133: A German and an Irishman Walk into a Waterpark

Talk more into the microphone, a little less into the beer. 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. Hey, this is Grumpy Old Geeks for October 23rd. This is Brian Schulmeister, and I'm here with our special guest host, Fergal Lyons. Hi, Fergal.

Hi. Thanks for inviting me, Brian. Thanks for bringing really nice beer, Fergal. Sure. Yeah, so Fergal is an old friend of mine. We met at the famous Finn McCool's, where there's been a few Grumpy Old Geeks gathering. He's hung out with Jason before, and he's a geek.

I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with that term, but okay. Yeah, you know the sci-fi references. You work in the computer industry. What more do you want, Fergal? Yeah, I do have a background in computer science, work for one of the big security firms that you've probably heard of, Symantec. And so, yeah, I guess I am a geek.

Yes, you are. And you listen to the podcast and pick on me regularly and like to talk about all the parts that you don't like, although you have admitted that you do listen to it in the shower. Yes, I do. So that's kind of fun. So tomorrow, you'll be listening to yourself in the shower. You'll have to tell me how that feels. Won't be the first time.

So the big news this week, Star Wars The Force Awakens. We finally got what is considered an official trailer, and the tickets then immediately went on sale and sold out everywhere. Yeah, do you know for how long it sold out for? Not terribly long. At least the first few days here in LA. I think we've got, my wife and I picked up tickets to see it three or four days after opening day.

Oh, very good. I'm probably not going to see it until January, because I'll be traveling right through the holidays. All right. Yes, you'll be out and about. What did you think of the trailer? I thought it was excellent. I thought, you know, we've got the two main characters introduced.

They went through some of the older characters. They look fantastic. Yeah. And they've set up Han Solo to kind of be the bridge, the one who will explain the history to the youngins. Sure. The big question is, where the fuck was Luke? Yeah. So the internet has now blown up, thinking that he might be the bad character, or he's certainly gone to the dark side. They've even pulled out an email that Mark Hamill wrote to J.J. Abrams 10 years ago, where he said he would be intrigued by playing a Luke Skywalker who had gone to the dark side.

That is interesting. I hadn't heard that. I would actually be quite disappointed if that's the way they go. But you never know. We'll find out very soon. December 18th. Right. It's not that far away. Of course, the big controversy that came out straight away is all of the racist fuckers out there who didn't like the fact that one of the main characters was a black guy.

Yeah. Well, this is what happens when you have Twitter. Yeah. When any idiot gets a voice, and then any news agency will pick up on it. This can't be a real thing. But- How big could this be? Did they not see Star Wars before? There were plenty of black characters. Plenty? You mean Lando?

Well, there was a few. There was Lando. There was Lando. I wouldn't call that plenty. There was Jar Jar Binks, who was an incredibly racist version of a black character. Well, I mean, I think Jar Jar Binks could either be read as a racist character of a black guy or just a stone Jamaican white dude.

I guess he could have been white. Skateboarder with dreads. Maybe. Now I always envision him as being black. Yeah. I mean, the whole hashtag boycott Star Wars. Terrible. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And I can't imagine this is a real thing. This is the same. There's just a bunch of idiots and not a very large bunch of them.

Oh, to be fair, James Earl Jones, also black, but not that you ever saw him, but it was a guy in an all black suit. That's a bad guy. The other sci-fi thing that, of course, happened this week, it was Back to the Future Day, just what, two days ago now. So that was the one and only day that you could post that meme that people had posted for about five years running on the same day, October 21st.

So this year was the right one. Never posted again. We're done, people. It's done. We're all done. It was good. I saw them on Jimmy Kimmel. I saw that they popped in on that. Yeah. And Doc is looking kind of old. And Leah Thompson is looking pretty smoking still.

Gotta be honest about that. Yeah. It was a, you know, it was a fun movie. It wasn't a, there are people I know that just love this movie and love all of them and are really, really into it. I thought they were fine when they came out. But they were also iconic for the time.

They are definitely, yes. They captured a moment in the 80s. Yes, they are iconic for that. The interesting article that I found out about this week is they went and talked to the writer of Back to the Future 2, who, let me see, his name, Bob Gale. And then he admitted that he actually based Biff Tannen in the future, the crazy one who had taken over the entire town on Donald Trump.

Yeah. I know that's a great story. I'm a little skeptical. I think it's a great story to spin now. I think it's a nice revisionist history. Yeah. That fits everything quite well. It's not like the Simpsons, which really accurately predicted Donald Trump running for president. But it's still cute. And it's interesting.

And the article that's in our show notes actually talks a bit more about what he felt about, you know, his take on the future and obviously the things that didn't happen, the hoverboard. And it wasn't a phone. It was in the glasses. And he said, well, that was a near miss Google Glass. Yeah. Made it. And you could have been right on.

But yeah, so good article. Interesting thing. Back to the future. All right. All done with that. Let's talk about something that I know Fergal does not care about because he is an admitted Android fan, although he's been forced to be used. Well, unfortunately, you have a very old iPhone. I had briefly just while I was waiting for my new Android to arrive.

Yeah. But yeah, I've used Android for a lot of years. Never really went down the iOS path. I have an iPad. I have other stuff as well, of course. But for my regular phone, I prefer Android for a number of reasons. I don't know.

I prefer the flexibility. I prefer the openness that Android gives. Right. The hackability. Well, they're all hackable. Trust me. The other thing is that, you know, we have, our company writes a lot of software for Android. We don't do so much for iOS because it's very hard to write things at a hard, without a root level for Apple.

Yeah. Well, the iOS update came out, and I'm happy to announce that mainly we basically have more emojis, and we finally have a taco. Awesome. And a burrito. Score. If you live here in Southern California, you've been waiting for that a very long time. We also have the new emoji that we talked about on a show probably five or six shows ago because it sneaked out.

It's basically the kind of CBS logo with a little quotation mark coming off of it, and nobody could quite figure out what the hell that was supposed to be about. Well, this is a big Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, et cetera, et cetera, are all in on this emoji.

It is supposed to be an anti-bullying emoji. It's for a campaign that's going to be called I Am A Witness for National Bullying Prevention Month. So apparently, if you post this, when people are flaming you, they will stop. Yeah, right. What?

Well, yeah. This emoji is supposed to, you know, promote. It's like a shield. Yeah, it's like a shield to stop them from calling you an asshole. I've got my emoji up. Stay away. I have emojied, and then automatically you're going to get, like, flaming tacos sent you. So I don't think this is going to do much, but it's...

Yeah, this is one of these bright ideas that somebody has that nobody will argue against because it sounds like you're arguing for bullying. Yeah, I'm not going to argue for bullying. So this emoji that will have no effect whatsoever on anything. Yeah. Okay, let's do that. In the news.

This is from the Daily Mail, which already kind of gives me pause. It also gives me pause because it's from an Australian. Fuck those guys. And then it also gives me pause because it's a chiropractor. And I was kidding about fucking those guys if they're Australian, but fuck chiropractors.

That's not real science. But the point being, there is a condition that is apparently being called Tex-Nec, and it's a bunch of x-rays from kids even as young as seven. And this chiropractor and doctor in Australia is saying he's seen an alarming increase in this.

And there's some kind of disturbing x-ray scans going on in the image. And this is not surprising. We've been warned about this. This has been a discussion for a long time saying that this is not a way we're supposed to hold our head. And it's probably not good for us.

And yeah, but this is hardly very scientific. You know, I'd like to see, you know. But there's numbers written on the x-rays with arrows. Oh, those kind of numbers. Yeah, that's science. This could have just been some kid with scoliosis who happened to have a cell phone.

Yeah, you know, I've got a thing against chiropractors because I think they're kind of witch doctors and they don't really know what they're doing. But I am, this is the first real thing that's kind of caught fire about it and an attempt at somewhat sort of science. Tex-Nec as a condition which can lead to cognitive problems and depression might be stretching it a little bit.

