122: The Middleman Economy

I got nothing else. Me either. So, cut. 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.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for Friday, August 7th. I am Jason DeFilippo. And I am Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? I am doing well. I'm older now. That's true. Happy birthday. Yeah. Well, you know, every day it's the oldest you've ever been. So, you just kind of have to deal with that.

That's true. You're just one step closer to dead. Yeah, thanks for that. Appreciate it. No problem. We talk a lot about the singularity on this show, so maybe not. Yeah, well, if I can get to then. I mean, it's another 10 years to go. That's kind of a slog.

I think you can make it 10, Jason. Yeah, I'll see what I can do. So, I got my first Manny and Petty on my birthday. I saw that you posted that on Facebook, and I thought it was very funny because right before I saw that post, because, you know, Facebook just refuses to give us a linear timeline ever, there was a post of a crown that you woke up to, like a little princess crown.

A little tiara, yes. Somebody had posted a photo with you wearing it, or it didn't happen. That never happened. Said, no way would I ever do that. Yet, then you went to get a Manny Petty. Now, if it were me, I would have just manned up and wore the princess tiara to get my Manny Petty. Problem is, it didn't fit. Well.

I would have. I would have. But when I went to the Mexican place, they did give me a sombrero to wear. Maybe I'll put that in the show notes. Okay. That would be nice. It's already on my Instagram account. So, if you go to Instagram.com slash JPD, yes, I was an early adopter, you can see me in my sombrero.

I like how you just pimp all your social media properties now. Dude, what the fuck? You got to do that. Come on. This is what we do. That is true, I guess. So, how was your week? Anything fun happen? Yeah, it's been great. Doing a whole kitchen remodel. So, I've been without a kitchen now for five days, so I've learned what I've always thought about myself, which is, I would hate camping.

Yeah, so are you living off the land? Yeah, the land is like my kitchen table that's been moved into the living room that has a bunch of things that are plugged in and supplies to just get by, such as wine. Well, that's all you need. That's all you need. Living off the grape. They're here installing all the cabinets today. There was no getting around the schedule.

You and I tried to even do a show last night, but that didn't work out for either of us, so if there's some banging around, that's what's going on. Yeah, yeah. You know, they can't all be winners. Nope, they can't. But, you know, I have to increase my market value with my place here in Santa Monica, which is a city that is trying to design itself happier.

Yeah, you sent me this article, and it was from The Guardian, which I thought was weird. No shit. It's like an English paper is writing about this program, and it's pretty – I find this really interesting and very cool. Well, it's called The Wellbeing Project, and it's not just here. It's also in your other city, Jason. They're doing it in Chicago, so you should look in to see how well things are going there.

Yeah, well, I don't live in Chicago anymore, so I don't know. This program started in 2013, and it's being funded by the million-dollar grant from Bloomberg, of course, and what they're basically doing is using data to see what's going on in cities and how to increase quality of life and what problems may be happening and all that sort of thing.

And, you know, as geeks, we should like this stuff. Yeah, we should. Is that million dollars going to, you know, fund getting rid of every Prius in Santa Monica and maybe making the roads wider because the traffic sucks so bad? Yeah, I know. We need some sort of outlet other than Lincoln to get across this damn city.

No, they didn't ask me, unfortunately. I don't think I was living here in time to do the thing that they sent around, so I think the Priuses are here to stay. But it's an interesting project and an interesting read. We've got the link in our show notes. And this is the kind of stuff that I want to see technology and big data being used for.

I think this is an interesting concept. Awesome. Yeah, we'll see how it works out. Hopefully it'll get something done because I still call it Satan Monica because it's the last place I want to go. I know, but I love it here. Found a link. Quora is, you know, they're all over Twitter, Facebook, Google+, although Google+, not for long, as we've discussed a few times.

They do basically the answer questions. And somebody asked, when can the pay-what-you-want model succeed? You know, the old Radiohead thing. And I thought this was a really good answer. He wrote, the guy's name is Carl Shan, and he basically does, he's an author, and he put out multiple books under the pay-what-you-want method.

And he does a really good rundown of the only situations in which this could possibly work or be beneficial for you. If you've already built an audience that, on the backs of the labels, that, you know, you got your free publicity and you're already a star. Is that it? We call that the Amanda Palmer model.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, no, it's pretty much, yeah, it's basically kind of on those lines. I mean, certainly you need to have a bit of an audience already. He numbers them down. Number one would be, you have to have a product with a low marginal cost. And that's very helpful for music or any kind of digital distribution.

Because any time that you have the physical and shipping, as all you Kickstarter idiots know, it gets expensive and complicated. Oh, yeah, definitely. Number two, you'd have to have a fair-minded customer base. Good luck with that. Not in this day and age, motherfucker. Nope, everybody wants anything they can get for free, and that's that.

Number three, a product that can be sold at a wide range of prices. Again, I think that's pretty much the same as number one. Yeah, that sounds exactly like number one. Yeah, yeah. Finding a competitive marketplace. I'm not entirely sure what that really means, especially if you're trying to do something creative.

Because, I mean, what isn't a creative or competitive marketplace these days? That kind of defines what a marketplace is, competition. So he's basically just saying you'd have the ability to underprice people that won't do the pay-what-you-want market. Okay, so pretty much we've knocked everything out of his argument so far.

Number five, a strong relationship between buyer and seller. Well, if you have a strong relationship, you could probably just charge your regular price. Yeah, because I think that's the elephant in the room right there. If you have a strong relationship with your audience, then they're going to pay for it. They're into your stuff, and they're going to pay for it, as Amanda Palmer well knows, because she funds basically going to the bathroom at this point.

She does, actually. I'm going to give Neil a handjob. Would you guys like to kick-starter that? For $55, we'll put it on the webcam. We'll periscope it. Jesus. So there's a cool article I found from David Byrne out of all people.

I'm a huge fan of David Byrne, and he's just saying that, okay, if we want to fix this, we need everybody to open up and talk about how we're getting paid. What have I been saying since day one on this podcast about the music industry? Oh, yes, transparency.

Transparency. And we're not going to get it, ever. Of course not. No, no, no, no, no. There's too many people making way too much money for there to be transparency. Everybody except for the artists, of course. And this goes into my next article, which I found called Stop Calling It The Sharing Economy. That Isn't What It Is.

Did you read this article yet? That's what I've been saying since day one. Exactly. Yeah, I did read this article. This is a fantastic read, and it's extremely long, but it's a very, very good read. And basically, this is a well-thought-out version of everything that I rant about on this podcast. Yeah, no, definitely.

And I think we should actually call it the middleman economy, because that's what it actually is. You know, you look at Airbnb, and you look at Uber, and you look at all this other crap. They're middlemen. That's all they are. They're just inserting themselves in between you and the actual service provider. That's all the sharing economy is.

No, I agree 100%. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's, you know, privileged people up in Silicon Valley making an app that's a second layer in between the service that you're going to go do anyways. Supposedly giving you extra value or, you know, peace of mind or making your life easier, and basically taking money from the bottom and the top.

Absolutely. Yep. And I got to give a hat tip to Mr. Jordan Cooper for this one. I found this on his Twitter feed. So thank you very much, Jordan. And yeah, honestly, it's the middleman economy. That's all it is now. Well, and I ran across a very similar link that talks about the same thing.

