. I have. I've had this weird thing with this Amy Schumer like she did not exist in the entire universe about two weeks ago. And then all of a sudden she is everywhere because she's pretty damn good. I got to say she's funny.

It's just, you know, it's one of those all of a sudden things. It's just all of a sudden. OK, we're going to pause for two minutes and you're going to watch this and then we'll talk about it. And we're back. What do you think? That was pretty damn funny. Apparently, Amy Schumer basically makes fun of millennials. Yeah. It's tough.

Bill Nye. Good job there. That was very funny. Yeah, I was amazed. It's just at the end. You got to you got to wait to the end. You got to watch all the way through and it makes it. Yes, that was highly enjoyable. I had a good chuckle. Show notes will be in the show notes. Link will be in the show notes at grumpy old geeks dot com slash one one two.

Yes. And since we don't really have anywhere else to put this and I know none of this will make any sense to Jason whatsoever. This is all about sportball, Jason. Yeah, I actually know what this is about. Thank you very much. I do watch John Oliver. OK, good. Yeah. So, well, I think we talked about that.

Yeah. FIFA, the the international governing body of soccer, which I railed about during the World Cup and then John Oliver talked about as well, is basically corrupt as all hell. Interesting news came out today because the U.S. government, the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, is basically going after nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives and indicted them for racketeering, conspiracy and corruption and arrested them, which I did not realize our government could do that to an international body.

But hey, what the hell? Well, they do a lot of business on U.S. soil. So in in one of those cross jurisdictional type of dealios, they had the local police arrest them for extradition to the United States. Yes, this is very exciting news and it might actually clean up this thing.

I mean, you know, you can talk about deflate gate all you want. And we all know that sports are basically corrupt everywhere. But I would love to see if I get cleaned up a little bit because, you know, World Cup is my once every four year joy. I love that. So let's fix it. That's it. Yeah, no, there are a lot of happy people today because of this.

I'm not one of them because I couldn't give two shits, but I'm glad you're happy. I am happy, Jason. And I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad. Brian, how high can you count?

To potato. Can you count to potato? Because this is, you know, this has apparently been something that mathematicians have been worried about for years. They haven't been able to do it. Yeah, well, apparently people afflicted with Down syndrome can. So that may say something about me.

Now, this is a very funny article that you posted. I don't know how this came across your desk or how you found this, but it's hilarious. Yeah, let me explain it. So there's an old graphic. It's an old meme graphic that has just shows basically a kid with Downs with holding up a sign that says, I can count to potato.

And I was looking for that picture because somebody was talking about math, and that's generally my go-to picture to paste in when somebody's talking about math that they don't understand. And then I came across Encyclopedia. Yes, the content-free encyclopedia. But there is an entire article on counting to potato.

Counting to potato is the act of, arithmatically, creating a sequence of numbers that ends with a potato, which is not a rational number, but rather a tuber vegetable, commonly eaten, baked, boiled, or roasted. And it's just this entire, like, very funny article about it.

And it was like, people just have way too much time on the internet. But I love it because this is one thing that made me smile. Yeah, it was very funny. And obviously, it's a take on Wikipedia. I do like, I mean, I, you know, we talk about this sort of stuff a lot. Welcome to the mothership of amateur comedy writing. Amateur means we don't pay you to do it.

Yep. Yep, there you go. Crowdsourced comedy. Yes. They even have Schrodinger's potato. Yeah, very nice. Very funny. In other sites that I found that are actually pretty cool, this is a site called Unsplash.com. And what it is, is free high-resolution photos, 10 new photos every 10 days.

And they're curated, and they're actually really nice. And this is from people who actually are giving the rights away to the photos. They're not being stolen. People put them out there and give them away for free. And this site goes through and finds, like, the best stuff and sticks it out there for you. So that Prince guy could basically print them out and sell them?

Yes, actually, he could. Instead of, you know, ganking on somebody else's shit, you can do that. But they're pretty good. Jeffrey Zeldman did the latest round of curation. So that's how I came across my radar. But check it out. They're really nice. Right, right.

Yeah, they're cool. And the way I would do it now, which I think I might do, I'll just run a scraper. Every 10 days, we'll go back to the site and download them to a folder. So I know in the future, I can go back and have a nice set of high-res photos if I need them for web development or the like.

Right. Yeah. Why not? And we are going to mention title one last time because I can't believe it took someone this long. But a spoof video has finally come out, which is very, very funny. This is one of those annoying things where this gig-wise, they posted it on their Facebook page.

And, of course, you can't find it anywhere else, which is the dumbest thing in the world. Why no YouTube? Come on, people. Facebook video? Really? But... Hey, on that Amy Schumer thing, I found it on her Facebook page and had to go to YouTube and search it to find it to give us an embeddable version.