Well, it reminds me of back in the 80s, I used to use, I used to compete at Rubik's Cube. Right. And I used to get a Rubik's Cube thumb. And you said you're not a geek? Hold on a second. Rubik's Cube thumb.

I can still do a Rubik's Cube in about a minute. Is this before or after you were breakdancing on those rough Irish streets? That's pretty good. Yeah. Okay. But I think, you know, people are spending a lot more time on their phones now than any Rubik's Cube boy ever would have done.

Anyways, let's talk about a company that Jason and I struggle to figure out how it still is around. Let's talk about Yahoo again. Yahoo is now basically outsourcing their search to Google. And it's about time because their search has sucked for so long.

Yes, their search is horrible. Nobody uses it. 90-something percent of all search goes through Google. Everything has their small 10 percent, let's say. Right. Another one you might be familiar with, Ask.com? Yes. Are they still around? Yes. But it's Google.

It's a Google backend. It's a Google backend. So Google and Microsoft are basically running search for everyone. What is Yahoo doing? I don't really understand. Their shares have tumbled, what, 38% since the 1st of January. You used to have a Yahoo email account.

Everybody has a Gmail account now. You used to go to Yahoo for search. You don't go to Yahoo for search anymore. It used to be some sort of guided directory. They killed that a couple months back. What the fuck is Yahoo doing? They claim to be, you know, media. They're about content now.

But they're not very good at it. But they don't have any content. Nothing of any. They're as into content as the Huffington Post is. They just take other people. Well, that's not smart. Yeah. Okay. Well, you want to be an aggregator. I don't think that you're worth the money that you're getting anymore. I think it's on its way out.

Good. And it won't be before time. Good. Speaking of things that I'd like to be on the way out, you know, I couldn't not talk about Uber with you, Fergal. Fergal is my friend who's the biggest Uber supporter and will never shut up about how much he loves it. Well, I only talk about it how much I like it when you rail on it.

Right. So, first off, I came here by Uber tonight. Of course you did. And it was kind of an interesting experience because I got it to pick me up in a Prius. Yeah. Bring me down to Whole Foods where I ran in and got all this beer and then came back out and dropped me over to here.

The whole thing, in theory, should have cost five bucks. But because I paid with American Express points, it cost me nothing. Okay. So, what have I got to complain about? That's a perfectly great service. Now, do I have issues with the company? It's an artificially cheap service, though.

No. And you know that. Yes, it is. I don't view it as being that artificially cheap. Okay. Now, about the company. Let's just talk about the San Antonio thing because Uber has returned to San Antonio as of this week. They left on April 1st, basically throwing a huge hissy fit because the city wouldn't let them basically get away from all the regulatory things that most cities require anybody that operates in their confines to do.

So, they said, fuck that. We're leaving. And apparently, they kind of won. And they came back and San Antonio is, for the most part, caved. Yeah. And gave in to everything. So, now, no fingerprinting, no drug tests, no all the other things that San Antonio requires for anybody that does provide a transportation service in their city.

Uber doesn't have to do that anymore. So, it's your own damn fault if your Uber driver is stoned and crashes the car and kills you. So, two points on that. First, they still do have drug testing, but it's random. And then, secondly, the fingerprint requirement is still in place, but there is a two-week or some of that grace period before they have to have it done.

There are regulations. Uber must abide by those regulations, and that should be the case everywhere across the country. And as you know, that is all I've ever said about Uber. And that has been my biggest problem. And we are in agreement on that. We come at it from different angles.

Yes. One more point, though, before I finish up. Okay. The girl who drove me here tonight, her car stank of weed. So, maybe there are some issues still to be resolved. Well, it seems to me that Uber is starting to slide towards the normal taxis level of service.

And that really concerns me. Well, like I said, you know, you're supposed to always get your free bottle of water. That was a point of contention with Uber. Sure, it's not on their tagline or anything, but that was a thing. And I do occasionally take Uber. I have not gotten a free bottle of water in ages. Everything is starting to slide.

The cars aren't as nice as they used to be. That's the big issue. The drivers aren't as nice as they used to be. The rules on the cars used to be that the car had to be seven years old or less. Yeah. Okay. Now, they've extended that out to 10 years and possibly even 12 years. Some of the cars I've been in the last while, they've been pods of junk.

Yeah. And that annoys me. Well, maybe they're just art. Because as you pointed out in the link that you added to the show notes, Uber is now supporting art and it's doing an ultimate pop-up gallery. I love this because they're all about celebrating the people and places that make cities like LA unique.

That's why they're excited to announce Uber Artist, a bunch of the drivers who are driving Uber because they suck so bad at their art. Oh, come on. The world is full of struggling artists. It doesn't mean they're bad. Well, I guess they have to – this is probably better – driving an Uber, I suppose, is better than working at a McDonald's or something.

Yeah, sure. Although, maybe not so much. But this is an interesting idea, I guess. I mean, the thing that struck me about this article, and this isn't even a slam on Uber. This is just kind of a slam on our culture now. Why does every company have to be everything?

Why can't they just be a transportation company? Why do they have to be a lifestyle? There's a very simple reason. Everything has to be a lifestyle. And we're going to touch on that in a few minutes. It's because they have such a ridiculous valuation. Now, they can't just be in the transportation sector because they will not be able to sustain that valuation.

They must be everything to everybody, and then they can continue to grow. I'm actually interested in if Uber gets a piece of any of the art on sales. You think? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. So, the art thing was – I think the article said that it really – it's a pop-up art studio.

Yes. And Uber is going to take you to that studio. But all the artists are Uber drivers. As well. I'm sorry. Driver partners, as they brand them. Because you're a fucking – I'm sure you have a fucking piece of the company. You're a fucking partner. Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that, you idiots.

Speaking of idiots, free Uber. Another link that you saw. So, this one is strange. So, this is in – I think it's in New Hampshire, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which is full of idiots. Okay. Because – There goes our listening base in Portsmouth. Yeah, exactly. But no, Portsmouth is full of these Uber, Uber libertarians who are really just off the wall in terms of not wanting any form of regulation whatsoever.

Well, this is live free or die country. Exactly. Yeah. So, they go a step further and what they're doing in this case is freeuber.org. They are campaigning to have Uber in their towns. And they have this activism dashboard where they have these basically boosters, people going out, making calls, talking to people, and trying to increase the demand for Uber in their small little butt-ass town.

Right. Well, that seems a bit silly to me. Yeah. It's weird. Good luck on you. Let's move on to another company I can't stand. Airbnb. They really screwed up. They screwed up big time. They ran an ad campaign in San Francisco, which basically passively, aggressively bitched about the amount of taxes that they had to pay.

And then chided all the public services to maybe do better work since we just gave you $12 million. Now, imagine if Hilton Hotels, our Marriott, did the same. I know. You know, put up an ad saying, hey, San Francisco, what about fixing the potholes out here now that I've given you X percent of my take?

Yeah, because, you know, all of us have to do it, too. We pay our personal taxes and we don't post ads bitching about it. Airbnb should pay taxes. Of course they should. And that's all perfectly reasonable. This was the most tone-deaf ad campaign I've ever seen in my entire life. The apology and explanation that have since come out saying that we were just trying to point out that, look, we're paying so much into the community.

No, no, that's not what these ads said. Do they not have PR people? Do they not have just sensible people who would put a hold on something like that? As you know, we talk about this all the time on this show, the arrogance of these companies. There's no humility and there's no – they're so fucking arrogant.

They don't even – none of this even hit their mind. This would be like – they are pissed. They're pissed that they're paying this much taxes and they want to let people know. There was no note. This is completely, utterly true. This is how they really do feel. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah. And they're shocked and surprised now that people are pissed off about it.