So I just grouped it in here. This one is from Tech Mike. And it's one tweet shows what Silicon Valley really thinks of the people it's crushing. And there was a tweet going around some guy in San Francisco tweeted six months ago. There were three laundromats in my SF hood.

Now two. And one may be evicted. What happens when basic services can no longer afford rent? And then some guy that works over at Google, who helped build the Google email platform, replied saying, that's the cost of disruption. Washio and others have removed need for laundromat on every block.

You pretentious fuck. Fucking asshole. That's only if you're rich. But of course, thanks to you guys and the way you engineered San Francisco recently, there are only rich people that can live there. Yeah. And sadly, the service that would sell you quarters so you could go to the laundromat is now out of business.

So what are you going to do now? Yeah. And then this article goes kind of in depth as well, talking about the same thing that you were just mentioning, which is Washio still depends on laundry services because they're just middlemen. Yeah. All they do is they have somebody come pick it up. They probably call a fiver or a task rabbit to come pick up your laundry and take it over and do the fluff and fold and then bring it back to you and then just charge you a fee.

So what they do is they drive the service that you could just go to by yourself out of business. Then they're the middlemen that then take it to somewhere else. Awesome. Yeah. And what they don't even talk about in this article is the problem with laundromats in San Francisco is the homeless because the homeless will come in every morning.

And this was a problem at my laundromat. They would come in. They would take off all their filthy, nasty clothes that they've been sleeping in the park in and, you know, doing their man poo business and just put them in the dryer. They wouldn't wash them. They would just dry them. So you could not dry your clothes.

I cannot tell you how many times I've had to take my wet clothes across the street to the dry cleaner and say, dude, just wash them. Wash them again. Dry them. I'll be back in a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is a really good article, too. There's a quote there that basically says that these apps that are supposedly changing the world don't really affect anyone except for the very wealthy young men who designed them.

Yep. In fact, if anything, they make it worse for the rest of us. In the news. Fighting the good fight against all the crap that we're talking about. You remember Dan Price and his company Gravity Payments a couple of weeks back.

Oh, yeah. He's the one that upped his minimum wage to 70 grand for all the employees. He decided to slash his own pay package to basically take all of his employees up to a minimum salary of $70,000. How's that working for him? In the no good deeds go unpunished files. Not very well.

Yeah. And for some understandable reasons. Let's first just talk about his own employees. A lot of them were obviously very happy. Some of them not so much because basically some of the higher paid people thought it was unfair to double the pay of some of the new hires while the long serving staff members got small or no raises at all.

Understandable. I can see that. That's understandable. I would have probably tried to employ some sort of sliding scale bringing everybody up to $70,000 but then raising other people's salaries commensary. But then you probably go out of business. See, this is where it gets complicated. Economics is complicated, Jason. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, it's a meritocracy.

You have to get paid based on your merit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, that is what happens. So they've lost a few people because they were upset about the salary raises and the inequalities within basically skill levels or people putting in more time or people that have been there since the beginning. The web developer, Grant Moran, who was 29 years old, had a salary of, what does it say?

He got his own salary bump as well. And I guess they were staged raised outs because he went up to $50,000 from 41. And he was worried the new policy doesn't reward work ethic. Now the people are just clocking in and out and making the same as me. It shackles high performers to less motivated team members.

Hey, this may just be a web developer thing because I certainly felt that way the entire time I was working in the corporate world. Get over it. No, no, don't get over it. Get paid what you're worth. Honestly, if you were making 41 grand and you're like the like the senior developer there, you were getting underpaid, brother.

I'm just going to tell you that right now. Yeah, I agree with that completely. Yeah, yeah. If you're if you're a senior web dev at a company that's doing payments, you should have at least six figures, period. Yeah. And well, most of his employees do seem to agree, though, but he is having some problems.

Because the bigger problem for him was that some of his clients started to drop him because they were convinced that this would lead to increases in charges, even though he promised them that it would not because he was taking his own money to use these to make these payments. Yeah, that's kind of bullshit, I think.

That is. Yeah. If they're if they're if they're like bailing on him without having any price raises in their service, that's that's just an excuse to leave. Maybe his service sucks. Who knows? But yeah, it does sound like it's an excuse to leave or no, or maybe not. Or maybe just fear of something new.

It's like, but if he makes you a promise that the prices aren't going to rise, why do you pull out right away? Now, granted, press press. Well, granted, he did get a few new clients due to the press from this, which is. But the thing is only a few, which just goes to show you that sometimes just the big press release thing doesn't really do much.

Well, especially not nowadays. Yeah, but yeah, I you know, the people who were there that got shafted, I totally understand that. I do. 100%. I do. But I still applaud his effort. I still applaud the concept of what he's doing.

And there's going to be bumps in the road along the way for somebody trying to do this. So I still think that this is a great thing that he's trying to do. You know, the thing is, you have to start the company with this ethic, and it's not something that is new. Like in the old days, we would all have free sites and then they would flip over to pay.

And once you hit like, you know, a certain level of user base and then you're like, OK, well, now I need to make money. So now I'm going to charge you a bit. Then I introduced the paywall. Yeah, that never works. We all know that. Once you have something that is nice and cheap and free, and then you introduce the payment process, nobody comes back.

Look at you, New York Times. That's the way it works. So you have to start with this out of the gate, I think. And, you know, in the future, it might work. But when you're taking money from people who probably deserve more money and give it to people who might not be deserving of it, just to do it is kind of kicking the nuts for the people who are putting in the, you know, the 80-hour work weeks and engineering and all that stuff.

No, it's a rough road if you're an existing company and you're trying to switch over to that. I agree. It would probably go a lot better if you just would have started a new company or somehow. But, you know, so but again, yeah, as far as the paywall thing goes, New York Times has to realize they're not cocaine. The drug dealer model does not work on the web.

You don't get your first taste for free and then you get hooked. Yeah, then you just disable cookies and you can read all you want for free anyway. So, so Uber, I would be remiss not to mention some Uber news in my own city. Four Uber drivers were cited at LAX for having serious criminal records.

And we're not kidding here. Child exploitation, identity theft, manslaughter, driving under the influence. Yeah, those are bad. Those are all bad. By the way, if Uber played by the rules and had the legislation and all the different things that taxis have to do, all of them would have been ineligible for a city of Los Angeles taxi permit.

Yep. This is, yeah. This is the problem, Uber. This is the problem. Well, this is one of the many, many problems. But yes, I had never even, you know, I like to think outside the box and come up with reasons why Uber shouldn't exist. And I never even thought of this one.

This is, you know, I'm adding that to the quiver. The funny thing is, I mentioned this to some of my super pro Uber friends, and the immediate response was, oh, you're going to try to tell me taxi drivers aren't rapists? Well, no, they're not, because you can't get a permit if you have any of this.

So they're fucking not assholes. They're not. Yeah. Well, they're assholes, but they're not. Yeah, they may not be good people, but at least they're not convicted. They're not felons. Yes. That's kind of a point. Yeah. Point for taxis.

