123: ABC, As Easy as Episode 123

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 August 14th, 2015. I am Jason DeFilippo.

And I am Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? I am hot and sweaty because it is really hot here in Southern California. It is extremely hot. It's going to be incredibly hot this whole weekend. And I just saw in the LA Times that we are about to get the strongest El Nino winter we've ever had, which means lots and lots of rain, which is, of course, a good thing.

But as per usual in LA news, not enough and way too much at once. So it's going to be really, really bad. Of course. Nothing ever goes well here. No, no, no. It's just, well, I don't even want to get into weatherpocalypse of Southern California.

People here are just silly. I'm 100% on board with crazy weather predictions and doom and gloom being broadcast to the rest of the nation so no more people move here. Down with it 100%. Well, that's totally fine. And, you know, PCH is going to collapse 700 or 800 times over the course of the winter.

But let everybody, yeah, hopefully. Let's trap everybody in Malibu that lives there. I really don't care if Courtney Love can come out of Malibu or not. I'm okay with that. Okay. Well, that just means I can't come to Santa Monica either. No, you just have to go over the 405. No, that means I can't come to Santa Monica either.

That's true. Anything to avoid the 405, as we all know here. Yeah. Okay. This is turning into a traffic and weather podcast. We need to move along. It's LA. It's how we start things. All right. Let's talk. Let's talk about the crappy music industry a little bit. Go for it. Rock and roll.

Rock and roll. The United Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada has started an aggressive legal campaign, basically suing all the major labels over streaming revenue, which does need to happen. We all agree with that. We've talked about it a lot here. We are always excited when anybody brings any transparency into what they're actually making, which is next to nothing.

So a big lawsuit. Let's see what happens. Well, it's nice to see them suing somebody besides the fans. Yeah. You know, this is, you know, Lars Ulrich, if you're listening, and I know you're not, this is what you should have done the first time around. So sue Napster, not the fans.

There you go. But you fucked it up and the music industry is dead. And thank you. So is my career. Awesome. Well, I didn't know you had the big music career, but I see your point as the tertiary side business of providing services to the music industry.

As almost any industry does. You know, if there are tertiary industries that are around it, I am one of them. There are many, many people in L.A. in many different capacities that have all made their livings over the years through the music industry. And all of us are struggling as much as the millionaire rock stars are. Title.

Moving on. Moving on. I never really followed too much what was going on with Google and YouTube. And because it just seemed like the story was changing every couple of weeks about what they were going to do about the music industry. First, it was going to be they're going to launch their own streaming service.

And then it was going to be, well, we're just going to make people put make sure that everything on YouTube is monetized in some way, shape or form. And along the way, somewhere there was something called Music Key, which is what people were going to sign up to if you were not connected to a major label or whatever. And you wanted to put your stuff up and ads would be put in and you would get revenue share and it would all be great.

And they did draconian methods because that's what Google does in terms of forcing people into sign up with this sort of thing. And but it's going to be all really good for you, except for the fact that it never really seemed to happen. Yeah. This was the whole Zoe Keating thing that was going around that we talked about, right? Yep.

Yep. And it's just an update on that because it still hasn't happened and it doesn't look like it's ever going to. Okay, so that was the old tempest in a teapot. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So there you go. So Google and YouTube have not figured out what they're going to do with their music industry thing at all.

But, you know, maybe MIA will become ABC or XYZ. Okay. See if that might solve the problem. So there was an iOS update this week, 8.4.1, and I'm happy to announce that it did not re-enable Bluetooth on my phone. I did it last night and I actually thought of it at the moment and I noticed as well that it did not re-enable Bluetooth.

In fact, I can't really seem to tell what it did at all. Well, it didn't fix Apple Music. Ah, but we knew that they've already said that's not going to be until the 9.0 update. Okay. Well, I mean, I got it to play a little bit. It was a little bit better, but not much. Really? I haven't tried it yet.

I'll have to try it out today to see if it works. I know it's not going to. And I'm fairly confident that even the 9.0 update isn't going to solve my particular issue with Apple Music. No, yours is not going to fix that. That's a completely different issue. I just wanted to actually play a song without stopping.

That's funny, Jason. In the news. Brian, do you have a SodaStream? I do not. I really don't drink Soda unless I'm out and about. Occasionally with a double-double.

That's about it. Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, they're nice to just make your own carbonated water, you know? Oh, right. Right. You know, gin and tonics. There you go. Yeah. Well, that's good for that. The thing about it is, though, it's kind of like when people get their own personal, like, deep fryers.

You just kind of want to start carbonating everything. Yes, I remember a particular barbecue with the Goo Goo Dolls that involved renting a deep fryer because they are from Buffalo and John Resnick was the king and is the king of making wings. And that party got a little out of hand and we might have deep fried a boot.

Well, I'm going to tell people right now, never try and carbonate wine. That sounds disgusting anyways. What are you, coming at Adam Carolla? We're going to have grumpy old geek-a-ria? I was just trying to, you know, figure out if it was going to be something cool or not, you know, because it's nice and refreshing.

We were talking about the heat before. Let me just make sangria. It's super easy and it's delicious. Let me just, for both you, Jason, and the kids listening, do not experiment when drunk. No, no, definitely not. Just saying. It never works out well.

Speaking of experimenting when drunk, what do you think is going on with Google? Yeah, I think they're breaking things up because they need to really kind of protect their little fealties now. You know, there's some talk about how the EU problem was coming into this.

But also it's about, I saw one that was like the Game of Thrones-ification of Google. Like instead of having one big, you know, one big empire, they're breaking it apart into fealties. Then you can have little kings for each one instead of just one big CEO.

You can have lots of little CEOs. If I had time on my hands, I'd be doing a Game of Thrones Google intro with the music and everything and then little different things popping up. Search engine, da-da-da-da, here's our other shit. Yep, pretty much. But I don't have that kind of time, so there you go. Yeah, the European Union thing, just quickly mentioning that, they've got an extra two weeks to respond to charges.

It's nice to be a big company because you get extra time. Can you imagine if, have you ever gotten an extra two weeks to deal with a traffic ticket? Oh, yeah, yeah, but it cost me $300, $300 or $400 more. That's true, that's true. The Google thing, I don't know, I mean, the name is silly.

I did like the press release that had the, you know, the tip of the hat to Silicon Valley. That was very funny. What else? It makes sense for them. I mean, we know what management gets like even if you get, you know, once you get up, anytime you get above like three people, things start to fall apart. And when you have so many different divisions, none of them are working together, it makes sense for them to break it up a lot.

It does, this is the first time I wish I had Google stock because, or Alphabet stock as it is, because I have a feeling they're going to spin off a lot of really, really interesting things that are going to be really cool and make them an awful lot of money. They have so much money and so many, such a great brain trust.

This is, I see a lot coming out of this, which is cool, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I see it as the same exact thing, but just a, it's still Google, you know. Granted, they call themselves Alphabet now, but it's still Google with just more managers. Yeah, more management, but hopefully that will make things run a little bit smoother.

One of the things that they apparently launched today, you remember when Google wanted to launch a little, basically air balloons to give internet everywhere to the world? Yeah, it's Project Loon. Yeah, well, now they're going to launch genetically modified mosquitoes everywhere to fight disease. What could go wrong with that? I don't know what could possibly go wrong with that, but it is one of the, what they're calling, I hate, I hate the way this terminology happens.

It's a moonshot project. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, we have nothing else to worry about in the world at the moment. Yeah, honestly. But, yeah, they're trying to figure out ways to get rid of, you know, malaria and dengue fever. But I thought this story was kind of, you know, a little early since they haven't actually hired any scientists yet.