Anyways. Good job, Airbnb. Apple Music apparently has 6.5 million paying subscribers, which is still well below what Spotify is claiming at 20 million. I know I'm no longer a paying subscriber for either because I canceled my Spotify when I signed up for Apple Music.

And I canceled my Apple Music when I discovered it won't work with my large library. And I've just been too lazy to go back and sign up with either of them again. Oh, okay. So 6.5 million paying subscribers, is that enough? Does that make their business viable?

Well, I mean, again, it's a loss leader for their phones, which are going in $1,000 a pop, especially now that they're not being subsidized by the carriers anymore. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I think they're going to be fine. It's not great. And I'm sure they expect it to be a lot better.

And they're going to have to be better if they're going to be best of industry or try to win out on anything. But, you know, I know I'm kind of a one percenter with my music collection and the fact that it won't ever work for me. But even people that don't have my problem are complaining about how convoluted it is.

And it is. Yeah. iTunes is a mess and they've got to fix that. But I think the very fact that it's easy to sign up for it because you're in the system. Yes. And the ecosystem is a powerful thing. Very strong. And especially, like, even you have an iPad.

At some point, you know, you get your Apple TV, you get your iPad, and the app works on an Android phone. And then all of a sudden… It all works together. Yeah. It all works together and it works together beautifully, except it doesn't. So, that's the problem. Benchmarks.

Bill Gurley finally said something that we've been saying on this podcast for a long time. I'm talking to you. All you unicorns, all your private valuations are complete and utter bullshit. So, yes. He's basically saying all of these companies are massively, massively overrated.

All of them are complete and utter crap. And maybe people should start being realistic about business fundamentals again. So, imagine how well that went over in San Francisco. Yeah. We'll just ignore them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nothing. Whatever. I'm still worth $5 million for my app that does nothing.

I said Facebook was way overvalued when it went public. I still think it is. It went public. But, you know, it's continued to climb. But I do believe it's overvalued. Twitter's overvalued. At least they have business. Google's overvalued. Yeah. But, yeah, they do have… At least these companies are operating.

Yeah. They're making some money. Yeah. They're not startups that haven't even gotten through the first round of funding. I don't understand that world up there. That was what we originally started this show about because Jason was supposed to teach me about the startup world. And then we never talked about it much because he doesn't understand it either.

So, yeah, that's where we ended up. Let's do a little quick science news, fun stuff. I remember a long time ago when the Large Hadron Collider first came online and everybody thought that it would blast us out of existence and we'd be dead in two seconds. Well, apparently next week they're hoping to make contact with the parallel universe.

And this is not bullshit. This is pretty crazy physics. Now, this is the one in Switzerland? Yes. Is it? Yes. At the CERN Institute. Yeah. So, they're going to be firing up to the highest energy levels they've ever done in a bid to detect or even create miniature black holes.

If successful, a completely new universe will be revealed, rewriting not only the physics books but philosophy books too, which is a little bit over the top, I think, for science writing. But I think it'll maybe rewrite some science fiction books. Certainly, certainly, yeah.

It's interesting and I, you know, I'm very excited about what they're doing there. I mean, some of the, all the major discoveries that we're making in the physics world are coming from that, from CERN right now. All of them. Yeah. So, if you're in physics, you're there. NASA researchers. NASA's had a couple big weeks.

Let's be honest here. Water on Mars, everything that they found with Pluto. Yeah. Unfortunately, I think one of the guys that they keep in their back office is holding on to that red stapler, got a report out this week. A NASA researcher released a report that he, 99%, 99.9% certain Southern California is getting a big quake soon.

I have been, I grew up here. I was born here. I've been hearing this since I had here really. Well, we know that there's a big quake coming soon. Yes. But to say it's 99.9% in the next three months, is that right? Two and a half years. Oh, two and a half years. Which is still. It's still a small time. A small time. Yeah.

Because this, all everybody says is like a 300 to 400 year span or something like that. And you can't predict. This is not a predictable thing. And the US Geological Survey, is that what they call it? Survey? Yes. Geological Survey. They came out and said, that's ridiculous.

That guy did not run his mathematics through the normal channels. It was not vetted. And they do not believe that his numbers stand up. Oh, I said it's a her. It's not a him.

Oh, it's not just a her. Andrea Donnellan of JPL is the one that did the study. Okay. And what's the name of the girl from USGS? The woman? Sorry. This is where I put in the music. Lucy Jones. Lucy Jones, who is fantastic.

Have you ever seen her on TV? I have not. She's a slightly rotund, but very animated woman who is so passionate about what she does. Oh, great. She's an absolute pleasure to watch. I'll have to watch a video of this later then. Yeah.

So, we're going to get one and we're not. And now it's not really true anymore. Good times. Yeah. It's fun being in California. And then you put in a link to appypaper.com and just wrote stupid or genius. Yeah. So, this probably is stupid.

So, let me first say what it is. This is a firm, say, startup company who will send you free wrapping paper for the holidays. Right. And you can request, I think it's up to four sheets of this wrapping paper. And the paper is imprinted with icons of apps.

Logos. Logos, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And so, companies are paying to get on this paper. It's, I, okay. That's my first impression is this is genius. Because it looks like, you know, it's a screenshot of your phone or something like that. And if you bought, like, your kid an iPhone or something, what better paper to wrap it in?

This is somewhat genius. The fact that it's free is weird. But then I guess not because they're, I suppose all these companies are paying to be on this, this paper that gets ripped off immediately and thrown into the trash immediately. So, you're not really getting value for your bucks there.

Plus, the entire site spends a lot of time explaining what the concept of wrapping paper is. Okay. They kind of over-explain. I think we all understand what wrapping paper is. So, I've started to veer into the stupid. So, from my perspective, I think it's a stupid concept.

But I wish I'd thought of it because it's genius. Yeah, I'm sure they're getting valued at quite a lot of money. Fresh and unique. Saves you money. Sharing the love. I don't know so much about the love. Okay. The other story I came across was the Googlers living at Google.

This is on Recode and it's been getting passed around a lot. It's basically chronicling. I guess somebody did a Quora post and then somebody else did some stuff on Reddit about some of these kids. And not all of them are kids because the time frame on this goes from like 2005 to now.

And found all these Google employees that basically took about a year from renting anywhere and basically just lived on the campus or in the parking lot or whatever. Because Google offers all these great perks like 24 hours they're open. There's always food in the kitchen. They have showers on campuses. Blah, blah, blah.

So, yeah. If you work for Google, it's certainly possible to live your entire life there. Yeah. But these are clearly people who are socially malfunctioning. Yeah, you think? So much so that they're incapable of even getting a place to call their home.

Yeah. And it's kind of sad. I found all these stories to be a little sad. I don't think that these guys are homeless because they can't afford. They're working for Google. So, they're making a salary at least. In theory. But, I mean, we did run the reports on tech, people working in tech and the affordability of rents in both this area, Santa Monica.

And both in San Francisco. So, maybe not. But definitely the stories that are chronicled in this Recode article. These are guys that chose to do this because they don't really know what they're doing with their lives. Yeah. And they would live what we call alternative lifestyles.

Something I would not do. A quick note on the same sort of thing. Just because I saw this this week. This is from The Guardian, which is one of the reputable UK papers as opposed to the Daily Mail. Number of London's working poor surges 70% in 10 years. So, in the last 10 years, basically, most people living in London are living in poverty at this point.

Which, I believe, London is one of the most incredibly expensive cities I've ever visited. And it's gotten more and more expensive. Even back, I lived there in 97, 98. And most of the people I knew even then, to be able to live within London itself, were sharing rooms.

Nobody had an apartment of their own. They shared one with four or five other people. Or they did this huge, like, two-hour commute to get into town every day because it was just too damn expensive. And that was a long time ago. But that was also indicative of the stage of life you were at.