Yeah, I did search on the tube of the U for this, and I could not find it anywhere. As far as I can tell right now, the only place is on their Facebook page. We have a link in our show notes, and it is very funny. I can't even discuss it at all because I will step on the jokes, but it's very well done and very funny. Yeah, yeah.

I spit water out when I was watching it because it was so funny. So we've got two good videos this week. A bit late. It took them a while to get to it. But, you know, very, very well done. Are you kidding me?

Love it! I think I'm going to try to go apply for a job in China, Jason. China? Where at? Yeah. Well, first, this is great. The company name apparently is... Let me find that again because I love this. NetDragon Websoft.

Ooh, NetDragon Websoft. Yeah, NetDragon Websoft. That's where StrongBad works. Yes, StrongBad works there. It's apparently one of the most popular mobile internet providers in China. And the guy who started it up is, you know, has a gazillionaire, basically. And he's building a new head office for the company.

And guess what it looks like? It looks like a spaceship. It looks like the Star Trek Enterprise. It is a replica of the Enterprise. And he's gotten approval to build it. And I want to work there. It doesn't actually look like the Enterprise. It looks like Voyager. There has been much discussion about this topic.

And it is basically Voyager. Oh, that's a good point. It is Voyager, isn't it? Yep. It's the closest replica out of all the spaceships. It's Voyager. Yeah. Yeah. But still, it's cool as shit. Link in the show notes. And, you know, let's all go work for NetDragon Websoft.

NetDragon Websoft. Closing shout-outs! Closing shout-out for me this week to Mary Ellen Mark, one of our great photographers, passed away this week. She was 70 years old and just an iconic photographer. And she will be sorely missed.

If you don't know who she is, I put a few links in the show notes. One's a video of her talking about the art of photography and the craft. And she's made, I'm sure everybody has seen some of her work, whether you know it or not. She's definitely one of the greats of our time when it comes to photography.

Yeah, I knew about her passing up because a bunch of, I guess she taught a few classes at the Julia Dean Photo Workshop, which used to be right in Venice Beach. So a bunch of my friends had taken classes with her. So there was a lot of posting about it. So, yeah. Yeah. I remember that.

Yeah, I actually remember when she was teaching there because I was really bummed because the class had already passed and I wanted to take it. Right. As soon as I heard about it. Ah, bummer. So, on a happier note, have I ever talked to you about Not Your Father's Root Beer? You have not. So, there's a little company up here called Small Town Brewery Company.

Nice thing. It's in La Crosse or La Porte, Wisconsin. Some place up here in Wisconsin. In a little small town. But they make a root beer that is not a root beer. It's basically a spiced beer, so it's got booze in it. Right. But it tastes just like root beer. It is deadly, deadly good.

Well, bring some. Sounds like it might go well with Zane's spiced monkey rum. Here's the thing about it. The reason I'm giving it a shout out, they just made huge distribution deals around the country so you can now get it in LA just in time for me to get there. Sweet. The stuff is so good.

The sad thing is, though, the ones that you can buy in the store, they're only 5.9%. Here in town, you can get up to, I think, 12% in the bottle. They've got that kind. But you can get up to 20% on tap. That is Illinois only. That's just dangerous.

I don't even have a plus. Anything over 10%, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Fortunately, the one time I had it at Harry Carey's restaurant at Water Tower, and it comes in a very small glass because it will knock you on your ass, and you cannot tell that there is an ounce of booze in this stuff.

Right. So we're going to make some root beer floats when we do the next Grumpy Old Geeks together. That sounds good, man. Let's definitely do that. That'll be fun. I am still in Canada, so I want to give a shout out to my, basically, my East Coast office, the Foggy Dew, which is a lovely pub on King Street where I've been spending quite a lot of time and mooching off their wireless consistently because, as you recall, Rogers is the devil, and there's no free Wi-Fi basically anywhere in Canada because they charge you for everything.

No free bandwidth here. No unlimited. So thank you very much, Foggy Dew, and thanks to friends of the show, Kevin and Ted, that I've seen already, and anybody else that I may be running into while I'm still here. I thought you hung out at the Dog's Bollocks quite a bit, too. That's our Christmas tradition. We go to the Dog's Bollocks.

Okay. Play cards against humanity. Sounds like fun. Sounds like fun. It is. Well, thanks for listening. I am Jason DeFillippo, and you can follow me on Twitter at jason.com, all spelled out, or at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schulmester, and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

We'll talk to you next week, and have a good trip, Jason. Yeah, you too. Fly safe. I shall try and drive safe. And we might be talking to you next week. Hopefully. Trumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show. No, really, it is. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG, and drop a few coins in our cyber tin can to help support the show.

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

Or you can donate through Grumpy Old Geeks' Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. You can also find us at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks or twitter.com slash GOG podcast. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 112.

Potato!

Stay on target. Stay on target. Stay on target. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Bruise Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean.

Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at bkfsea.com.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at qvc.com.