They got the guy that, they got the guy that wrote Chrome on the project. I'm like, all right, buddy. Yeah. You go, girl. I don't, I don't really know how that'll translate to actually genetically modifying mosquitoes, but, hey, we'll see what happens. Yeah, like I said, I think that was a little too early on that story.

But, so, remember a little site called Friendster? Yeah, that was the one that I signed up. I kind of did a late LO on that. I got into it way too late, and it was already kind of dead. And I was like, oh, this is kind of lame. There's no future in this kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, long story's on Friendster. But basically what happened is Facebook bought all their patents, and somebody kind of has been going through the Facebook patent portfolio and found one that they got from them that is tied to your friend's credit score may affect your ability to get a loan.

Right. I had heard about this a while ago, too. And social sciences are, there's some truth to that. There's some not. Let's be honest. You know, I've got a bunch of loser friends, but I've also got a bunch of incredibly successful friends. So how are you going to factor that in into what my credit score should be?

And is anybody actually doing this right now? No. Is it just a patent? Yes. Do you know what companies like that do? They hire a shit ton of lawyers to go through and figure out every possible patent they could ever possibly have on anything so they can be patent trolls later on, potentially. Oh, absolutely.

But it's still, it's an interesting thought experiment. It's not only is it an interesting thought experiment. I mean, I can, there will be things like this unrolling in the near future. You've got, I mean, the insurance industry in particular and credit industries and things like that. They're multi-billion dollar industries. And if they can find anything that gives them a leg up or a slightly better bet on people, they're going to use it.

Oh, definitely. And I mean, if you go back to the, you know, the social science part where you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, then they could have a scientific, you know, stand, a leg to stand on with that. But yeah, yeah. I mean, they definitely could. I mean, I'd like to, we do have open transparency laws about credit here.

So I'd love to see the reports that this will generate. Credit rating went down because you're friends with this guy. Unfriend. Yeah, really? You get, you get, you get like notifications. You might want to unfriend Joe today because he just lost his house.

Joe lost his job, lost his house, is on a drinking spree. And he started listening to country music. Great. Doesn't bode well for the dog. No, it does not. So, do you ever read the site Priceonomics? Uh, no, no, I do not.

Me neither. But somebody linked to it, so I had two as well. Okay. Uh, this is the San Francisco Rent Explosion, round three. Right. AKA, holy crap, it's expensive. Right. Uh, this is a post that just has the latest, uh, housing prices and how much it keeps going up to have just an average little place in San Francisco.

Yeah, that's pretty expensive, but, uh, listen up world, uh, where, where are the other big booms are? Obviously we've got Silicon beach here in, in Venice slash Santa Monica, where rents are at this level, if not already higher, because we're right here by a beach. Uh, what Charlotte, North Carolina is a big tech area right now.

Austin is a big tech area. Uh, your rents are just going to go through the roof. This is happening anywhere any of these companies are settling into. Yep. They really just need to like, kind of, I think everybody should like all tech companies should just move to Boise, Idaho. And then like Idaho can be like the next big thing.

Then we can have our, our space back. Isn't it, isn't Idaho, doesn't Boise now, it's not, is it Boise where Intel, Intel has a gigantic factory? I can't remember. So they've already got tech there too, but yeah, I mean, we're, we've been talking about, uh, the whole, income thing for a long time.

And this is just, it's getting ridiculous. Yeah. If you live a normal life and if you have a normal kind of job, you can't even afford to live in these cities anymore. It's ridiculous. Oh yeah. Especially San Francisco. I mean, I mean, honestly, you're talking about quote unquote Silicon beach, which I still think is the worst title ever.

Um, uh, it has never been cheap to live down there in Santa Monica, Venice. I mean, it's never been cheap there. And that just, it just exacerbates the problem. It's never been cheap, but it's exploded in the last year or two. I mean, uh, that one of the reasons I ended up buying and thank God I did because it was right at the right time was I looked around and I saw the rents just starting to rise beyond my ability to pay them.

But there, I mean, the place that I'm living in now, the rent right now would be probably one and a half times what my mortgage is. So I just got in at the exact right time. It has exploded here. Yes. Venice has never been particularly cheap. Santa Monica has never been particularly cheap, but it's gotten, since Twitter moved in and Snapchat and all those guys came here, it's gotten ridiculous.

So we're, we're the San Francisco rent explosion just as easily applies to our area right here. That's why I live in the Valley. Yes. Well, good times, uh, along this realm of, of just, uh, people just doing massive cash grabs.

Sesame street is moving to HBO. Yeah, that's kind of silly. This is a big deal. Uh, and, and a lot of people are starting to write about it because it's not that it's going away completely from PBS. It's just, it'll be nine months behind. So HBO basically gets a nine month window to air Sesame streets and then they will air again on PBS as well.

Now the whole point of Sesame street and PBS was to provide this kind of educational entertainment for children to people who did not have money to low income people. Uh, you know, people who can't afford HBO go on an iPad to watch it on. I was going to say, let's take, let's take the, uh, you know, the stuff for the po folk and put it behind a paywall.

That's exactly what they're doing. And, you know, I'm glad that there's still this nine month thing. And to be honest, let's, you know, Sesame street, nine months behind. What's the big deal. It's not like there's a story arc everybody's following. You're still just singing songs about ABCs. So he is for cookie. So the nine month or the nine month gap isn't that big of a deal, but it's a horrible precedent.

And the question that I really have about this is, is they basically said that, you know, due to declining DVD sales and things like that, they had to make this deal because HBO was giving them the bags of the money. Uh, I don't know about you, but, uh, do you, do you have a lot of friends that have kids, Jason?

Uh, fortunately, no. Okay. Well, if you did, every time you went to any of their houses, you would see 7,000 toys from Sesame street. So I find it hard to believe that they're not making a shit ton of money. Well, it could, they, they could have gotten built out of their licensing rights a long time ago.

You don't know about that, but that's very true. That is true. But, uh, assuming that they have the licensing rights to all their stuff, um, I don't see the reason that there's the big cash grab. In fact, it's rather depressing. Yeah. Uh, but I mean, okay. You know better than I do because you have friends with kids.

I didn't even know Sesame street was still a thing. Oh, Elmo's huge, man. Oh, I thought Elmo went the way of the dodo after the, uh, the little kid touching incident from the guy who was the Elmo puppeteer. Uh, they seem to seem to weather that storm as it were, but, uh, yeah, I mean, they're, they're cookie monster, every, all that's big bird, all that stuff.

It's everywhere. I mean, obviously there are a lot of other toys these days, but I don't see any issues just judging from my, my friends with kids' houses. They've, they've all got a ton of stuff. You know, Google wants to spend all this money on mosquitoes. Maybe they should just spend it on Sesame street. Uh, maybe, you know, or Netflix, but then same problem.

Google can put it up for free. That's what I'm saying. Put it on YouTube for free by Sesame street and put it on YouTube for free forever. That sounds like a lovely plan. Somebody get on that. I mean, Hey, they're the alphabet company right now. Sesame street can write the new Google theme song.

Exactly. I, that's what I'm telling you, man. Synergy, man. Disruption. That's right. Uh, speaking of disruption, we are unbelievably heading. Well, not just heading. We're, we're smack dab into election season already, even though it's quite a long way to go.

Over a year away. Yeah, but we're, we're full on in and I'm not going to get too much into it. There's no point in it, but there have been a number of articles coming out about how the voters are angry and that's why Donald Trump is doing so well because people are so pissed off. And this has been every four years, right?

Jason, everybody was angry four years ago. Everybody was angry four years before that. Everybody was angry four years before that. And none of us ever do anything. And it's always business as usual. Correct. Exactly. All right. So yeah, that rage against the machine article that's in our show notes is a load of crap. Yeah. It's, it's, this has all happened before.