Yes. Like, when I was over there in London as a student, yeah, I was sharing with multiple big people. And so was everyone else. But, you know, we were in our early 20s and, you know, just happy to be away from home. There was some part of that. But some of the people I was working with were a bit older.

And they were, like, you know, day-to-day managers with bands and things like that. They were making decent money. It's just London. It's crazy. It's expensive. Security? It's a little bit weird to be doing the security segment without Jason because this is normally him.

And I just throw my hands up in the air and say, what are you going to do? But we have a security expert with us. Now, note that I'm in the marketing department. So it's been a while since my security credentials were up to date, shall we say. All right.

Well, you found some links. So talk me through them. Yeah. Well, let's start with the first one, which is about music, which, of course, is your area. And this was about a guy called William Bedell who has created a botnet of sorts.

And he has set up this botnet, and he believes that he could make money from Spotify using this botnet. In theory, one could. This is no different than what we've seen with people gaming YouTube and setting up bots that hit videos and play them and play them and play them.

It's a constant cat and mouse game between the companies and these people to do these sorts of things. The funny thing about this one is, you know, I was talking – this just made me laugh because, you know, he's going to be a big roller here. Using his botnet at the ultimate technology that he can achieve, it is possible to generate a sum total of $32.26 per day in royalties.

Yes, but that was with a very small botnet. You could scale, and there are botnets out there. Yes, but as soon as you do scale to that level, even basic security will wake up and catch it and shut it down. Because the other consideration is that it has to be your own music, our music that you have the rights to, so that you get the money.

Yes, exactly. I mean, there was an early version of gaming Spotify. I can't remember the name of the band right now, and I'll try to search for this after and put it in the links. But it was a band that basically did – I think it was 24 tracks that were like an hour long each, and they asked all their fans to put this album on before they went to sleep and just let it play.

Or no, it was like 152 10-second tracks. So it ran through all the tracks, so it just racked up plays. So, you know, they exhorted their fans, please put this on before you go to bed every night and just play it on repeat. And it would just rack up all these plays, and they were making a decent amount of money off of it. Way more than they would have anyways, because their music kind of sucked.

But, yeah, Spotify just needs to watch out for this kind of stuff, but I'm sure there are people looking into it. Oh, of course they do, because they want to pay out as little money as humanly possible. Sure. Those guys do all those things. So our CIA director got his email hacked. Yeah, this really is – on the one hand, it's not surprising.

Not at all. On the other hand, it is appalling. And it's ridiculous that – you know, I'm going to get a little political here. Okay. Because this is analogous and similar to the fact that Hillary Clinton had her email server at home. Basic security at the highest echelons of government.

Yeah, they don't understand what they're doing. They don't. It's so far behind the times. Now, to be fair, 90% of this guy's hacking was social engineering. Yes. It's not like he just broke in. He did the phone calls. He pretended to be someone with his cell phone agency.

He got some basic amount of information. Then he was able to deduce some guesses on passwords. One password, people. You fucking don't listen to us. But he was on AOL. Yes. Come on. The head of the CIA has an AOL account where he keeps some confidential information?

You've got to keep in mind what age these people are. Of course, they're not going to get this stuff. You know, I'm not going to name the name of the record label. But I heard something about someone coming in to be head of a digital department that is in his late 50s. And I know he knows nothing about digital.

He knows enough to get by in a meeting. But does he understand it? No. When you hit that age, you don't care anymore. You're not going to go learn all this stuff. And none of these people are going to learn this stuff. Hillary Clinton, I guarantee, had no idea there was an email server. I blame whoever the fuck she hired.

Yeah. It was stupid. But she had no idea. No. Not directly, no. It's interesting. This is actually something I've been working on at work in the last few weeks. Because we're realizing that a lot of people do work activities at home.

Yeah. They transfer files through their email. They log in to work computers from their home computers. Yes. And they potentially could be doing so from infected systems. Yeah. Well, there could be a key logger on their home computer capturing every single thing that they're doing.

Or somebody just monitoring the router or somebody sitting outside and acting to their wireless. Possibly. That's the reality of today's day and age is nobody keeps their work at work anymore. Yes. And nobody's, whatever secure institutions are being put into place in your workplace are not being done at your house.

Yeah. And so that's what I'm working on at the moment is actually getting our enterprise companies, customers to provide their employees with Northern Software at home. So that they will secure their home computers and increase their level of hygiene from end to end.

It's going under the Norton branding because if it was the other one, I already have some marketing for you. Semantic lockdown. Come on. That's not bad, right? No. That one's free. It's on the Norton. Norton lockdown. It still works. So I was flying a lot recently and I've definitely noticed that our tickets are way more high tech now.

And I always kind of had something in the back of my mind like, what the hell is going on on this ticket? And normally, you know me, I jack and a few, Jack and Coke, Jack and Coke, Jack and Coke, a couple of movies. By the end of that, the ticket is usually somewhere in the little vomit bag and I just leave the plane.

Not anymore. Not after I read this article. Yeah. So the barcode, which is one of those 3D barcodes or QR, which were vaguely somewhat invoked for a while as a marketing thing. And now you're only if you're using a QR code for marketing, you're so out of date.

It's ridiculous. But yeah, they have become useful for things like this and even like Ticketmaster or any kind of like encoded information to ensure that you have access to something. QR codes are great for that. Unfortunately, they're putting a lot of information in those codes.

More than they need to. A lot more than they need. In the case of the airplane boarding pass ones, they contain your name, potentially your address, your frequent flyer numbers. Which is generally the login account for you to log into an account, which then will have your credit card information.

Potentially. It also has your schedule. So, you know, people will know where you're going. That's okay, everybody's posting that on Instagram anyways. Yeah, true. That one's no big deal. But yeah, it's a lot of information. And, you know, there should at least be some level of encryption.

Or some notice of what information. I would like to know what information is on my ticket. Sure. You can't even find that out. Well, you can because you can just scan it yourself. You can. Yeah. Good times. So, yeah, I don't. I'm definitely never going to.

I'm always going to bring my plane tickets with me now. Yeah. And I'm going to go ahead and shred them. Yeah. That's just what you got to do. Don't leave them laying around. The Target Store. The Porn Player. Oh, this was brilliant. This is, there's going to be a lot more of this. Yeah. This is going to, again, it's, it's, it's, it's not only do, you know, kind of the older people in the workplace not really understand technology.

Corporations do not understand technology. Well, Target clearly has had multiple problems in that regard. So let's just explain what happened here. Target has some kind of a phone system. A PA system. A PA. Well, first off, first off, the phone system. Right. So these hackers call into the store and they say, can you connect me to extension 4135?

Yes. And whoever's there connects it to 4135. Which happens to be the intercom over the entire store, the PA for the entire store. Yeah. And then what happened in this case was they played a porno movie, the entire audio for a porno movie. And it went on for a long time.

Much longer than it probably should have. Absolutely. I assume there is an off button. Yeah. I don't know. I think, you know, you go in and you start pulling cables, you know, after a couple of minutes. You'd think they'd have a bigger, just a very, like a volume knob. Yeah. Or something. I don't understand why it went on for so long.

But the reason I titled this, like, where next, I'm sure Target has a pretty standard system from Cisco or from whoever else. You just need access to whatever the corporate handbook is that lets you know what the number is to dial into the intercom. And you're off to the races.

Every store I walk into in the next few months, I'm expecting to hear porn. Yeah. Me too. This will happen a lot. You listen to the clip, I assume, which is really kind of amazing. Well, you should, because it's actually, it's a mom with her child that is recording it.

And she's like, oh, I can't believe this stuff. And it's your standard porn moanings. There's nothing terribly, like, crazy or anything. But the child starts to cry. I'm like, why? It sounds like people being very happy. But, yeah, it was very funny.