They might not show up and get you to the airport on time, but at least they won't rape you along the way or sell your children into, you know, slavery. Yeah. So there you go. And in America, just sucks news. Everybody's heard about this, but how could we not talk about it?

Some some kids in Canada at universities created this stupid little designed robot called Hitchbot, and it managed to basically it had a sign on it, say, take me around. It's a cute little thing. It's an upgrade of the what's flat Stanley or whatever, that kind of that kind of concept.

So it made it all the way across Canada. No problem. Made it all the way across a couple different countries in Germany or in Europe, like Germany. No problem. Then they decided to send it across the U.S., and it got basically completely trashed. Well, in Philadelphia. I'm sorry.

You don't put anything that you love in Philadelphia because it will die, especially yourself. But yeah. No. But you couple this with the Cecil the Lion news, and it just says America wants to kill everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's wonderful people here. Yeah.

That's pretty much how we roll. If it's great, we kill it. This came out of Ryerson University in Toronto. Oh, nice people. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. What are you going to do? It's honestly, it's like you just you can't engineer around stupid.

But yeah. Well, let me remind all you kids out there. You know, we all think that we're supposed to play by a certain rule book, but most of the world doesn't take it away, Jason. OK, I've got an article from Medium called Theft Lies in Facebook Video.

Yeah, it's basically an article about how, like, you know, Facebook is trying to go after YouTube with the video stuff and how they cheat. They lie. They steal and saying that, yeah, well, Facebook basically says if you watch it for three seconds, that's a view.

That's it. Counts as a view. Yeah. And a bunch of other stuff. It's got a lot of graphs if you're into that kind of thing. But we all knew this, you know. Right. If, you know, if you just scroll down the page and you're reading your friend's, you know, status update, which you probably generally can't see because they keep posting the top stories now, even on the website.

And they've taken out, you know, I can't even go into Facebook. But yes, if you're paying for Facebook video, you're probably getting duped at some point. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, because I autoplay. I mean, I never watch any of those videos, but I'm sure everyone, every time I scroll down, it's been counted as a hit.

It's ridiculous. The stealing thing is the one that really killed me. That is absolutely insane that that that basically people who have monetized themselves and are making a really big living off of YouTube. Basically, sometimes Facebook is just kind of grabbing the most watched videos and putting them up themselves and playing their own version of it instead of the link to YouTube.

Now. Yeah, that's what they do. Yeah, that should be fucking illegal. Oh, my God. You know what? I think it is. It is interesting. Go figure. Stealing somebody's intellectual property is illegal. Oh, hold on a second.

This is Web 2.0. This is disruption economy. This is what we do. This, unfortunately, is how all you stupid little media apps out there, including Spotify, got started. We'll just play the content until someone notices and then we'll make deals. And then we'll just hire lawyers and, you know, pay half of what we would have paid.

And the lawyers just make out. Now, kids, this is not the way your parents raised you. This is not the way we were taught to be. But apparently it's completely OK. Straight out of Sweden. Yeah. And in keeping with that exact news, I found this article about Facebook's video problem, which involved the Ronda Rousey fight.

OK. Even if that's how they say her name. But basically, YouTube obviously has a deal and they pull down clips immediately. Because they have a deal. They have their content ID system to if anybody tried to put up the entire fight, which is 34 seconds approximately because she kicks ass.

It was yanked immediately. Not for Facebook. Facebook had the entire fight up for over 15 hours before somebody pulled it down because they wrote them a very nasty email saying, can you please take the entire fight down off your Facebook video? Yeah.

Well, I mean, that just comes down to a matter of numbers. I mean, how can they do things at speed when they have to deal with so many videos being posted every day? I mean, it's it's it just comes under a human issue at that point. Because YouTube has built this extensive, massive content ID system that actually works fairly well automated for the most part.

Except when except when people who post from, like, say, Universal Music have their own stuff taken down and they they DMCA themselves. That is the automation part of the system that fails. And they don't have enough people. They have an army of people that are working on this, but it's still not enough.

And it's such a Byzantine system to report either way, as in I actually did own that or please take that down, you know, like I actually talked about this on a previous show. I've had to go through the copyright system at Facebook and it worked somewhat well.

You know, I got my photos taken down and it worked, but it did take a day. It took a full day to get it done. And it generally came down to the person who posted the photo replying back to them. They have to wait for that. Right. You know, that's that's a bottleneck right there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really? Kind of, you know? Yeah. But otherwise, you know, then I could just write into any video that's posted and the rights holder, if they just took it down and the actual rights holder was the person who posted it, then they would, you know, then Facebook's liable for taking down a video of somebody who legitimately posted it.

It's it's a complicated issue. Well, it's a complicated issue. And there's a lot of people that, you know, a lot of misreporting on both sides of the spectrum, et cetera, et cetera, because there's there's big money involved. There really is. So, yeah, I don't you know, there's never going to be a full automation system that works until we're all in computers, downloaded into computers anyway.

So these companies just have to bring more people on board. They have to pay more people to do that. But then profits go down, don't they? There's only so many people in the Philippines they can hire. I'm sorry. Well, yeah, because it'd be cheap, you know, real money for this, you know, have some real people.

Hey, let's get the economy going. Come on. No, not going to happen. Bad idea. OK. Yeah. I found an article on Mashable because we talk about Google Plus all the time and how terribly it's failed. They've got an article called Inside the Failure of Google Plus, a very expensive attempt to unseat Facebook.

And it's an interesting read. I recommend checking it out. I'm not going to go into too many details because we have here on the show, but definitely check it out if you want a history of how Google Plus came to be and came to not be. Yeah. And again, I'll state again that they built some amazingly great technology, some good UI that should be in place on social networks.

Oh, well. See, I was so happy. My friend Dan Berka went to Google after they hired him from Milk, like they acquired Kevin Rose's company Milk. And Dan Berka was there. And Dan is one of my favorite designers in the world. He's a super nice guy. He's Canadian, of course.

Right. And he's one of the best designers. And he was the lead designer at Dig for a long time, too. So I was really hoping that Google was going to take care of that from him. And we did get some good design, I think, out of Google Plus. And I think as far as social networks go, they don't try and curate your stream.

They do large format, beautiful images. Everything just seems to work, but just nobody showed up. Which sucks. Nobody showed up. Except for when they first launched, when we all tried to get on and we tried to get our business entities that we were all working for on and they wouldn't let us. Yeah, that was a big problem.

The whole account issue was a bad thing that they did. And yeah, anybody that needed any kind of corporate entity, like you and your bands and all that got the shaft, that really kind of screwed them, I think, from the get-go. If they would have handled that right, I think they would have been a juggernaut because Facebook has been basically phasing out anything that a company could do to get good press, get good stuff.

That was their market opportunity. And they totally screwed the pooch. And that market opportunity is still out there. Yeah, that's the thing. I know you can't take it, Elo, because it's a bit too late, but there's a huge market opportunity for some sort of ability for brands to do all this.

But again, everybody's on Facebook. You've got to get everybody onto that other place. Yeah, Facebook is just an enemy to brands at this point. And Google Plus just totally screwed that opportunity, which really kind of blows. Well, they blew it both on the launch and then just the general attitude. And I'm going to say this to anybody out there that's trying to work within the entertainment industry if you're if you're a tech company.