It will all happen again. Actually, I, what I've just realized why I put this in there. The, the tagline voters are fed up with American politics, but are they willing to do anything about it? Question. It's cancer, Jason. Nope. Exactly. Now there is one thing that I am highly intrigued by.

I just heard about this yesterday and this could be something that we could do about it. Lawrence Lessig. Lessig. We know him quite well. We've read some of his stuff we've talked about before on the show. I've been to his house. I've pooped in his toilet. Well, he is decided he's going to run for president if he receives $1 million in donations by Labor Day.

Not going to happen. Well, you have, you heard what his promise is. Yes. I've heard what his promise is. He's going to get in there and he's going to sign something into law and then quit. He will, if he wins, he will pass one law and then he will resign. And I am going to support him. I am going to put my money where my mouth is and go ahead and dedicate some hard-earned funds to his campaign.

If he becomes president, he will sign the Cynicism Equality Act, which basically will get rid of the entire rigged system and money and politics. Did you say cynicism? System. The rigged system. Oh, no, no, no. I thought you said the Cynicism Equality Act. And I'm like, oh, perfect.

I'm a cynic. That actually might have been a Freudian slip if I did say that. So I'd like to believe that this would happen and be cool, but you're right. It's not going to happen. But I say we support him. Toss a couple bucks his way if you can afford it because we've kicked around the whole idea of trying to bring some sort of parity and fairness to politics for ages and especially with the economic side of it.

And it's never happened. This would be a game changer. This would change the world. Here's the deal. He tried to do this already. Remember with his last fundraising campaign where he was going to basically start his own super pack? Yeah, yeah. I do remember that. Yeah, I gave him a bunch of money for that and it failed miserably.

And it basically just disappeared. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was fine. I'm just saying he's got a track record of raising some money and then having it fall on its face. So he's like Kickstarter. Well, yes. You finally see my point.

Yes. Well, you know, you've ponied up for a few Kickstarters. This will be my version. Oh, by the way, a little follow up on that Kickstarter I did last time. Or no, it wasn't even a Kickstarter. It was the Teespring one with the Discworld shirt. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, my God. What a waste of money that was. Is it even worse quality than the one we got from?

Here's the deal. The graphics are the problem. The T-shirt's just a regular Hanes, you know, tagless beefy tee. Mm-hmm. Or medium tee. It's not even that beefy. But the only person that I can make out on the shirt is the turtle because it's the biggest thing on there.

The graphics are so terrible on it. So if anybody bought that because we talked about it on the show, I apologize profusely. It sucks. That is very funny. Again, it's very much like a Kickstarter situation. If you've never designed a T-shirt before, there are things that you need to know about the way things print.

Yeah, yeah. Your DPI is much lower on a T-shirt than it is on a retina screen. Yes. Having done merchandise for many, many years for bands, there is a learning curve. You cannot just sign up with a Cafe Spring or Cafe Press or whatever they were called and do a really intricate, cool design and hope that it's going to work out because it's not.

Absolutely. So a new study out. Actually, not that new. It came out in January, but it's being written about now. Study credits Uber with decline in California drunk driving deaths. Well, that's kind of a no-brainer. This is the city and, well, for the most part, most of the state actually, except for San Francisco, that has zero, zero public transportation.

Yeah, yeah. You know what else would have done a really good job of stopping drunk driving deaths here in Los Angeles? Any kind of public transportation. Well, you know, you do have the subway now. Not to where I am yet. They haven't finished that, so.

There's still buses. You can still take the bus. Have you been on a bus in LA? I'd rather drive drunk. I used to take the bus two hours each way to work every day. So, yes, I have been on the buses. But what they're talking about is Uber X, not Uber Black, because Uber Black is still rich people that would just, you know, call their service and come pick me up.

I've had a cocktail. Exactly. But Uber X is cheap for the, you know, for the everyman like us. No, no. I mean, it makes total sense. And I actually had a friend of, a friend of mine was in town last weekend and we wanted to go see, she wanted to go see Wilco and I wanted to go with her and we both wanted to drink and we took an Uber.

There you have it. So, yeah. I mean, it makes total sense. Obviously, you know, I'm very, very careful with this sort of stuff and I don't drive when I'm drunk anyway, so I've always got a wife who can be a designated driver or we pick and it's my turn to drive.

But this makes total sense. Again, there is little to no public transportation here. The cab systems, there were never cabs around before. Cabs have definitely stepped up their game here in LA. I've noticed that. I see a lot of cabs at a lot of places now, which you never used to do. And they're obviously, you know, Uber forced them to step up their game a little bit.

And this is a no-brainer. Of course, this has had this effect, but so would any other form of public transportation. The one company that I love, but the fact is, you know, LA just geographically doesn't work out this way, was the company that would show up, they would drive to you wherever you were, they would leave you, they would drive your car home and then come back and pick you up or something like that.

It was a really cool service, but it doesn't make sense because it was too expensive and it's too, we're too geographically spread out. It's, you know, it gets to the point where like, oh great, you're going to drive me home from where? The Valley, right? Yeah, no, there were a lot of services like that. I actually knew a guy that was working for a couple of them and one guy started one because it's really easy to start, but the liability in the insurance is what killed all of them.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, luckily Uber doesn't have to deal with that too much. Interesting. Also, because a lot of people were stealing the cars. Oopsies. Yeah. Basically, you know, they'd be like, okay, well, he's going to drive your car and, you know, you're going to get in my car and you're going to tell me where to go because I've got the GPS and all that stuff.

And then basically they'd get to the guy's house, they'd get out and then they'd both peel off and take away, you know, just like, thanks for the car, dude. Awesome. Security. Security. Ha! Found a good article on Salon that kind of runs over, well, actually technically, and we've had this problem many times.

It was originally on Alternet, but Salon's attribution and ability to find anything on Alternet is next to impossible. Utterly impossible. Yeah. So I could not track down the original link for this, but I will give the author's name Glenis Sweeney. That kind of runs over a lot of the stuff that we talk about in this segment all the time and debunks quite a bit of it because people do go a little bit crazy.

So all the problems that we've had about smart TVs, remember about a year ago, it was, oh, it's listening to your TV and it's sending everything back and you're going to die. Well, you can just turn it off and it's pretty simple. Smartphones, same sort of thing. There was a charging strip and plugging it in, never plug your phone into a public place.

They can steal all your information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Goes through and debunks a ton of that stuff. Same thing with smart meters. So this is actually a positive article in our security segment for once that says that a lot of the things that we've been told to worry about are complete and utter bullshit. OK, do that very often.

So I thought we'd throw one good one in. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, it's from Alternet and Salon, which aren't exactly what I would call, you know, like deep diving technology sites. So I'll take it with a grain of salt and make it could be making people happier that these kind of articles are out there.

But I swear that they're now ruin it, Jason. I am going to shit all over it. That's what I'm going to do because, yeah, you're just not safe. And you know that I know. I know, too. But I just wanted to feel good segment for once. OK, a little warm and fuzzy in the middle of our cold security. Have you been stealing John McAfee's Xanax?

I wish. Sterling Backcheck. Have you heard of them before? I have. Yeah, they're they basically do background checks and screens. And I've I've I've gone through them. So, yeah. So they have a lot of your super personal information.

Yes, they do. Because the yeah, the form that you fill out when you are getting a job that requires a background screen is a little bit daunting. I had to do that at BLT, that agency I worked at in Hollywood, because we worked with studios. Yeah, exactly. And I've had to do that as well because I've worked with, you know, music labels and things of that sort.