And we're going to see, again, like I said, a lot more of this. It's not that difficult. And it's half social engineering and half understanding technology when the companies and the people that are operating it do not understand technology. Right. So Fitbit can get hacked, apparently. Yeah.

Fitbit can get hacked. The Bluetooth port is wide open. So anybody within, I think, what they're saying, like 10 feet or something of a Fitbit device can hack it within seconds, they're saying. Within 10 seconds.

You deliver 10 seconds after the device is connected, meeting even fleeting proximity of your problem. So, and then you basically can infect the device and put some malicious code on it. And then when that's connected back to your PC at home or that's connected to anything.

And I guess it is over Bluetooth. That was my first question to you. I don't know how I missed that in the early part of the article. Because I was like, do you actually have to plug it in? No. No, you do not. Yeah. So that's not good. Well, it's the biggest problem is that Fitbit were told of this problem, this vulnerability back in March.

And it remains unpatched today. Right. And that's the issue that all of these technology companies need to realize that they, when a vulnerability is identified, they need to respond. Because it's only a matter of time before it appears in an article like this.

Yeah. And people like us, or usually Jason, will be out here telling it to the world. And it's out in the public domain. And then anybody who wants to will then. Yeah. It becomes a weekend project to say, oh, let me see if I can hack my Fitbit. Yeah.

And it's not terribly difficult. It's not like there's a large barrier to entry to do a lot of this stuff. It's quite simple. You put a link from your own company here. How safe is your quantified self, tracking, monitoring, and wearable tech? Now, I've always been screaming about this a little bit.

This is terrifying. And it's funny because Jason and I went through this big period of talking about doing all this quantified self stuff. And I finally came away with the idea that this is a waste of time. If I'm monitoring myself enough and if I'm disciplined enough, I know I need to work out.

I don't need an app to tell me that I've worked out or not. I don't really need that. So I've stopped doing the quantified self stuff and just kind of lived my life. But the quantified self stuff, if you're talking about this, if you're using a Fitbit or if you're using something else and it can be hacked, you think, oh, that's bad.

They might get my password. No, they will know what you do every week, when you do it, where you're at. They will know that you run on Tuesday mornings. They will know that you're out of your house for an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes. They will know that you go to the gym on Wednesday. They will know that you do exactly what, what, what, what.

With the quantified self and all this tracking and monitoring and everything that people are doing now, if somebody hacks into that, they will know everything about you and what you do and when you do it. And that is not good. Yeah, it's, it's a constant worry.

And I think it's, people need to be, it's, it's not the one piece of information that might get out there. No, it's the conglomerate. Yeah. Bringing it all together. A whole lot of it together. Which again. And don't underestimate the power of that big data and their ability to stitch these things together.

No. To build this huge profile of you. And if you weren't careful with your passwords, all they need to do is get into one thing. Yeah. And then they can get into all the things. And then once they've seen, you know, once they've gotten into your Fitbit logs and your bank account records and your account records with United Airlines.

And it's so easy to put together. Big data is so easy to crunch. Now your entire life can be put together and accurate predictions about your future behavior can be put together. And that is what every single company in the world is trying to do to all of us, right? Yeah. Because they want to sell us their shit.

And they can figure out how to do so if they have all our data. Yay, world. Comment of the week. All right. So now we move on to comment of the week.

First off, we've got an iTunes five-star rating from TheRedCrow who says, worth your time. I wish all news, blogs, podcasts were like this one. Authentic, smart, entertaining, and actually informative.

Not the advertising, hyperbole, idiot fest that pretty much everything else has become. Add to that the professional-level audio mixing and you have magic. Do they curse sometimes? Yes. It's for adults, sunshine. Do they hold views that people who have only been exposed to mainstream information might find shocking?

Yes. Educate yourself. Do they sometimes use terms that people might find offensive? Yes. But when they realize they're wrong, they're big enough to correct themselves. This podcast is a hidden gem. I'm hooked and look forward to listening every week. Give it a try. I'd be surprised if you didn't feel the same.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you, TheRedCrow. That's much nicer comments than I ever get from Fergal. Look at all the nice things people say about this podcast. It's awesome. That's great. It's good. We also got another five-star rating from, sorry, it was an Arabic script and I can't read that.

So whoever you are, thank you very much. Arabic or Arabic? Arabic. Sorry. Well, you said adults. You said adults. Oh, I said adults. I said it the way it's meant to be said. Yes. Very proper. Very proper for an Irishman. So whoever you are, thank you very much.

You wrote, recently I discovered this podcast and now can't miss any episode. Listener from Oman. So we have a listener from Oman. How awesome is that? So thank you very much. So via our website, GrumpyOldGeeks.com, we heard back from our buddy, Elliot Earls, who left us the nonsensical comment the other week with quite a long comment.

So I'll just run through this really quickly. And then I think both Fergal and I have some comments on this one. Dear Geeks, love the show. Great job. I'm writing in reference to last week's comment of the week and your desire for clarification regarding this tweet. The one who loves guns, that I'm going to come back to later because that is the only funny thing you've ever said to us.

I love that one. The one who loves guns commented that any form of humor that needs to be explained is not very effective. Really? Yeah. This begs the simple question, effective for whom? You dig, think about it, I'll wait. You really think you're funny, dude. My tweet was a form of waterparking.

I was waterparking you. Waterparking is akin to, but distinct from trolling. You know how you have to explain your humor? You now also have to explain what you did because I'd never heard of waterparking. I couldn't do that. You heard of it? No, I'm going to come back to that later. Okay, okay. In waterparking, one assumes the role of a boob, moron, noob, or rube with the intent of provoking a condescending response from the one being waterparked.

The results can be hilarious and or fabulously entertaining for the waterparker. And no one else. That was my own addition there. So in this instance above, I was assuming the role of a man smart enough to be listening to people discussing stegnography to be clueless enough to assume that it was the study of a stegman gram. I was conflating and confusing stegman with stegman.

That's apparently the basis of your entire joke. And I was waterparking you to boot. What was the payoff? My kids, age 9, 11, and 13 all howled with belly laughter as you confusedly read my tweet on your podcast. A few of my grad students, too, found your confusion amusing. I hope you're requiring them to listen to it in your class because that will increase our listenership.

I see waterparking as an advanced situationist artistic practice. Wow. Leveraging contemporary media to expose the absurdity of the shitstorm our culture has become. Thanks for participating, fellas, and keep up the good work. I genuinely, honestly, and authentically love your show. Regards, Elliot Earls, designer in residence.

Well, thank you, Elliot. I mean, I don't want to crap on you too much because you do seem to be a sincere listener. Yeah. But it's still not funny. Yeah. Bit of a stretch. Happy that I could provide some amusement to your kids. That's good.

We like that. But, yeah, waterparking, not something I've heard of. Reminds me of the people that basically dial into the local news and do the bop-a-booey thing. It's funny for you and no one else. Yeah. Like, the beginnings of the joke, in quotations, was conflating steganography with Stedman.

The guy's name is Stedman. Yeah, it's not Stegman. So, I think really what happened was that you found this funny through the filter of your misspelling of the guy's name. Now, to be fair, I've done very similar things after 19 beers.

Okay. Fair enough. Are you saying that Elliot maybe had a couple of beers before this? I'm thinking there might have been a few beers. Okay. My other issue is with waterparking. I've never heard of this term. I said, oh, that's kind of interesting. That's a term. Let me look it up. Oh, good. You looked it up.

You did the research because I was going to do that and totally forgot. I did a bit of Googling. Nothing. There was no word, nothing on Google, on waterparking. I said, oh. But it's an advanced situationist artistic practice. So, Elliot has defined it.

Okay. Because I believe that this is Elliot's term. Right. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary.com. That is the definitive place where you're going to find any term, any definition of a term that's used in the internet world. Yes. No mention of waterparking.