I don't care if you're Google and you have more gazillions of dollars than anybody in the world. You can't you can't strong arm creative persons. You can't you can't do it. You can't come in there like you're doing everyone a favor and you should be using our technology. And if you don't screw you.

No, no, no, no. Come on. That's not that's not cool. And it does not play well in the world of massive egos of rock stars and managers. No, definitely not. Absolutely not. It's just it's a shame. I mean, I've got like almost close to 11000 followers on my Google Plus page.

I post something. I get three clicks. It's like, damn. Yeah. You know, it's like the the tumbleweed start to build a Google Plus and they blow past Ello. Yeah. Or Ello. Have you heard of the matchstick? I heard something of it and I wondered, well, why would anybody want this?

Well, it was basically like kind of like a Google Chrome stick type of thing. It basically lets you throw video to your TV. It was based on the Firefox OS, which nobody ever uses. And yeah, it was going to be an H like just a little HDMI stick.

And it was kickstarted. Oh, yeah. They were looking. Jason. What? How well did that go, Jason? Well, they got four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Oh, so they got the money. Then what happened? Well, guess what? This week they posted a an update says a painful decision.

We will refund your money. And you know what the problem is? DRM. They're having a huge problem with dealing with DRM and they just can't push it through and get the development done to deal with DRM. And you know what DRM is the devil anyway, but it killed this project.

So if you if you signed up for if you're one of the seventeen thousand two hundred and eighteen backers who pledged for the matchstick, you'll get your money back. Good. OK. Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, again, this is the problem with Kickstarter. Well, no, this is just a problem with building things before they happen.

You know that that is Kickstarter. Yeah, that's my point, Jason. And the other problem is, is this it's they knew they would have to deal with DRM. They should have been able to budget accordingly for it and ask for enough money to be able to produce the product that they had promised to do.

But because you're doing this first and you don't really know how to run a business, this is what happens. Yeah. You know, it did. It is just Kickstarter in the balls again. Yeah. We really are going to have to bring back that segment because it's coming up more and more again. We had to we had to like Oasis of Calm where we didn't talk about Kickstarter much, but it's back, baby.

Yeah, it's back with a force, it seems. Oh, yeah. And Rowan, where are my cards? You know, my mindfulness cards. Bring them on. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for you, buddy. I saw this. I saw this one come through. Universal Music's anti-piracy ads reached new heights of crazy pants gore.

This was from Boing Boing. I think Shani posted it and happy birthday. Oh, actually, Shani posted it to Twitter. But Cory Doctorow wrote this. Yeah. These are some crazy ass ads from Universal Music. It's stupid. Severed body parts saying stop destroying the band you like.

Say no to music piracy. Yeah. I have three words to say to you. Universal Music. Go fuck yourself. That's about it. Look, it's a fine message to send out there.

These ads are ridiculous. It's way over the top. It's, you know, it's listen to Universal Music. You probably paid more money than you pay most of your artists for to this advertising company to make these dumb ads. We're right here. You can pay us a fraction of the cost and I'll make you better ones because these are stupid.

Yeah. Honestly, pay your artists. And, you know, this you should be reading these ads because you're the label and you're keeping all the money. Oh, I'm surprised. But damn, somebody should have done like joke ads to send it back. Stop destroying the band you like. Actually pay them. Yeah. Seriously.

Oh, man. So yesterday was a big, big anniversary. Day in the infamy. Hmm. Except it's not that day. Go ahead. Yep. No. Yeah. Yesterday was not. Yeah. Not that one. That was December. This is August. August 6th is the day that we bombed Hiroshima.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was the start of basically the nuclear age. And there were a lot of articles that came around about this. Ours technically covered it. But the one that I wanted to point out is the press release from the Truman Library that has his three page press release.

And it is an incredible read. Wow. We can't we can't like our government now can't like fart without releasing a 75 page press release. Yeah. I mean, we are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city.

We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake. We shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. That's how you make a press release. I'm sorry. That's how you do it. Yep. I agree. It's pretty fancy and pretty terrifying, really.

Well, it's chilling. It's utterly chilling. But back in the day, we're like, yeah, don't fuck with us. Nope. Don't even bother. Security? Ha! WordPress has a new update.

Yay! Security! Mm-hmm. Fortunately, now, all of my sites update automatically. Uh, yeah. So most of mine now, at least for the major things. So I didn't have too much of a problem, but let me, let me just, I had to deal with some issues this morning because one, one of my sites did have a problem because it's a site that I forgot I had because we did cover doing favors for friends a few times on the show, right?

Oh, sadly, many, many, many, many, many times. Well, there was a friend of mine that was going to pay me a couple grand to put together a site for him and, and music slash photography projects, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I, you know, did the whole dance about, okay, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.

Talked to him multiple times, said, all right, you know, let me just get going on this and you can toss me like a grand just to cover the setup and design and all the various things I'm going to start doing. So I set up all the WordPress stuff and started to get going on that. And then I just never heard from him again for a while and never got any money.

And basically I've never heard from him again about the entire project and basically forgot that I had that install there. And yeah, and that one I didn't, wasn't updating. So there was a bit of an issue this morning. So I just basically nuked the whole thing and I'm all good now. So yeah, yeah.

I have one that I have to deal with today too. Basically my mom's ex-husband, I still run his website for his band. Yes, my mother's ex-husband's band. Yeah, that's the other problem with getting roped into those favors is you're doing them forever.

Not anymore. Divorce went through, house has been sold. Guess what, buddy? Yeah, but everything seems to have updated okay. I only had one plug-in crap out on me, which was, which, you know, is the problem with the automatic updates is that plug-ins tend to die sometimes.

Right. And that ruins your day. It really does. It's like, oh man. Especially if it's something that you really need. Yeah, because then you got to go in, you got to nuke it, you got to go back in, you got to figure out what the problem is. Oh, well, I go in and I fix the plug-in. I mean, that's the problem with knowing how to code.

I go in and I have to, I literally go in and fix the plug-in and then I send the author the patch. Right. And guess, guess what the author never does. Pays, pays me for my time for fixing his goddamn plug-in. And probably never says thanks either. No, I do get a thank you. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

Yep. So I'm running Windows 10. Last week you had mentioned a couple of the crazy issues with it, including like the, the Wi-Fi sharing with, with people on your trusted network contacts, which I promptly fixed. Link in the show notes. If you are upgrading to Windows 10, this is called broken Windows theory, which is pretty funny.

But it's a basic rundown of some of the default settings that you probably do not want to have turned on. And it's a pretty quick and easy fix. Takes care of it all. You'll be done in two or three minutes and you will be much more secure. Okay, cool. So check it out and go do it if you're running Windows 10.

I'm actually, I'm actually going to install Windows 10 on Parallels this week and give it a shot. I like it, man. It's pretty damn stable. So, yeah. I mean, I, you know, with all these privacy issues that keep popping up, but at least, you know, it's a pretty open world now. Everybody's posting about this stuff pretty quickly when they find it and giving you the update.

But, you know, if, if there's ever anything big, I'll kick myself for not sticking with Windows 7 because it ran just as well. But Windows 10 is a little prettier. Okay, that's cool. Yeah. Windows 7 was solid as could be. Windows 8 was a fuster clock. That was the biggest mistake Microsoft has ever made.

So, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, something came out of Black Hat that I thought you might like. It's the Fontana Project, which basically is a, is a way to, for hackers to tell what's going on by the sounds that your printer makes. Ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung.

That kind of thing. All of that sort of stuff. It's just another, you know, brick in that wall of how we're finding out how easy it is to compromise anything on the Internet of Things. Yes. Air-gapped means nothing anymore, apparently. But now I can just listen to your printer and get a password off you.

Oh, that's nice. I appreciate that. Good times. I just, every week, it just gets worse and worse and worse. It really does. And then I just saw this off of Engadget and I had to throw it in because it's so rare that we, well, not so rare anymore, that we hear about Macs that Macs getting hacked.

So, researchers have created a worm that infects Macs silently and permanently. It's going to happen. I mean, it's a computer. They can do it. Yeah. And, you know, I always, the big Mac versus PC arguments that we used to have 10, 15 years ago, for me, it was just always, of course, there aren't that many for Mac because hardly anybody uses Mac.

That's why it's more cost effective and it makes more sense to write all your exploits for PCs. Well, now that everybody's on Mac, not the case anymore. Yeah. I don't know any, you're the, like, honestly, the only person that I have to deal with on a daily basis that uses a PC. Everybody I know uses Macs.

So, yeah, it's coming. And, you know, it's based on free BSD. Yeah. So, it's just... So, open source, which means you can hack the hell out of it. Yeah. That's the way it's going to go, sadly, sadly, sadly. Good times. Yes. New York Times, as we've talked about earlier, has a great little, kind of a poll, you know, a little interactive poll that just tells you how many times your personal information has been exposed to hackers.

Yeah. Have you signed up with this? Yeah, I did. Yeah. Signed up with this? Then, yes. Nope. Yeah. It's out there. My address has been shared, like, seven times. My credit card, three times. Yeah. It's out there. Yeah.

It's all out there. All our base are belong to us. Apparently, Russian hackers have infiltrated the Pentagon email system. Now, before everybody panics, everybody's been quick to point out that this was not the secure system. This was the one that they, I don't know, just send funny GIFs to each other on?

Yes. This is the unclassified cat GIF system. I don't know about you, but, I mean, I'd assume that they'd only have the one email address. They wouldn't have the one for secure stuff, and then this is the one for just farting around with. I mean. Yeah, especially at the Pentagon. Come on. Clinton claimed that it was too complicated to have two emails on one phone.

How many phones are these people carrying? They got four BlackBerrys and a sidekick. Awesome. And the razors for porn. Oh, the razors for porn. If we didn't already have a show title, that would be it. I'm good at those.

So, we talked about Sammy Kamar before on the show. He's a super hacker. Literally, just a flat out super hacker. He's made a new device that is just evil. It is just evil. It's called Roll Jam.

And what it is, it's a little device that's smaller than a cell phone, has an antenna and three radios. Two of the radios jam your key fob from your car and your garage door opener, and the other one records them. Perfect. So, when you press your button the first time to open your car, it records it, and then he can come back later, pick up the device, and play it back, open your car, get in it, and your garage, and off he goes.

Yep. So, yeah. Bye-bye security. And he's, you know... This isn't the internet of things. This isn't even like a Wi-Fi enabled car door opener. This is just old school. This is seriously old school. And this is an old hack, but the device he made cost 35 bucks. Awesome.

You know, it's really not that hard. Break into anybody's house now. Uh-huh. Car. Yeah. And you wonder why I have a shotgun. Yeah, well, you have to be sitting in the car or your house when somebody tries to do this. A little social engineering, Jason. Well, if they open the garage door and walk right in, I don't care about the car.

You take the car. I'm just insured. What the hell ever. But you walk in my garage, that's a different thing altogether. Yeah. And especially when you have one of those Wi-Fi enabled deadbolts on your door in your garage. Yeah. All this stuff is terrifying, and there's no way to stop it. The only one that I ever really supported was the remote that you could buy that would shut off the TVs in public places like airports.

TV be gone. Yes. I love that damn thing. I wish everybody had one. I had no issue when they just had the TV on silently, but now that they blare the sound everywhere, I want that. I got to order one of those things. One of my favorite videos, I think it was Gizmodo, where they walked around CES and turned off all the TVs and then got kicked out of CES for a couple of years.

That was awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I think it was Brian Lamb, if memory serves, but either way, it was pretty awesome. And you can still get them. So I recommend everybody get a TV be gone. I want it. Well, then buy it. You're a privileged technologist.

Go buy one. That's true. And next time, just, you know, just LAX and YYZ. Watch out. Those TVs are going down. So the EFF has launched a new online tracking blocker. Okay. Called Privacy Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Snake.

You remember the Badger video? Go with Privacy Honey Badger. Yes. The Privacy Badger 1.0. Don't give a shit. That one too. That would have been idle. So, yeah, I'm running it right now, and it's free.

And, yeah, apparently, the hack pad that we use for our show notes has a ton. Privacy Badger detected 13 trackers on this page. Oh, shit. Yeah. Is it even worth installing? Absolutely, yeah, because you can turn off different sites, and I run through it.

No, I'm an ad blocker. I'm running this privacy thing. I'm running so many plugins. It's unbelievable. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've got no room for URLs anymore. I've got so many little dingle dongles going on there. Yeah. Yet, we continue to do this, even though we say every week in this segment that it really doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, because, yeah, you can still do, you know. So I can just listen to your printer. Listen to the printer, do fingerprinting through a freaking iframe, whatever. Exactly. You can't hide, people. You cannot hide. Comment of the Week.

Big thanks to our new Patreon fans, Clarence Johnson and friend of mine, Brian Blondell. Thanks, Brian, and thank you, Clarence. Woo-hoo, thank you very much. We like your money. We appreciate it, and we love having the coffers filled back up every time we drain them for bandwidth and Jason's love of technology and microphones.

Ay, ay, ay. It's been a while, I know. I haven't bought anything with our grumpy old geek's money. Yep, it's sitting there waiting to be used. It's paying for the bandwidth and stuff like that. Yes. So a friend of the show, Lawrence Lee, writes in, question for the geeks. What is it with the ad blocker wars?

I don't buy much these days, and ads generally annoy me and display things I already purchased. So why the hell doesn't someone come up with a way for me to just tell the advertisers what I want to see? No tracking, no wasted dollars, no annoyance, only benefit all the way around.

Should I create a startup? A couple thoughts here. There is a site that basically shows you what you want to see. It's called Amazon, and then you just type in what you want to buy. There have been companies that have done this, that have tried to get off the ground as an ad agency, online ad agency, that have tried to do that.

But they require you to sign up and then fill out endless, endless forms of what you like and don't like, which no one will do, which is why all those companies have failed. And finally... Well, I mean, also, basically what he's talking about is the entire retargeting market.

Yeah. Because as soon as you go and search something on Amazon, it doesn't matter if you're buying it or not, you're going to be followed. Yeah. Everybody does retargeting now. All I'm seeing on Facebook for my ads are the things from Home Depot that I've already either bought or I'm about to buy. Yeah. There's no flag for these people to say what you've already bought or purchased.