So the bigger ones. So, yeah, I've gone through not this particular company, but I've done background checks before. And yeah, that the information, the information that they like to collect is a very, very personal. And they put it on a laptop that is unencrypted, leave it in a car and it gets stolen.

Awesome. How many times does this have to happen before people just go? Yeah, enable file vault, dude. Enable vault or just build in procedures where this information is not. Why is it on a laptop out of a building? Exactly.

This makes no sense. And this is why security will never matter. No matter what we do, there's still the problem with the idiot that you hired. Yes, the meat is always the problem. Yes. Or in the meathead. It does look like it's only it's 6,400 people in Georgia and 86 Salvation Army applicants.

I didn't realize that you would have to have a background check to work at the Salvation Army. 6,400 and 86 Salvation Army. Where's, why does it say about 100,000 then? That's a good question. Yeah. We're missing quite a lot regarding, well, I guess maybe they don't know who the rest of the people were or they're not releasing that because it's sensitives.

Oh, it could be. Yes. It's your sensitivicals. Yes. Yeah, this is just stupid. This is, anybody in charge of this sort of information should not, this should never be out there in the wild in this form. An unencrypted laptop, on a laptop to begin with, and then it's unencrypted.

Idiots. Yeah, even my, all my crap's encrypted and I'm, you know, I don't have anything worth stealing. I know, all my stuff is encrypted and what are you going to get? Some, some, some released publicity photos of a bunch of bands? Woohoo! Yeehaw.

So we talked about that, that really bad OS X vulnerability a couple of weeks ago that, you know, really bad one. It was like the D Y L D print. I think that was it, something like that. Finally, finally, Apple has released a fix.

So on 10.10.5, which is out now, I recommend everybody go get it immediately if you are running Yosemite. I did it this morning. Yeah. Which is partially why I was a little bit late. And it works fine. I had no, I had no issues. Everybody I know that's updated has had no issues with it.

And you also get a shiny new iTunes. That still doesn't work. Yeah. It's still a piece of shit. You're now safe to use your piece of shit music software. Thank you, Apple. Thank you so much for allowing me to be safe to not listen to music. Oh God.

I, you know, I was, I was playing with it a little bit last night and I did get a few songs to play. I still haven't gotten, oh, nevermind. Yeah. It just doesn't work. Who cares? So remember when the CIA basically snooped on a Senate?

Yeah. Yeah. They were snooping on the Senate, they were snooping on the Senate intelligence committee on the, the torture reports. Yeah. I mean, personally, I think they're doing it every day. So it's not like cast your mind back. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Remember the time they got caught.

Yes. There we go. That's the correct way to phrase it. Exactly. Uh, well, apparently they did write an apology letter to, uh, Diane Feinstein and a couple other people on the intelligence committee and never sent it. We call that a draft just in case.

Yes. Yes. I don't, that doesn't, this is no way implies that they ever meant to send it. It's just, maybe we should have one of these in our pocket. I wonder if they wrote it before they even started, I would, I mean, you got a PR department. I mean, it's just like when you're running for president, when, you know, on election night, you've got your, I'm going to, I won speech.

You've got your concession speech. You've got your, we're going to fight this to the bitter end speech. You can, you're, you're prepared. Oh yeah. And it was like when the, when the men landed on the moon, it's like, okay, we've got the, yay, they made it in the, ah, shit, they're all dead. Yeah. B we found Martians on the moon, which is a bit weird.

Or C it's cheese unions or D I can't believe everybody bought. It's totally fake. People are going to be arguing about this for years. Oh, somebody called Joe Rogan. Anyway. Yeah. This came out in a, uh, freedom of information act request. It is. I just thought it was very funny. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. Now in now this is the yin and the yang of Facebook security. So wait, there are two sides. Yeah. So, uh, Facebook awarded a hundred thousand dollars to a team of, uh, Georgia Institute of technology researchers for finding some vulnerabilities, right?

Yay. Good for you guys. And on the flip side, an intern was pointing out flaws in their messenger app and was summarily removed from Facebook and got nothing.

Yeah. I read this story and it's pretty, pretty funny. Actually I do. The headline makes you hate Facebook. You dive into the story a little bit more and you can kind of understand where they're coming from. It's not like he tapped somebody on the shoulder and said, Hey guys, there's some stuff here that maybe you should fix.

No, he created an entire application that basically exploited that. That was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, called Marauders map out of, after, you know, now technically he was using inside information that he was gained, he, that he gained from his internship to create an application and released it that exploited this brought these problems instead of saying to Facebook, Hey guys, you might want to fix this.

Yeah. It was kind of a stupid dick move for sure. So it's, he should have lost his internship. I have no problem with that. I was so angry at first when I first read it, I was like, what a bunch of dicks Facebook are that I was like, Oh no, if this would have happened at any other company, they would have done the same thing.

But they should have taken him aside and said, dude, okay, that was a dick move, but it was cool. You, you, you know, you found the holes, you'd made the thing, but let us tell you how we do it here. Yeah. Instead of turning it into this big public kerfuffle, they could have taken it in house and said, dude, don't be a dick.

This is how we do it. You know, we're all hackers. We'd love to do this stuff. And when you find things like this, go, Hey guys, uh, let's fix it. If millennials need to have explained to them that corporate culture is usually involved keeping things internal rather than them releasing them to the wild. I'm a little bit worried.

Comment of the week. A big thanks to our newest Patreon supporter, Bobby G. Thank you very much. That's awesome. You know, we love our Patreon supporters. And I thank you to Rachel Mowry who, uh, donated to us through our PayPal account. Thank you very much, Rachel. Yes. Thank you very much to both of you.

Uh, and we have a question that came in this week from chrono master. Ooh. First off, I love the show. Keep up the great work. You make my commute to work a little more bearable. Question on the Sennheiser CX five dot OOI headphones.

That is really a terrible name for those. They're not good at the branding. After both of you gave them such a great review, I decided to check them out. From the two episodes where you reviewed them, it sounded like the headphones were noise canceling, but from my research, they seem to be only noise blocking.

Wanted to have that clarified since noise blocking slash noise isolation seems to be the standard for most in-ear headphones. Thanks for your response. And again, great show. Uh, you have a very good point. Uh, they are, people do tend to throw around the, uh, the term noise canceling for any headphones that, uh, basically claim to bring down the noise and make your sound better.

Uh, they are not noise canceling headphones. Noise canceling headphones means that you basically have a microphone in them, which is recording the outside atmosphere and creating a sound wave that actively cancels it out. That gets quite pricey. Um, noise reduction headphones really just kind of create a seal in and around your ears that keep out the noise.

And damp things down quite a bit. So all you're really hearing is the actual audio that you want to be hearing. These are just noise blocking and or noise isolation headphones. They are not, uh, they are not noise canceling headphones. However, having said all of that, they are quite simply the best noise blocking slash noise isolation headphones I have ever used in my entire life.

And they actually do sound better to me than some very expensive noise canceling headphones that I have had and or tried. So I recommend that you give them a shot anyways. Conveniently, if you order them through Amazon, through the link in our show notes, of course, uh, you will be able to return them if you do not like them.

So, uh, I'd say give them a shot. Um, you're right. They are not, uh, they're not noise canceling. That's why they are relatively cheap. But again, uh, Jason and I have just waxed rhapsodic about this. Uh, they're fantastic headphones. Yeah. They're utterly fantastic. And I didn't know the difference either. And I've got a pair of the, you know, there's like $500 Bose headphones, uh, which are, you know, they've, I got to put a battery in them all the time.

Cause they always run out and I forget to turn them off because they have a microphone in them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Because it's like, you could be in a room and then you put them on and then it gets quieter when you turn them on. And I'm like, how, this is madness. What is this sorcery? Yes. These I just put in my ears and everything's quiet no matter what.