No mention of waterparking. It doesn't exist. Elliot, this is you. You've defined this. Congratulations. I hope your word takes off and that you become famous for it. I hope it takes off. But today, there is no such thing as waterparking. Yes. And I, yeah, I don't get it. But, hey, I'm glad that you had fun.

So, thank you, Elliot. And I'm glad. Thanks for listening, Elliot. Please do. Please do keep listening. Keep up with us because it's fun. And we can't keep up with you. If you would like to confuse us by waterparking us, please do so on Twitter at GOGpodcast at grumpy oldgeeks.com.

Don't bother with Facebook because it's such a mess. All the Facebook pages, you can't see a goddamn thing. And on our Patreon page, patreon.com slash GOGpodcast. Crap, I can't remember what it is. See, this is what happens when Jason isn't here. Whatever our Patreon page is, check that out.

Software, apps, and gadgets. Virgil brought over some lovely beers, and we are currently, this is definitely not the first one, drinking one called Your Father Smelt of Elderberries by Stone. And go ahead and say this again. Yeah, this is the stone stochasticity project, which is basically where stone go off in weird tangents and add unusual ingredients to make their beers.

And yeah, this one, they've used elderberries. And yeah, you can taste the elderberries. Yes, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. I don't really know what, I couldn't tell you what an elderberry really is. It tastes of some kind of berry. It tastes of this. Yeah, I guess it's elderberry.

It's very good. The term stochastic occurs in a wide variety of professional or academic fields to describe events or systems that are unpredictable due to the influence of a random variable, like water tabling or water, whatever the hell you use. Parking. Parking. Water tabling or waterboarding.

Waterboarding. It's a very different thing. So for software apps and gadgets this week, I thought we would do something that Jason and I never really get the opportunity to do. In fact, we haven't even talked about it since the episode that we did with Felicia Michaels, because Felicia had kids and we asked her a little bit about this.

We have Fergal here, who is the father of two. And I'm very interested because I will soon be the father of one at some point in the very near future-ish. Interested in technology and how that affects kids and how you deal with it as a parent. Certainly, I've had enough experiences with nieces and nephews to know that there is an innate need, desire to hold on to iPhones and iPads.

And their comprehension of them is astounding. They know how to, I just remember my niece particularly knew how to work the iPhone to find photos and videos of herself before she could even speak. It's that quick. And the desire to be on those systems is huge with kids.

Well, they see us on them and they want to get involved too. They want to see what they're capable of. Right. What I think is different about kids is they're like sponges, of course, and they learn how to do these things. Not only do they learn, but they remember. Right. Every time I go back to my phone, I have to go, oh, how do I change the background of this again?

I have to go through all this process and figure it out. Right. They remember. They just get back in. They do it. It becomes second-hand nature to the past. I mean, to a certain extent, it's how our parents looked at us with computers and they're a whole new level and we're looking at them now. So you not only have a very young child, but you also have one in the school of high, which is a whole different set of challenges.

So I'm particularly interested in how you're dealing with that because that's, I can't even imagine. You know, every week when we do this show and we talk about things like Snapchat and all this, I'm horrified at the thought of what is happening with teenagers. Yeah. So I have a 15-year-old daughter and, you know, first off, I have to say she's a very good kid.

It's not that I have to worry too much about her, but we all know the internet is a pretty horrible place. Yeah. There is so much nasty stuff out there and nasty people. And, of course, I want to protect her from that. People want to water park you left, right and center.

Stop. You're just going to bring that into the mainstream way before it shows. I'm trying to get him on Urban Dictionary so there'll be the mention of Grumpy Old Geeks. I'll get some more of those. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I want to protect my daughter from some of this nastiness out there.

But at the same time, I want to make sure she views the internet as a tool in the same way we all do. And that she uses it for education and for research and so on. Which is so many 14-year-olds are what to do. Yeah. Actually, you are very lucky.

Your daughter is pretty fantastic in that way. So, you've got a lot easier. But there are things that you are doing. I know that you shut down access at a certain time period. Because the issue is more about enabling her to focus on her studies and not be distracted by, in her case, it's YouTube.

She loves YouTube. She loves all the YouTubers out there, the personalities, the bullshit they're all up to. It's so fucking inane. But she loves it. It is the natural extension of reality TV. Yes. I mean, that's what all this is. It's horrifying and it makes no sense to us.

But that's what the kids love. But these are the celebrities that she's much more interested in than traditional celebrities, music or movie celebrities. Right. So, my control of her comes down to mostly about time. Right.

And she's got two devices that I lock down. She's got her cell phone. So, she has an iPhone. But she has an iPhone that has no data package on it. Oh, okay. So, that's the first thing. Her phone is a phone. It has to be on Wi-Fi. And text message.

And beyond that, unless she's on Wi-Fi, she has no data. Which is relatively ubiquitous. It is. So, she doesn't have it at school, but I see her going to soccer. Yeah. As soon as she gets to soccer, there is city Wi-Fi at the soccer park. Yeah. And she gets on her phone there.

Right. Okay. It's very hard for me to lock that down. Yeah. But we'll talk about that in a bit. And she also has a PC. And she does most of her research and her looking at videos on PC. But to be honest, she's more inclined sometimes to look at these YouTube videos on her phone.

A tiny little screen rather than another PC. That's another really weird thing that the kids are just, they'd rather watch on the phone. They're just used to it now. Yeah. I mean, look at the monitor I have in front of me. I want big. I want huge. I want to mention that. But yeah, it's a whole thing with kids. And again, the text neck and just even the eye issue.

The eye strain. Yeah. And the issue of looking at devices before you go to bed at night. Yeah. That's a big problem. You should shut off your phone for half an hour. Although. Not that we do not. I do have to say, I was just heard, I was listening to a podcast that was talking about this very same thing, which is that the blue light being emitted from the screens, et cetera, et cetera, is supposed to disrupt our natural sleep methods.

There was a study, and I will have to find this and get this in the show notes. And Jason's probably laughing right now because he knows I'm not going to do it. But there is a study that just came out that found four aboriginal societies that are currently existing now that do not have any access to higher technology.

And they found out that on average, they slept an hour less than we do. So as much as complaining as we're doing about our sleep being disrupted by all our screens and everything like that, pre-technology societies on this planet that we're studying right now still sleep less than us, and they're fine.

Yeah. So maybe we're just boiny bitches. I think we are. Yeah. To be honest, I used to get about eight hours sleep a night since we had a new baby, 10 months old now. Yeah. I now get about five and a half hours sleep each night. And I feel better. Yeah.

I feel better all day long. I'm not tired. I feel great. My sweet spot is six to seven hours. If I have more than that, I don't feel good. That's what I need. Let's take this back to where we were. Very interesting. So what do I do? First thing, I apply a lot of security at the router.

Wow. Okay. So if you have... Wow. Most people don't even change the admin passwords on their routers. The vast majority of your Wi-Fi routers now have family protection, family safety built in. So you go into your router, you identify the devices that your kids use, and you can define a time period during which that device is allowed to be active.

Not only that, but you can also block specific sites. Right. So for example, on my daughter's phone... You could actually shut her off of YouTube. I shut her off YouTube. And I do. Right. I do that on her phone during certain periods. Okay. Okay. So she knows she cannot look at those sites.

Right. And that's the way it is. So that's the first thing I do. The next level up from that, I make use of... Excuse the plug here, but we do have a product in Norton called Norton Family. And this is a family security software. And its role is to monitor and block kids' activity online.

Now, what does it... By that, are we talking about stopping them from signing up for things? What does it do? Multiple levels. So first thing is, you can define a profile for your kid in terms of what kind of sites you want them to look at or not look at.