And once you show an interest in something, they're just going to keep hammering you with it. I mean, honestly, that's all they do. And do we really want there to be a system that actually knows the things that we already own? That's a lot of information for people to be collecting about us. Not that they can't get it.

I'm going to say they already know that, dude. Privacy is dead. Get over it. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I totally agree with you. And I don't know what's going on with the ad blocker wars anymore. I have noticed that the sites have gotten a little bit more savvy about it. There's all the pop-ups now, like, say, I see you're using ad blocker plus.

If you'd prefer to support us in other methods, click here. And that's where you can donate to them. So that's pretty clever. I like that. I don't mind that at all. Yeah. No. I mean, we talked about this before. That's what they're doing now. They're like, subscriber will kill this puppy. You know?

Pretty much. That's pretty much where we're at now. Don't you like us? You seem to come here a lot. You read messages all the time. How about you pay us? Yeah. Pretty much. Mm-hmm. We got a message from Gabriel via our website. I just wanted to comment that most of my contracting gigs of the last 10 years or so have come from LinkedIn.

Some from Facebook and Twitter, too. I'm probably in the minority, but just wanted to say it works for me. Gabriel, yeah, I think you're an outlier. I'm pretty sure. And I don't even pay for it. LinkedIn app is useful when I go into a company to quickly check who I'm supposed to meet and the backgrounds of the people in the office. Also, I can't wait for you to talk about this.

And he provides a link, which is in our show notes. I mean, Jason, you're using LinkedIn for pretty much the same thing now. You're using it to look into people that you're about to talk to on the various other podcasts you're doing. Yeah. No, it's a great way to connect. But I've never gotten business out of LinkedIn.

Literally, I've never gotten business. Yeah. Yeah. I really haven't either. I mean, I've connected with old colleagues and things like that. And then that sparked, you know, reaching out to each other and catching up, which may eventually, within a year or two, lead to something that they're working on in which they want to pull me in.

That's happened. But it's never been it's never been blind finds or people just finding me ever. Yeah. No, the only the only job offers I've ever gotten on LinkedIn. And I got these when I worked at Technorati back in the day. The Yahoo homepage team wanted to hire me away from Technorati.

And I got a message from them every three days saying, please come in and interview for this position. And I'm like, I like my job. I'm happy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So about the link now, Jason, I thought you might like this because this is a serious, uh, this is serious, serious tin hat stuff.

It's called, uh, how I gave up alternating current. And it starts off as kind of like a, I wanted to get off the grid and here's a million things that I did, all of which are very interesting and all of which would take way too much time and effort for me. And, uh, I'm just not getting off the grid anyways, but I was also trying to figure out, are these like, is this like, is this a cleverly written ad for a bunch of different products, including Soylent 2.0, which is just launched.

Yeah. The Soylent thing is interesting, but yeah, this guy, he basically got off the grid and uses his solar panel to power his home. Yeah. Granted, he's an edge case. He doesn't do a whole lot. Um, the Soylent 2.0 thing, I had actually hadn't heard about Soylent 2.0 until I read this article and, and, and it's a very well read article or well written article.

And I was well read when I was done. Um, but yeah, um, he's basically just talking about his, you know, his quest to get off the grid and we're definitely going to have this in the show notes, check it out. And I'm going to try Soylent 2.0 because it sounds like they fixed a lot of stuff.

Yeah, whatever. Anyway, gross. Yeah. But the thing is like, yeah, part of the thing that really helped him do it is he's completely gotten rid of his kitchen and he's basically just having Soylent 2.0. Not only is this getting off the grid, this is getting off any chance of dating. That's the other problem I have with this.

I love to cook. I am a, I am a cooking fiend. So getting rid of my kitchen is not something I would ever want to do, you know, and I'm not going to cook on a space stove. Um, cause the, the setup for, for entertainment and, and for his computer, I mean, I could never do my job using that ever.

So, no, um, but it's still a fun read and he, I think he's, you know, it's a cool experiment, but you know what? I worked my ass off for 20, 20 some odd years so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor. I don't want to have to go backwards anymore. And I would like to have, I'd like to cook and have women over and make them a nice dinner and I'm not doing it on a space stove.

Yeah, no, I agree. It's a really interesting article. It's well thought out. He took a lot of, uh, he put a lot of time and effort into this, but, uh, you know, I'm, I bought into society. I'm invested. So I'm staying. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, it's still fun. I mean, 10 years ago I would have written this exact same article.

I know. But now I'm, I'm old and I just don't give a fuck. You've come around to my way of thinking. I'm like, let's burn some coal. Let's kill some badgers and let's have a really nice dinner. Yeah. So Flash Jervis writes, great podcast, great site, four stars for the podcast and content and an additional star for the show notes.

I'm seriously considering making it my homepage. Don't do that. Honestly, don't do that. Thank you. Thank you very much for the five stars and the, yeah, I think we're a five star content. Jeez. I know that was a little chintzy, really. I know. I think you should give us six.

I think you should go back and give us six stars. The problem is his name is Flash and we bag on Flash all the time. Flash. Last week, you introduced me to the Sennheiser CX 5.00I black in-ear canal headset.

Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? It really does. That's some branding right there. And it's funny because when I started talking about this, this Amazon same day free delivery thing is just, it's an addiction now. Every time I go, I just ordered a Audio-Technica ATR 2100 microphone this morning.

They're like, would you like it today for free? I'm like, well, of course. Yes, I would. Yeah. Why would I like it tomorrow for free when I can get it today for free? So I got these Sennheisers same day that we did the show last week and I listened to them over the weekend. And you thought I was drunk, like drunk tweeting on, or not drunk tweeting on Facebook.

That would be kind of crossing the streams, but drunk posting on Facebook about how much I love these things and how much I was enjoying music again. And I wasn't. It was actually amazing how the sound quality in those headphones, earbuds is.

It's so much better, especially, you know, like most of us, we've just been wearing our stupid Apple white headphones for years now as just like sheep and not thinking about it. And it's just, it opens up your, well, ear holes really, it really did. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you liked them. How were they on the plane? Amazing. Okay. I haven't done that yet. So I'm unbelievable on the plane. I, my bows are, I just, if anybody wants my bows, come by and pick them up. Uh, they were unbelievable. And I, I let my brother try them because he's, you know, a music snob because he plays the viola and, you know, actually conducts orchestras and stuff.

Right. And we did some tests with it now snapping my fingers and he could hear the snaps because it's not fast enough to like catch that. But I was talking to him at the same time. He's like, I can hear the snaps, but I can not hear you talking to me. Yeah. So they've got to be great for just the, the plane drone. Oh yeah.

No, they're fantastic on the plane. And I listened to music the entire time on the plane. I usually listen to audio books or podcasts and I was just so getting back into music because you can hear so much more with these. Yeah. It was, I mean, I've just had like kind of a musical renaissance since I got them.

So thank you very much for this recommendation. Oh, no problem. I also saw that a friend of the show, Sean Bonner, uh, picked him up as well. Yeah. I saw that in his newsletter. Yeah. His newsletter talking about it, but, uh, no plug for us, man. Come on. Sean, what the fuck's going on, man? Come on. Share the love. Share the love.