But you know, like when my brother tried them, I was snapping my fingers and he could hear that. But then when I was speaking, he couldn't hear me at all. And I'm standing right in front of him. Yeah. So you're not going to get the pure noise canceling aspect out of these obviously, but again, most bang for your buck and for headphones that I've ever had in my entire life by far.

Yeah. For a hundred bucks, dude, they're awesome. Yeah. So I'd say go ahead and get them anyways. And thanks for the comments and thanks for listening. And I'm glad you enjoy the show. We have an iTunes five-star rating. We actually have two. The first one is from M just M, a breath of fresh air from current events to books and media.

Brian and Jason know the business and present it in an informative and hilarious format. Well done, gents. You have a listener for life. Well, as long as you are broadcasting, that is. I mean, I'm not going to off myself when you're done. That'd be really dumb. Good point. Fair enough. We wouldn't want you to do that anyways. No, we definitely would not want that.

Yeah. So thank you very much. So our next one is Lars 300 from Canada. Ooh. Yes. Hello, Canada. Weekly news from the future. I have no background in tech and I'm surrounded by people that are even less tech savvy. So I really look forward to these weekly podcasts.

So I really look forward to these weekly podcasts from what's coming our way. Security news and media reviews. This is my go-to podcast every week. Can't say enough good things about it. Thank you for putting out such great content. Well, you're welcome. Yeah. Thank you very much, Lars 300. And with you having no background in tech and surrounded by people that are even less tech savvy, you sound like most of my clients.

Conveniently, I could use one. So why don't you hire me? Yes. And if the rest of you want to hear us keep making the goodies, why not stop by our Patreon page and toss us a buck or two? Because every supporter helps, especially now that Brian is going on welfare. Can I do that? No, you're self-employed.

You are your own welfare. But I pay in. At the library. So this is going to be a little bit of an odd at the library because I'm going to be talking today about books I have not read.

Yet that I cannot wait to read and we'll be talking about next week. But I wanted to give everybody a heads up just so if they wanted to play along next week. You can read along with the show. Exactly. I was listening to the Art of Manliness podcast number 128, The Perils of Oversuccess with Jim Rubens.

And this is a book that I mean, it was written, I think, in 2008 or 2009. So it's been around for a while. But he talks about how America is kind of broken with this idea of success. It's ruining people's lives, making people depressed.

And it's like kind of how to get past that. And I'm really looking forward to this book. Yeah, it's called Oversuccess, Healing the American Obsession with Wealth, Fame, Power, and Perfection. None of that premise sounds true to me at all. We don't talk about anything. In fact, we talk about the opposite.

Everything's great. I know. I'm like, we definitely got to get this guy on the show or at least buy him a beer because I think he, you know, he could be the founding father of our podcast if we'd actually had read this book before we started. But I definitely recommend checking out the podcast.

That'll be linked in the show notes because it was really good. And this guy's pretty sharp. I got to say. Sounds good. I might be reading along with you. Now, one of my favorite books of all time was Shadow Divers. Have you read that book? I have not. It's a story of two guys who find a U-boat off the coast of New Jersey.

Okay. And they dive down to it and explore it. But the research that goes into finding out which U-boat this was was fascinating. It was, you know, I mean, it's a nerd story. Honestly, it's a lot of research, but also a lot of like danger and diving to places they shouldn't go.

And that was written by Robert Curzon. He's got a new book and I am so excited for this one. It's called Pirate Hunters, Treasure Obsession and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship. Okay. I'm just putting it out there. If you've read Shadow Divers, and I know a lot of people have read that book that listen to this show, check this out because I am terribly excited.

I wanted to get to it this week, but my day job now requires me to read about four books a week. Yeah. I wanted to get to quite a lot of books this week. And considering I'm underemployed, one would think I would have had plenty of time. But it's amazing how you can fill up your days when you don't really have anything you have to be doing.

Oh, yeah. That's the worst. Kitchen Remodel, Learning Plumbing. A shout out to YouTube for that. I'll talk about that later. Yeah. So I've been super busy. But I did finally download Peter Klein's Ex-Heroes, and I've gotten a start on it. I've just started it last night, and I'm enjoying it so far, Jason.

So right now, your recommendation is feeling pretty good. It does remind me a lot of Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart series, the Reckoners novels that we talked about quite a while back that you and I both love and went through. Because it's got a very similar feel to it, at least at the beginning. Yeah, the very beginning is like that.

Yeah, just these, you know, the way the superheroes are created at the beginning totally goes sideways after the beginning of that, and the rest of the series has nothing to do with it. Excellent. Well, I mean, I'm not saying it as it's a bad thing. Anyways, it's a good feel that we like. I mean, I'm a big fan of Brandon Sanderson's.

So, yeah, I'm enjoying it, and I will certainly knock out at least the first one before next week. And I'm going to try to read this over a success book because it just feels like it'll feed into a good episode for us if we both read it. Oh, absolutely. I think we're going to have some fun times with that. Well, I don't know if anything that we talk about are fun, but.

Yeah, not fun. So, you had been making fun of me for my Dune love and got pissed off at me because I just kept reading them and I wasn't reading anything else for a while. Big article came out and a really nice write-up about Dune. It is basically, this is the 50th anniversary of Dune.

And if you're an aficionado as I am, you know that basically the entire book is about ecology and how humanity tends to fuck things up. A little prescient, right? Oh, okay. You say so? Related to our current time, a little more relevant than even before, even regardless of Sting's flying underwear in the movie.

Did you say flying underwear? Have you seen the movie? Yeah, I love the movie. David Lynch movie. Don't you remember, like, the scene when he's getting ready for the fight and all he's wearing are, like, these, like, little tidy silver pants that have, like, wings that go off on the side? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Google image that shit right now, everybody. No, no, don't, don't, please don't. But no, yeah, wait for my brother, Baron. I'd love that movie. Yeah, well, the movie's all right. Anyways, this is just a really, really nice write-up. And, you know, I still, Dune is probably my favorite book of all time and definitely one of my favorite series of all time.

And this kind of ties in nicely a lot of his original ideas and kind of how, you know, I mean, this is a big year for climate change, for the planet. We're all starting to recognize it. Even Pope on a Rope is downboard. So we're looking pretty good here. And good write-up. I recommend you read it if you're a fan of the series.

Okay, quick question on the series because I am going to pick it up. Oh, I've got Dune, but I want to get the rest of them. Where do I stop? Because you said some of them sucked at the end. Well, no, I think it's all of his original books are worth getting through. Okay, so all the Frank Herbert books, but when his son took over, that's when it sucked?

Yeah, they're not really worth it. Some of them were kind of okay, but they don't have the depth to them. They're basically just, you know, crap sci-fi stories. You know, if you really want to continue after you finish the Frank Herbert ones, ask me again when you're done with all of those, and I'll tell you which ones actually kind of did a good service to the whole story and the whole arc, even though they're, you know, again, no depth to them, just kind of fun little jaunts.

There's a few of them that are okay. Some of them just don't even bother. Okay, I don't know if I have time for fun little jaunts, but I'll let you know when I'm finished. You know, Peter Klein's ex-heroes, that's a fun little jaunt. It's in that vein. Okay, good. So, yes, everybody, go buy a bunch of books and sit around and read them, and next week we'll talk about something that we've actually read.

Yeah, actually, maybe next week, if I have the time and I can tear myself away from doing more, like, crazy plumbing work around the house, maybe I'll run through all the Dune books and just kind of give them a, these are the ones you have to read, these ones are okay, these ones not. So you can look forward to that next week. Well, yeah, hey, hey, here's an idea. On Patreon, you can have the Grumpy Old Geek's Guide to Dune.