So we give basic profiles based on their age that you can modify. So basically what we've done is we've gone out and categorized every single website in the world, believe it or not. And we assign it to a category. And it might be pornography.

That sort of thing. It might be pornography, it might be religion, it might be medical... This pornography is okay for 11 to 13? Absolutely. That sort of thing. Yeah, of course. So, you know, you can create a profile for your kid based on what you want to allow them to see. Right. Okay. That's the first thing.

The next thing is we define... You can define a set of information about your kid. Address, phone number, social security number, et cetera. And you say, if this kid tries to put this information into any form... Block it.

There you go. Shut it down. That's really interesting. Okay. That's smart. Also, we can track profiles created by the kid on any of the major social networks. It's one thing if they have a profile on Facebook where they claim that they're who they are. But if they create another profile where they claim they're 18 or 21, that's a problem.

Based on email address, name... Well, basically, we watch for profiles being created. Right. Okay. On the system. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Facebook is loaded. Profiles created. It recognizes behavior. Yeah. It creates a report. Okay. Now, the other thing we do is we track every search that the kid does.

You're listening to Yahoo? Everything she... I think we do it over Yahoo. It doesn't matter. But we at least have it for Google. So, everything that she Googles, I can list it out and see what she's looking for. Right. Secondly, then, everything that she looks at... How to shut down family security software.

Yeah. Everything she looks at on YouTube. All the videos. I have a list of all the videos that she's watched. I bet that's some fun viewing. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I've got a level of monitoring. The important thing to, however, with all of this is to not be...

Not to try to police your kid. You do want to upset your kid. You're supposed to engage. You do this with your kid. Yes. You let them know why you're doing it and explain to them. And, you know, it'll pop up a message saying, this site is blocked. But if you feel it shouldn't be blocked or if you need to see it...

Talk to daddy. Ask your dad. And I can, with a click of a button, you know, I already have received a message at that point to say, she tried to access a blocked site. Right. And I can allow it with just a click of a button. And I have that on my phone. So no matter where I am, I can actually do that.

Right. And the final point I want to make on this, because I don't want to run too long on it, is on phones, there's a very interesting tool that you can get there called an app locker. Right. And this is used normally for people who don't want their wives or partners to see what they have on their phones.

If you happen to have Tinder on your phone, maybe you want to drop it into your app locker so that... It's not easily accessible. Nobody can access it. If your wife borrows your phone and is scrolling through, she will not be able to access it. Now that can be used also for kids.

You can take all the apps that you don't want your kid to have, Snapchat will be a nice example, and you download it, put it on the phone, install it, then drop it in the app locker, encode it, and then they won't be able to make you sound.

That does take a certain amount of monitoring what's going on with the kids these days. So you should listen to this podcast because we talk about those apps all the time. But yeah, I mean, you would have to know what the app is. You would have to wait for the report about it. And you obviously must have heard that report that we did about the calculator that wasn't a real calculator program.

That was used to hide photos. Yeah. So the kids are working the same games. So that's what you've got to watch for. Yeah. App Locker is really interesting. I mean, yeah. And the whole family of every stuff, this stuff has gotten so sophisticated. I mean, obviously, this is not a world that I delve into except when I talk to you about it.

It's somewhat sophisticated, but let me tell you, our ability to do the level of tracking that we want to is fine on PCs. It's good on Android because Apple locked down their phone and created so few APIs into their browser.

It actually restricted us a lot from being able to provide these services to our customers. However, just recently, they've opened up some APIs into Safari, some filtering APIs. So now you can, in fact, filter content coming in through your iPhone.

Yeah. Which probably we, I mean, I think Apple realizes that we have to do, especially now in this day and age. Yeah. And the end of the problem with all of this stuff, though, is that it's so easily, all it takes is somebody bringing over a laptop or somebody bringing over their own phone that that isn't, that has a data plan.

Sure. And just going to the library and you're getting a computer there, then you're kind of screwed and all this goes out the window. But again, I think what you said is the key is communication. It's not just installing these things and saying, too bad. It's going through the process of talking about why you're not ready to see this yet or why you shouldn't have this account.

I do think my daughter gets pissed off sometimes that she can't do what she wants to do. So it's also called being a teenager. But overall, she respects the rules of the house. I do hope I end up with a teenager like yours. I hope so, too, Brian. I hope this next kid or this current kid grows up to be as good.

It's a boy. You can do whatever you want.

Media candy. So tell me about Oprah, Virgo. So I'm not the biggest fan of Oprah, but this week they're doing like a seven-night event with this show called Believe or Beliefs.

Right. Would this be on her own network? It is. It's called Own? Yes. Oh, yeah. I wonder who's on the cover of the Oprah Winfrey magazine this month. Let me check. I think it might be Oprah. I think it might be Oprah. Okay. But the reason I just draw attention to this, it's actually a really good documentary series about the world religions.

And, of course, Oprah's all religiously and all that, and that's fine. I am, like Brian here, not a subscriber to any religion whatsoever. I'm an avowed atheist. However, I think it's very important to know about and understand the world religions.

It's at the core of anthropology. I agree 100%. It's the core of us as a species. Our history is written through our religions. It's so important. And you cannot be an atheist unless you've taken multiple religions in the world classes and understand all the religions.

And you cannot make that decision to say, I reject all of it until you study it. And so this series is, I find it fascinating. Sometimes what's fascinating about it is just how ridiculous the things that people believe in.

It's just phenomenal. Oh, yeah. But still, I respect him for it. Yeah. And the other thing that I think is interesting is the very big role that ceremony plays in every single one of these religions.

And the fundamental ceremony is something that's clearly important to us as humans. And I think it's something that atheists never address. And I think that we do need to. Because if you think of any of the things that we do on Christmas, this is based on, well, if you're a Christian, it's based on Jesus.

If you're realistic about it, it's stolen from the pagans. It's a very special religious ceremony for them. So all of these steps and important points in our lives and the things that draw us together and bring us together and create the sense of community and have our special days, those are all based on religion.

And as an atheist, we espouse them and we join in on them, even though we don't believe in it. But they are very important. Christmas is as important to me as it is for any devout Christian. It's in a very important day, even though I don't subscribe to the belief behind it.

And if we didn't have, again, religion being a very, really good bellwether for the history of us as a species, how all these things came together. So, you know, I don't begrudge religion. It's great. When we were sitting in the, you know, in the mud huts and looking up at the stars, we needed reasons to come up with stuff.

And we came up with reasons. And we also came up with all these fantastic ceremonies and things. And that's what keeps us together as human beings, even if we don't necessarily need the original reason behind creating those things anymore. I think the very fact that, you know, she makes seven nights to explain all the relations of the world, of course.

I don't even know if that's enough. Yeah, it's not, of course. But the fact that there are that many religions with a diverse set of beliefs and everyone is so adamant. They're all the one true faith. We are all the one and the only true one. So that should give you pause. I'm actually very interested in this.

And I'm glad that you brought this to my attention because normally I would not have looked at anything on Oprah. And I will be watching this. I want to watch this. Part of the reason is my girlfriend is involved in the PR for this. Wow. You're just, you're really just shilling your own shit tonight. This has nothing to do with your personal interest.

Speaking of religion. So I will now bring up one. Actually, let me just say really quickly that I would probably rather, I will probably enjoy this Oprah's seven night series thing more than I enjoyed Bill Maher's whole diet. Religulous.

Which was funny and fine. Yeah, yeah. But as an atheist, I don't want people to think that Bill Maher speaks for all of us. I think he can be pretty much kind of a dick about it. Dawkins is also an asshole. Yeah. I agree with their belief. Millicent atheism.

Hitchens did it right. Hitchens did it right. Somewhat, yeah. Sometimes he had a few too many genitalics. It does not interest me in any way. No, it doesn't interest me either. The whole point of atheism is I don't believe everybody do whatever the fuck they want to do. That's the point. Unless you happen to be doing this.