So I picked up that Mac book last week. Yeah. Yeah. How is it? It's going back. Okay. It, uh, sucks. It honestly sucks. The two problems with it are the processor speed is ridiculously slow. Um, I've got, uh, I use, what's it called?

I stat menus. Yeah. I can see the CPU usage, you know, and all that stuff. And basically all the time it was at 50%, no matter what I was doing. And yeah, it was terrible. Uh, it got really hot all the time.

And the pro the biggest problem that I have with it is the keyboard goes all the way to the edge. So when I pick it up, yeah. And I, uh, you said that you would be able to get over it, but I don't think I could. I didn't, I couldn't get over it. Um, the, the size of it and the aspect ratio is great.

I love that part, but it just needs those buffers on the edge. So I'm going to take it back and I'm going to see if I can, if I can social engineer my way out of the 10% restocking fee, because I have to take back the $75 adapter to the USB-C adapter and figure out if I can get my 1500 bucks back because what I'm going to just end up doing is getting an air because the airs still have everything I want.

They're the best form factor. They're a little bit heavier by like what? 0.7 pounds. Oh, you know, Hey, I work out. I can carry that. But yeah, for the bang for the buck, I think the airs are still the best way to go. Well, we'll see how much of the art of charm stuff is rubbed off of you and, uh, we'll see how charming you can be to get your, uh, not pay, not pay the restocking fee.

We'll see what happens next week. Next week. Indeed. But yeah, the sadly, uh, skip the Mac book. It's, it's really not there. I will say that the retina display on the, the Mac book is amazing. It was gorgeous, but yeah, the fact that it runs the processor so hot to push that many pixels is a real problem.

And I really don't like that force feedback kind of trackpad thing that they've come out with. It's really weird. I hate those two, but that, that's something I think I could get used to, but the, uh, the keyboard spanning the whole way, I couldn't deal breaker for me. It really is. And here's the weird thing.

If you touch the trackpad when the power is off, it's just, it doesn't do anything. You have to have it powered up to be able to click. I mean, honestly, yes, that's what you'd want, but, uh, it's weird that you have to have the power there to get that fake click. Right. So in the, yeah, all in all, it was just disappointing.

Media candy. So Dr. Dre has a new album out and I can't listen to it because Apple music will not play it. Well, uh, from what I've seen from people that have listened to it, uh, it's disappointing. So maybe it's a, maybe it's a good thing.

Okay. Yeah. It'll play, it'll buffer for 30 seconds and play three and then it'll buffer for 30 seconds and play three. No, that's not infuriating at all. No, no. That, well, Hey, maybe, maybe it's, maybe that's actually the way he did it. Maybe it's super experimental. Maybe he had Skrillex as a co-producer.

Yeah, it could be. But yeah, so far Apple music has been nothing but a disappointment. I can't find my way around it. Yeah. Granted the catalog is massive, but if you can't find it and play it, what's the point? I agree. And I wasn't even going to mention Apple music, uh, this week because I have no updates because it's the same situation for me.

However, however, uh, uh, OS nine is coming in September and word is there is a complete and utter redesign and, and they basically have redone the entire thing. I don't think it's going to solve my problem of the large library because I just think that that's, that's way too much for them to fix.

But apparently the whole UI is getting an overhaul. Oh, thank Jesus. You know, Tresner's hard at work. Yeah. Tresner's out there and he's pushing pixels. Yep. Yep. Just sitting around with his Photoshop. He's got his flow charts and his Gantt charts and he's, he's pushing them all.

Yeah. Well, uh, if you want to listen to something really cool and you don't have to go through Apple music to do it, uh, I haven't really listened to mashups in ages, but a friend of mine posted this on our, on our Facebook and it's amazing. It's the cure versus the Commodores easy heaven, uh, by brat.

And it's frigging weird, but it's, it's just ridiculous how well they fit together and how like if Robert Smith had been in, you know, born in the sixties in Motown, maybe he would have written this version of this song. Yeah.

Yeah. I listened to it. I just don't like that Commodore song. That's the problem, you know? But yeah, when you go with a mashups and stuff, there was, oh man, there's some really good ones. There's a Bjork and the cure. I forget who did that one. That was my favorite. I was super into mashups about three or four years ago and I have like a playlist of just so many amazing ones, but I haven't kept up with it just because there's so many all the time.

So yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, if you like the Commodores and the cure, go for it. And this is making the rounds. I saw it on boing boing this morning. So it's, uh, it's, it's getting popular. It's gone viral. Well, uh, speaking of, I, speaking of things that have gotten popular, Wayward Pines, I finished it on the plane.

Actually, I finished it in like a day and a half on my trip to Chicago. Right. Uh, Shama Lama Ding Dong has redeemed himself. Really? I loved it. I freaking loved it. So it's Shama Lama Ding Dong. So until we get to the end, which will probably suck and ruin the whole show.

Nope. Won't know. Did not. Absolutely did not. It's completely done. The show is over. Yeah. It's a 10 episode miniseries. Oh, okay. All right. And it's based on somebody else's writing. He didn't write it. It's based on a book series called Wayward Pines. Oh, thank God. Yeah. So, you know, there was a lot out of his hands.

I think he only directed one of them. Okay. But for the, for the most part, I really, really enjoyed this whole thing because what it does, it moves along so fast. You think it's one thing and then next episode, it's a completely different thing. Then it's a completely different thing. And then it's just, oh my God, that's crazy.

Yeah. No, I don't want to say anything about it because it's going to ruin it if I do. But I seriously recommend checking it out. You can get it on Amazon. You can get the individual episodes. I'm sure that's somewhere in Sweden. But yeah, for the most part, I seriously recommend checking it out.

It was, this was the most fun I've had for a miniseries in a long time. Uh, Twin Peaks-esque is what I hear. No, that's the thing. It, I mean, the locale looks like Twin Peaks. That's why people are comparing it. But it is nothing like Twin Peaks at all.

I will have to give it a shot since you seem very, very pleased with it. Yeah. This is way more sci-fi than it is a murder mystery. Okay. It's, it's total sci-fi. Super happy about that. Then I will definitely check it out. One thing I will not be checking out, Jason. Uh, why are we now rebooting movies that nobody even liked the first time around?

Are you talking about Jumanji? Jumanji is getting a reboot. Yeah. Why? Why? Oh yeah, that's right. We have no more creative ideas anymore. You know, see, here's the thing about Jumanji. I thought it had potential and I thought Robin Williams ruined it. Well, now you don't have to worry about him being in the reboot.

No, somebody else will ruin it for me. Exactly. Ooh, fancy! Fancy! Ooh, fancy! All right. If you need some mind effery this week, I've got two things that'll just fit the bill for you.

I watched a TED Talk with Donald Hoffman, Do We See Reality As It Is?, which was super interesting and, you know, it goes well beyond the stone, what if the color blue to me isn't the same as the color blue to you? Why does everything taste like chicken, dude? Exactly.

It goes well further in depth than that, even though it's only, it's a 21 minute thing, it's super quick, but, you know, he goes into his research and has some really interesting anecdotes. I highly recommend listening to it or watching it. I would say watch it because it is a video. Yes, and he does have some charts and graphs and imagery.