Oh, bingo, that's a really nice idea. Wait for my brother parents. Software, apps, and gadgets. It's funny, as we were just about to go into this segment, software, apps, and gadgets, an old friend of mine and friend of the show, I won't mention his name because, you know, it's kind of funny.

He's been working on redoing his website for a while. I originally did some of the stuff for him way back in the day, but obviously, you know, I'm a little cost prohibitive, and he's a small business, and he can't really afford the kind of work that I do anyways. But, you know, here's what just rolled past my Facebook feed.

If you were thinking of using GoDaddy to design a website for you, think again. Two months wasted. Well, it has never come to my mind to use GoDaddy to design a website for me. Sorry. And I'd imagine most people that listen to the show never would either, and that's why.

So, there you go. I mean, I am more inclined to go to Squarespace than GoDaddy. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Very, very funny. For you old school people out there that might miss your BlackBerrys, I can't imagine there are too many more of you out there. In fact, most of the people I know, and having spent a lot of time in Canada where BlackBerry was a religion, you bitch and moan and kvetch because your keyboard was gone when you switched to your iPhone, and then three months later, you can't ever imagine having anything else.

Well, those of you who couldn't do that, Samsung's bringing it back. Oh, okay. Yeah, I saw this going around. Yeah, they're marketing a phone that's basically got a BlackBerry-esque type keyboard on it, and I just don't – I mean, I'm sure there's a market out there for that.

Yeah, and it's a keyboard cover. You can take it off. Yeah. So, there you go. I've never had a Samsung phone. I don't want one, but I just thought I'd throw that out there, and because there's other Samsung news as well. Oh, my God, so much Samsung news. Did your Twitter feed get completely ruined by Samsung yesterday?

It actually did. They met on a massive publicity blitz somehow. Well, it was their big thing. But I just really didn't realize that many people cared. There are a lot more people out there that use Samsung phones than use iPhones. That's very true, actually.

That's very true. Well, they are rolling out their own version of basically the Apple Pay equivalent, which I believe they're calling Samsung Pay, because why not? Okay. It's short to the point. And Google's got their forthcoming Android Pay. So, I guess we've kind of lost out on creativity and naming.

So, yeah, they're coming out with it. And the question is, you know, how many stores are actually going to be taking it? You know, even the Apple Pay rollout has been painfully slow. There's still a lot of places that don't take it. So, we'll see what happens. Yeah, anybody that's using those standard Verifone, NFC-enabled, you know, little kiosk, which is everywhere I go now.

Yeah. I can't not use it. I mean, the problem I have is when I walk up to it and I swipe my card, my phone can activate it. And it'll be like, okay, just that. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it's a bit weird. I mean, I like it. I'm enjoying it. So, you're actually using Apple Pay. I'm using Apple Pay anywhere that takes it.

Really? Yeah. Wow. The Whole Foods here has got it. It's fast. It's easy. And like I said, if only we could invent a way where you could actually prove your identity over your phone, I wouldn't even carry a wallet anymore. Wow. That's interesting. I didn't see you as an early adopter.

Well, I'm not really. I mean, I waited quite a long time. Well, yeah. It's not like you're using your Apple Watch to pay. No. And that would never be happening. But, yeah, Apple Pay is actually, it's really fantastic. It's super easy. I've got both my business credit card and my personal credit card in there.

It's very quick to switch between the two depending on which one I want to use. So, staple business card and Whole Foods personal card. Super quick. Super easy. No signing. No nothing. Just fingerprint. Boom. Done. Out. Nice. I'm going to have to try it. The problem I've had with it is I use Citibank for all my business and personal banking.

And the Citibank verification process to get your cards into Apple Pay is broken. It's completely broken. And you have to get on the phone with them. And I'm like, it's not worth it to get on the phone. I'll just swipe the damn card. Amex, perfect. But I don't use my Amex cards. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's growing pains with all of this stuff.

So, we'll see what happens. But I think, you know, once you're on it, Jason, once you get used to it, you're pulling out a card and swiping it and doing that whole rigmarole now just feels so like 19th century. Oh, God. I'm such a Luddite. Mm-hmm.

Media Candy. So, we've been covering the Top Gear story for quite some time. And now there's a little bit more news. Mm-hmm. Yeah. These guys made bank. Oh, my God. We said bags of all the monies, but I did not expect a quarter billion dollars.

This is the best firing ever. I know. Talk about, you know, moving up. $250 million for three seasons of 12 episodes each. Look, I mean, I don't have the stats in front of me or a BuzzFeed list, but I'm guessing worldwide, Top Gear has to be probably the biggest TV show.

It is. Absolutely. Yeah. There you go. The thing about it, though, I don't care about the money. I'm glad they're getting paid, and that means these shows are going to be amazing. Yeah. Here's what I'm happy about. Three seasons of 12 episodes each. Right. Now we have a number. It's not going to be like, you know, they're going to run one season and we have to worry about if they're going to bring it back.

Well, and the way that everybody, you know, this whole newfangled system, because nobody really knows what to do anymore, where all of a sudden you find out the season starts and you find out it's four episodes long. So 12 episodes. Fantastic. Three years for sure. Fantastic. Super excited. And yeah, with that kind of budget, I'm expected.

And these guys, you know, they're not there. They're already loaded. Oh, God. Yeah. They're all multimillionaires. All the multimillionaires are ready. So we know this money isn't really going into their pocket. There's going to be a shit ton of production on this. They're going to spend a ton on the show. So it's going to be fantastic. No, I can't wait.

I really cannot wait. Yep. And something I can't wait for. And I actually just, I picked this link from Salon that's in the show notes, grumpyoldgeeks.com, because I couldn't stand the latest episode of True Detective. And a lot of people seem to agree with me.

Episode or season? Oh, the last season. Sorry. I absolutely hated it. And they're talking about how HBO may need a new hit, but then they explain what it could be. I did not know this was coming, but they are doing a series on Westworld. Like based on that old movie?

Based on the old movie, except they've obviously updated it quite a bit. Now, the old movie was pretty cheesy. Yeah. I mean, it had Yul Brynner in it. There's no doubt about it. But the premise itself is fantastic. And I think that there couldn't be a better time for it because it's a lot about AI and that whole thing.

And, you know, we just had the whole letter signed by Elon Musk and Hawking and Wozniak that, you know, said we must be careful about AI, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is going to explore that concept in an updated way. And the cast looks really nice and the trailer looks great. So I am actually kind of excited about this.

You had me at Anthony Hopkins. Exactly. Honestly, if Anthony Hopkins is something, I'm watching it. I don't care what it is. I'm going to watch it. Yeah. And even Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright. It's a really, really good cast. So I'm really excited about this. The one and only downside I see is executive produced by J.J. Abrams.

Are they just slapping his name on everything now? There's no way he can be doing all this stuff. Yeah. Produced. That just means bad robot is, is basically the production company, which is fine because those guys do quality work. Exactly. I agree. So, but it's just, I'm so sick of seeing his name attached to absolutely everything.

Well, you know, if he does a good job on, say that again, we must give him all the sci-fis. Well, if he does a good job on Star Wars, then, you know, then he's batting a thousand. If he does a good job on Star Wars, he's God. As far as I'm concerned, I won't forgive him for alias, but that's just me.

That's just you. Uh, I think the most interesting thing in this article, which I did not know is the original movie, which was pretty cheesy, was directed by Michael Crichton. I was aware of that. Yes. I did know that. It was a interesting thing. I, that I, I don't, you've stopped doing your does it have legs podcast, I assume because of the move and job and all that sort of stuff.