He has PowerPoint. He put time into his PowerPoint, so, you know, give him some love for that. Yeah, watch it, it's super good. And the other thing that came out, and I don't know what's really going on with this, but in theory, scientists have confirmed the impossible EM drive propulsion, electromagnetic propulsion, which will basically get us up to super fast speeds out in space without using a ton of power.

Okay. Now, I don't know. I found this on Hacked. I haven't exactly seen it in the science journals yet, and I have, you know, I'm desperately hoping this isn't going to be one of those cold fusion things, but it may well be. But you never know, because they were German scientists. Okay, fine.

We are very meticulous. We are very meticulous, and we will go very fast. Yes. So, that would be super cool. I mean, we're talking, you know, warp drive here, basically. Yeah, there's graphs and stuff. We'll see. Good. Yeah. Well, build it and throw it up, throw it up in space and see how fast it goes.

I mean, that's pretty much what we got to do. Wired notes that the EM drive could get to Pluto in less than 18 months. Right. That's pretty awesome.

Now, I generally don't go in for these kind of crazy web video things that the kids are doing and Facebook is scamming us on,

but this week I found one from DC Shoes from Robbie Madison, where he rode a motorcycle and surfed. Yeah. I thought this was pretty damn cool. I saw three seconds of this video, which counted as a view as I scrolled through my Facebook feed.

You didn't watch the whole video? No, I'm not interested. Oh, my God. It's so cool. It is so cool. I love when, you know, people try and ride motorcycles on water, and I think it's neat. But this guy took it to a next level and is basically out in Hawaii surfing with a motorcycle.

It is well worth the four minutes. And then there's a Wired article that follows it up. It's like, here's how this nut surfed on a motorcycle. Yeah. The second line in the first quote, we sank the motorcycle over a hundred times. Right. But that was in testing, not when they filmed it.

They didn't sink a single motorcycle while they were filming it. Right. So, yes, there was a lot of testing that went into building this thing, but it's cool. I'm sorry. I just think it's cool. Okay. I will watch it. It is neat. Yeah. These DC videos, like when the guy did the drifting in San Francisco and they, like, shut down half of San Francisco and he did that.

Like, DC has great videos like this. And this one is, it's up there. It really is. So, my second one is, I love the big picture. The Boston Globe has always had a great photography section called the big picture. And this week, they have a great photo essay on the monsoons in India and Pakistan and Myanmar and all that.

And these pictures are just amazing. So, I just want everybody to check them out because it's like, oh, if you think you're having a bad day, guess what? Yeah, I mean, you know, we look at when disasters happen here and we have some semblance of infrastructure and support and when they happen in places where you do not, that is terrifying.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, we can just go and, you know, mob a Walmart, but these people just have nothing but mud and water and misery. So, check it out. Super depressing. Thanks, Jason. You're welcome. I'm not sure how much we should talk about this because a friend of the show and esteemed Dr. David Teeter basically told us, do not discuss this.

Oh, he did? He did. And he was very emphatic about it. I didn't. I missed. I missed this. We should not talk about this. Why? Are we going to break space time? Apparently, we might rip a hole in the fabric of space time. Do you remember the children's books, the Berenstain Bears?

Yes, I do. Unfortunately, they are the Berenstein Bears. They're Stain. Stain. Now, link in the show notes. And this has been going around on the net for a while. It's a bit of a... Years. For years. And I have to admit, I mean, I remember them being Berenstain with an E, not an A.

I don't remember that. Nobody on my Facebook feed remembers it. My sister doesn't remember it. My mom doesn't remember it. No one remembers the A. And then it gets really tin-hattied and crazy. And, you know, the reality is we expect it to be spelled with an E because that's how it should be spelled.

And it was probably always A. It probably always was. You want to go down the wormhole. It is a very, very fun wormhole to go down. It is. And it is mind-bending. And I did not sleep well that night because, you know what? I remember the E, too. And I don't know anybody that remembers the A.

Yes. And I love the Reddit thread that says there's the glitch in the Matrix and it links to an image there where he's captured something with the E, except the image is broken. Yeah. Because it's been taken down through the fabric of space-time. Or by Teeter. Maybe Teeter's behind it all.

Oh, could be. He is an evil genius. Maybe his name is spelled T-E-T-A-R. And we just don't know. Closing shout-outs! I'd like to give a final shout-out this week to Resistance Pro Wrestling. We sweated our balls off last week for an amazing show and had a great time.

So, if you go to punkvinyl.com, you can see my photos because I was taking over as the photographer this week. And it was a ton of fun, as always. Cool. Yeah, yeah. It was a lot of hard work. It was a very long day and a lot of hard work. And it was really hot in Chicago.

You really pack your Chicago trips full, man. Oh, yeah. And then we had a barbecue with my dad the next day who had four grills lined up to feed everybody. That was impressive. That was very impressive. And, of course, a flash thunderstorm in the middle of the barbecue because it's Chicago and we cannot have nice things in Chicago.

No. I want to do another shout-out to Soy Luna, the Mexican restaurant here in Tarzana, California, where I went to for my birthday. They heard me just kind of mention that it was my birthday. I'm like, I'm going to have the refried beans because it's my birthday. And then they came over and they put a sombrero on me, sang to me, gave me some dessert, and took a picture.

It was kind of silly. But that's on. As we mentioned at the beginning of the show, it's on the Instagram. But if you're ever out here, it is my favorite Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. Really? It's a little bit more upper-classy, you know? The burritos will cost you about $13, but, man, they're good.

Awesome. Highly recommended. Very cool. And I'm going to give a shout-out to Smoke's Poutinerie. If you are not familiar with poutine, if you're not Canadian, you probably aren't. It is deliciousness in a bowl. It's basically French fries with gravy and cheese curd.

And there has been nowhere to get any poutine in L.A. forever, but now there is. One of the best places in Toronto has now, and everywhere else in Canada really, has opened up in Hollywood, Smoke's Poutinerie. And it is friggin' delicious, and they have some crazy-ass options.

I mean, this is, you know, you can have bacon put on top of it. You can have all kinds of sausage, whatever. This stuff is delicious, especially if you're hungover. So thanks for coming to L.A., guys. Oh, my God. They're on the mighty Cahuenga. Oh, they're right by Stout, too, in Umami.

Oh, it's right by my old office at the CNN building. I am going. Yes. Immediately. You must try it, dude. It's so delicious. I love poutine. I mean, that's one of the things that the Canadians have done right, is poutine. Yeah, so that and their health care system. Okay, that, too. Oh, and their general outlook on people and being nice to everybody.

Yeah, like sending out that robot that got killed by us. Oh, Christ. I hope they don't, like, spike our poutine just to get back at us. Oh, it's war. So thanks for listening. I am Jason DeFillippo, and you can find out more about me at jpd.me.

And I'm Brian Schilmeister, and you can follow me on Twitter at Slenderfungus. Until next time. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate and still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show.

Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Tidal, and probably Apple Music. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stochanski. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash HouseOfAndy, and he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy.

Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 122. King of the Impossible He's for every one of us He's for every one of us He's slaving a mighty hand Every man, every woman, every child He's a mighty Flash

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