And, uh, MXV had some really gnarly throat surgery, so he couldn't speak for a while. We may bring it back, but timing is really tough with him in Chicago and me out here. If you do bring it back, I think Westworld, you need to watch it because I am really interested to see if it's just as cheesy crappy as I remember it, or if there's something to it, yeah, I, I mean, I've only seen it once and I was probably like, you know, late twenties when I saw it and I thought it was pretty bad.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I remember as well. Okay. All right. I found a, uh, another Ted talk. I've tried to make this kind of part of my weekly routine to watch at least one to two interesting Ted talks. And so this one was really good. It's by a Rob Knight and it's how our microbes make us who we are, which is a really interesting, you know, we, we think that, that we're brain or we think that we're spirit or we think that we're this or that, but we find out that basically all the microbes that we

run around with us, particularly in our guts, massively affect who we are, what we are, how we live and how long we live. Great talk. Okay. I think I've seen this one actually. Yeah. This idea has been kicking around for a while. This was done in February, 2014. So this particular Ted talk has been kicking around for a while too, but I just never really watched an entire talk about it.

There's a few books out there that are about this too, that I'm really interested in reading. So this might be something that I'll be following up on in the, at the library section someday. Yeah. See the thing about the whole gut bacteria, microbe thing, you know, your flora and fauna and your gut that right now, this is like the big thing for the self-help gurus.

I even, I even got like a box from Tim Ferriss that to like send in, it's like a 23 and me for my gut bacteria. Yeah. Seriously. I just haven't done it yet. I need to do that just to see what, what's going on down there. But this is like, you know, this is the darling of the ball right now.

Everybody's talking about their, their gut biome and like that. And I'm down with that. The thing is I always wait for the science, not for the bull crap that people that just kind of jump in on this stuff. So yeah, that's the problem right now. Hey, but there's a buck to be made on this concept right now. And people are out there doing it.

Capitalism. Okay. Maybe this week I'll, I'll throw in my, I got a spit in a tube and they'll tell me if, if I need to eat some yogurt or something. Can't you just send in your auto blow too? I told you, man, it's gone. I got rid of it. I know it's a joke there. Anyway, I found a really cool podcast.

I am loving this. It's called spy cast. And I've never heard of this. The, uh, international spy museum is doing this and they talked to ex spies and authors and just all sorts of really cool people that were, you know, big in the espionage game.

And it's fascinatingly cool. Yeah. Very. That's it. Yeah. Well, I didn't listen to any of them. I looked at it and I thought it was very, very cool and very interesting. And it's certainly right up your alley. Oh, it's completely up my alley. And, but you got to listen to them because they're, they're, they, I thought it was going to suck.

I'm just like, okay, this is going to be, you know, crap, but no, they have people who are actual spies on there that were, you know, part of the Bay of pigs invasion. You had people who were running Russian spies who were double agents, like, like literal spies.

Yeah. It's cool. I found the one I'm going to listen to. Which one? Author Debriefing, Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy. The story of Kawashimi Yoshikyu, the cross-dressing spy who commanded her own army. Awesome. That is bookmarked. Okay.

I got to get that one. I'm still, I'm still kind of working my way backwards with them. Okay. Yeah. I'll listen to that one. And then we'll talk about that a little bit next week. Okay. Yeah. I think you're, I think you're actually going to enjoy it. We were, we read seven eaves, both of us, and, and we were head over heels in love with that book. And I still am. Um, I forgot how much I love the book until I listened to tested, uh, with, uh, you know, those, all the savage and those guys and those guys.

Yeah. I never remember the other guy's name. That's what I was struggling for, but it doesn't matter. Adam Savage, the tested podcast. They did a spoiler cast on the first two parts of the book. And I was so pissed at the end because I thought they were going to do the whole thing. And I was just wanted to hear more this completely listening to these guys, just geek out over seven eaves reminded me how much I love the book to the point where I almost wanted to just pick it up and read it again right away, but I have to read something new.

Otherwise I've got nothing for our podcast anymore. So I'll get back to that at some point. Uh, but it was absolutely fantastic. Listen to them, talk about it and kind of dissect it and get into it. Um, I highly recommend you listen to the spoiler cast if you liked the book as much as we did. And after that, I found the seven eaves notebook.

So lit hive.com, which I'd never heard of, um, is, I guess some sort of startup that's trying to basically build communities around books and authors and particularly books that people really, really love like seven eaves. And it's got a Neil Stevenson's notebook and a bunch of multimedia materials that he used in the kind of creation.

And the other thing I didn't know about seven eaves is that this idea, this is a fully firmed world that Stevenson's been working on for years and years and years. He originally wanted to make a video game. Then it was going to be some sort of cartoon. Then it was going to be some other sort of animated feature that it was going to be a movie that it was going to be a TV series.

And he finally ended up just making a book out of it. But this kind of goes through the process and shows you a lot of the materials that he created when he was developing this entire concept. I have to agree 1000% on the spoiler cast. When I was listening to it, I'm like, man, I want to go listen to that book again, like immediately.

Cause I listened to the audio book, but it was, it was a really good take on it. And it got me excited about it, even though they liked parts that I didn't like. And I liked parts they didn't like, you know, there was a lot of, there was a lot of dissension, I think, you know, at least on my side, me yelling at the air saying, no, you're wrong.

But it really, cause it was just kind of like, we both read 70 years. We both went, Jesus, that was absolutely great. And then it just kind of left my mind. And then listening to these guys, I was like, no, it wasn't just a great book. It was a fucking great book. Yeah. Honestly, it, it kind of was.

Yeah. So that, it got me really back into it too. And the one thing that I'm super excited about, and it kind of goes either way. I mean, Adam Savage is kind of buddies with Neil Stevenson and even said, he's not a big fan of sequels and revisiting his work, but he, because he spent so much time developing this universe, there is a hope that he will continue the universe in, in another book and nothing would make me happier.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem here because at the very end on this lit hive thing, um, he talks about, you know, how the, you know, people are going to want more, but it is an actual self-contained story. So he could just stop if he wants to.

Yeah. I mean, he definitely can. I was satisfied with the way the book ended. I, I, it is a work in and of itself. That is absolutely fantastic. There is no need for him to do more, but I want more. Yeah. I'd kind of do, but then I kind of don't because I still think the first two thirds of the book are where the genius and the meat were, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. But I'm very intrigued by the world that they ended up in. Okay. So yes, if you haven't read seven eves and you're not convinced by us talking about it at this point, you're probably never going to read it, but I still highly recommend it. Yeah, definitely. You need to read this book.

If you're listening to this podcast, come on and straight up, it's straight up the things that you should be into. Now I was a skateboarder growing up for 16, 17 years and I saw this new trailer for a movie called we are blood. Oh my God. If you ever stepped foot on a skateboard, this is the movie to see.

I got chills. I even wrote a giant Facebook post about it. I am so excited for this movie, but it's just, it's a great look at skateboard culture. Right. And I also recommend if you have not seen the Rodney Mullen Ted talk to go back to your Ted talks, the Rodney Mullen Ted talk is one of the better ones where it talks about why skateboarding was so influential and why it's important.

And if you have kids, get them a damn board. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I've never been massively into skateboarding culture. That kind of skipped me. I mean, I did it a little bit when I was younger, but I didn't get into the culture, but I mean, I even not being into the culture, I watched the documentary, the dog town, and that was absolutely fantastic too.

So if you're, if you're a skateboarder guy, there's another thing for you to check out. Yeah. The thing about skateboarding that really sticks with me is it teaches you community brotherhood and resilience because it's really hard to ride a skateboard and do those tricks. And you just learn to get up, get back on it and fall as many times as it takes to get there, get where you want to be.

And when you're skating with other guys, they help you, you know, that was just my whole point of it. And that's why watching this again, I'm just like, Oh man, I kind of missed that, but I'm just, I'm too old and broken to get back on the board. Yeah. I'm way too old to even bother to try anymore, especially in this area. Well, yeah.

Cause you're going to run into people doing their YouTube videos. Exactly. Uh, so this, this is kind of non-news, but I'm going to put it in here anyway, because it was tweeted to me by several people. I know because everybody knows that I love Deadwood more than just about anything that was ever made for TV.

Yes, HBO confirms early talks of a Deadwood movie. And I'm just going to tell you right now, cocksucker is never going to happen. I don't, I can't imagine it happening either. The, the people that would be in this movie now, like, you know, Timothy Oliphant and just in, you know, um, what's the guy that plays Swear Engine?

Um, I always blank on his name, but he's going to be on a game of Thrones this season. Um, which is, I'm sorry, but amazing. Um, yeah, they, they can't afford to make a Deadwood movie, even though they did make the Entourage movie. And I know, you know, it's out there.

They, they could do it if they wanted to, but I just don't think it's going to happen. Yeah. I can't see it happening either. And there's not a really good history of, uh, of series from HBO turning into movies. I, okay. The first section of the city was fine. The second one was horrible Entourage movie bombed.

I don't see it happening. Yeah. The Entourage movie was just terribly written. I thought I saw it last week and I'm just like, oh man, really? I never even watched the show, but I did hear the movie was horrible. I couldn't watch the show. It was like, I live here and I live in that world. I can't, I don't want to watch TV about it. Yeah.

But it's, it's like if, if I find it amusing, well, it's a fantasy world that if everything goes right, you know? Yeah. Um, and that's why I have the problem watching Silicon Valley, same, same issues, but I loved Entourage and it's like, that's the Hollywood that I wanted to move to, but, uh, didn't exist.

But man, yeah, that movie was, I, I really liked it just to be back with the guys and, you know, be back in the world, but they just, they threw, threw in too many swerves and there were like a hundred cameos just for the sake of having a cameo. Well, yeah, that's what they do with those movies. Oh, and by the way, Jason, that Hollywood does exist.

It's just you and I don't have tickets to that ball. Oh, that's the party that we're not invited to. Exactly. We're on of the week. Oh, graphics people, graphics people on TV. Uh, yeah, since this is an audio podcast, I'm going to behoove you and beg of you to go to our show notes, uh, grumpy old geeks.com slash what episode are we on Jason?

We are on episode 123. Slash one, two, three, or like Google says, ABC. Uh, and look at the oddly shaped weather map that, uh, was, uh, set up for Chicago. Uh, that's all I'm going to say. Uh, graphics people got to do a better job. No, they don't.

I think it's fantastic. It is frigging hilarious. No, I thought this was a great video. I just liked to, I'm not going to spoil it, but just have to, you have to watch the chick at the end. Cause she was, she was having some fun with the last one. How could you not?

I mean, it looks like Montreal was really getting dicked by the weather, but the, the best part was the guy, uh, just explaining everything. He's like, why would you put a pistol? And like, Oh, those look like I, you know, it was, it was really funny. So check that out.

Also in moron of the week, we're going to put Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Yeah. You can't have it both ways, Hillary. Uh, they have finally gone through the email server that she had at her house. Yeah. And, uh, determined that there was a lots of top secret stuff on it.

Even though she has come out on the side of, you know, basically putting, uh, Chelsea Manning in a hole for the rest of her life or cutting off her head. And she's going to get a pass. I know she's just going to get a pass. Yeah.

I gotta, I gotta be on board with you on this one. This is, this is some bullshittery. Yeah. I mean, she had like top secret, uh, satellite imagery on her server. I mean, really stuff that should not kind of leave the building. Yeah. Yeah. You should not, uh, you shouldn't, uh, again, I still don't even understand what, why you had an email server in your own house.

It boggles the mind. Well, well, maybe she was worried about the Pentagon being hacked by the Russians, but yeah, I'm sorry. Anybody can hack your cable modem and get into your house. Yes. We've talked about this many times. And, and, uh, you know, first off again, still the buck stops with her.

She did not make this decision. She does not understand any of this stuff. She needs to fire her IT team. She needs to fire herself because she hired the IT team. That's true. Well, that's why I said the buck stops with her.

The web's not dead. Oh no, it's not. Fat Wallet is another site that I've never heard of before. In fact, I don't really even know what they do. There seem to be some buying guides and things like that. But it doesn't matter because they have the best listicle in the universe.

Okay. The fastest ship in the universe. How sci-fi ships stack up. Now they, there's as much science that doesn't go into this as possible, but it's a great little graph that runs through basically all your favorites from all sci-fi and tries to calculate basically relative speeds towards each other and, uh, charts them out as terms of, uh, total speed of aircraft.

And of course, you know, winning would be the heart of gold and the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxies and probability drive. Yes. Which is just goes infinity speed. But who knew the TARDIS went so fast? The TARDIS can cook, man. Yeah. The TARDIS can cook, but I am happy to see the Millennium Falcon way up there.

So sweet on you, Han Solo. Yeah. Except, uh, we, we all know the bad, bad, the bad science behind how, how many parsecs it can do and whatever, you know, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a good little chart. And, uh, again, it's very funny to see basically the Eagle five from space balls.

So there's a sitting up there faster than the board cube. Our follow mew. Good stuff. Great chart. Uh, this is what the internet was made for that important. And kittens. Closing shout outs.

I'm going to give a shout out to a local place that I've loved going to for years. Primitiva Wine Bar, just, uh, down the street here on, off of Abbott Kinney in, uh, Venice. Woo. I've got to give them a shout out because they are shutting down. Oh no. Oh no. Yes. Even the, uh, Primitiva Wine Bar is not a cheap place.

We've already lost a ton of our cheap places through the gentrification and Googleification and Twitterification and Snapchatification of Venice and Santa Monica. But, uh, now we're losing even some of the more expensive places. It's sad to see that they're going away. I will be going to have dinner there tonight because I have to have it at least one more time.

And, uh, included in that is a little link from, uh, curb.com about Snapchat being very sore winter about taking over Venice. And they have been. And this, uh, article goes into a story about how they've also kicked out some charities and some local, uh, bunch of local old favorites.

And they're just kind of being jerks about it. So, uh, my shout out is to hell with you, Snapchat. Uh, I don't think that's a new idea, but no Snapchat being such jerks about destroying my local area. Oh, that's too bad, man. Yeah, it is too bad.

It's a, you know, there's hope for Primitiva Wine Bar because they're getting together with another of the great local Abiquity restaurants that closed a while ago, Hal's. And they're going to open up something new concept, uh, joined together. We'll see what happens, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's getting pretty grim around here. Well, you still, there's always fins and yeah, there's still fins and there's still the property value tickings ever so steadily upwards.

So if you'd like to go stalk Brian, you can go to Primitiva Wine Bar tonight. And, uh, that's true. Buy me some, I was going to say, go buy him a pint. Go buy me some wine. Oh yes. Wine bar, Jason. It's a wine bar. I know, but a pint of wine would be much better than a pint of beer. You know, if you know what I'm saying.

I hear you. How about a gallon? Yeah. Just don't try and carbonate that pint of wine. Yeah. Don't do that. You, you will not be, you will not be happy with the results. No. Thanks for listening. I am Jason DeFillippo and you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schilmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus or see me drunk at Primitiva Wine Bar.

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 but 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, Tidal, and Apple Music if you can get it to work. Or you can donate through grumpyoldgeeks.com Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog and get 10 exclusive tracks.

Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stoczanski. 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 one, two, three.

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