The Hodge is on right now where everybody goes to Mecca. And there's actually fascinating stories. And again, this is another one of these links that I'm not going to put in the show notes, Jason. So forget it. About how Mecca deals with the influx of 5 million people that come for two weeks every year.

And how they basically built their entire city using technology to accommodate and then retract, to expand and retract. Although it doesn't really always work so well because there was a stampede death and the death tolls have now been raised to 2,121 people have died because they are told to go to this one city once a year.

You know, you can't really be sad about it. And it's, I guess they, maybe they die happy. I don't know. But it's still tragic. It is tragic. You can say it's stupid, but, you know.

No, we can't say it's stupid. Of those 5 million people, a lot of them would probably have died anyway. Because out of 5 million people, 2,000 people are going to die. Oh, okay. So you're just playing the numbers? Play the numbers. You're playing the numbers. Play the numbers. Let's talk about that Irish potato famine at some point and how many people died.

We'll crunch the numbers on that one first. Sure. 20% of the entire country died? Sure. Yeah. They were bound to die anyways. They all fucking smoked. No. All right. So let's move on to some good news.

The best thing I've seen probably all week and I may see all month. I like the band Hot Chip. They're kind of an EDM-ish sort of intellectually kind of funny band. They're really good live. They've been doing a live cover of Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark for a long time, which is very good.

And then they just put out the best video ever. It's all 80s clips from VHSs and it's fantastic. So it was a fun. Did you watch it? I watched. I don't think you're a fan of the music. No, not particularly. You know, I watched the first, all the 80s shows pieces.

Yeah. Then when the music came on, I've got to say I was disappointed. I was expecting it to be a really good version of. I think it is. I think it was. You and I disagree. There are some bands we agree on. Hot Chip's not one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Courtney Cox wasn't there.

So there just was no point. I was a little disappointed they didn't find like an early or just drop that in for a few seconds. Yeah. It would have been good. But yeah. Amazon is finally realizing that they might have a pay. Well, first off, there's payola going on online with reviews, which nobody wants to talk about.

And then there's just the fake ones. And then there's a whole take-ification of Amazon where everybody's writing funny reviews. What was that word? Take-ification. Take-ification. What the hell is that? George Takei. Oh, Takei. Okay. Because he started the process of writing funny reviews.

And now everybody is trying to write. Everybody is water parking. Everybody's water parking Amazon with their hilarious only to them reviews. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a big problem.

But they're attempting to tackle it. So, yeah. Good luck. It's about time that they did. The only way to do that is to throw 10,000 Filipinos at it that are highly underpaid. Yeah. That's the way this works for Facebook and everyone else. No, I think, you know, when I look at an Amazon review, you know, and we all depend on Amazon reviews now.

It's the first thing we look at. We're going to buy something. I listen to grumpy old geeks. Yeah. I make my decision based on that. But it's, you know, I do think Amazon needs to shut this down. No, it's a real expectation. If Amazon wants to continue on the path that they're going right now, then yes, this has to be dealt with.

And don't they have their certified buyer reviews, which is better? That's not a solution. Because that brings in the whole Twitter verification thing, which is an issue. And then it's the one percenters all over again. It's the haves and the have-nots. Do you have the blue star? You don't have the blue star? Fuck you. Well, how do you get a blue star?

All of that shit starts to happen. Yeah. So, it's a little insane. But, yeah, good luck with that, Amazon. Just make sure that all the very, very cheap labor that you hire actually can try to speak English. Otherwise, it's not going to go so well. You posted this, and I saw it about two minutes after that.

I saw it. I am so fucking thrilled about this. Absolutely fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. One of the best shows ever produced. They've been talking about a movie for- I actually did not realize you were a fan. Absolutely. But I don't know anybody else that is. It freaks me out that, you know, this was a show back in the early 90s.

The early 90s. Yeah? Yeah. Early 90s, I think. And fantastic show. You know, if you haven't watched it, please do. Typical British show. It ran, what, three seasons? Two and out. Two drunk women. Yeah. That's basically what it's about. She was a PR agent. The other one was a faded star. Yeah. They just got drunk all the time.

One of them had a kid. They were still trying to- They were in their late 30s, I think, on the show. Oh. I know. We're past that age now. Which is terrifying. No, no. I think they were much older. You think they were much older? And I am scared of how old they're going to be in this movie.

They posted the first shot. They don't look a day older. So, of course, they are. Yeah. Jennifer Saunders. Always hilarious in everything that she's ever done. Joanna Lumley. Of course. Goddess. Yes. But she was in The Avengers.

Yes. She was in The Avengers. She was purdy. Right. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I might guess. I think you're right. Yeah. And she was super hot. Yeah. And she has just, you know, she's one of these fantastic British actresses. Oh, yeah. Well, and when the British actresses play that role where it's just, you know, she's just grabbing a bottle of vodka and mainlining it.

And she's just fantastic. It was one of the funniest shows I'd ever watched in my life. I was dying. This was on when I was in college. I loved every second of it. I had the biggest crush on Julie Savala, who played the daughter, Safi. Although she got a little rotund later.

So I wonder if she might have lost her weight as they're coming back. But she was always very cool and cute. I can see your, I can understand your crush. Yeah, I definitely had the crush. I didn't share it, but I can understand it. Yeah. But, you know, I definitely, this was a great show and very much a part of my college age years.

And my mom loved this. Like, I watched this with my mom and we died laughing all the time. It was a great, great, great show. And I, I'm so thrilled that they're finally getting around to doing a movie. Yeah. So there's no way it's going to be done. I also love the fact that, you know, 90% of it occurred in the kitchen.

Yes. It's one room. Well, typical British sitcom. There really wasn't much going on. There's like two sets. Yeah. Everything will be that. So cheap, so simple, but just really well written and hilarious. And then when they did their big travel episode, like they would go to like Morocco, it'd be one set, which was the hotel room.

That was it. Oh, you need. I love that, but they didn't rely on it. They didn't need it because the dialogue was so fucking snappy and it was just all great. Or they went to France and it was just that ramshackle cottage that was the wrong place. Great episode. That episode was awesome. Oh, yeah.

All right. And speaking of shows ending, we would be remiss not to mention this. Mythbusters is finally putting an end to it. They will do one more season in 2016 and that will be that. So the writing was on the wall. Yeah. And I think it is time. What a great show, though.

I think they really did a service. Oh, yeah. To science. To science and to different communities. To geekdom. Yeah. To movie buffs. To... Well, they really kind of spread... They walked all over all of those fields really, really well.

The writing was on the wall when we let go with the B-team carry and all those guys. And we knew it wasn't going to last too much longer. But they've done a long... This has been a long run. So good on you. And it was a great... And like I said, much like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I mean, these guys are like...

They're out there and they're proponents for science and for geekdom and for all of that in a time period where we actually really needed it. Yeah. And in a good way. Like, you know, there's geekdom that's Facebook Zuckerberg. Which is, man, not so good. And there's geekdom like these guys, which is, let's learn about stuff.

Let's be interested in the world. Let's make sure the kids know that it's cool to know this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. And it's fun. It's interesting. And Mythbusters did that really well. They did... Everything was done and it was fun. Yeah. But smart. So cheers to you guys.

And I hope you'll always blow stuff up. Are you kidding me? Love it! Fergal is a fan of... Oh, gosh. What's that? Blue Apron? Is that... You and I...

You let me try it with your code. And I liked it as well, but I do prefer to do my shopping myself, so I'm fine with that. But I totally understand that you get it. But we both like to cook. And so I found an article that was made for us. I stayed away from the beer. But mind-blowing fruit and vegetable facts that will seem obvious in retrospect.

All right. I want to know if you... Don't read it yet. I'm going to... Close the link. I didn't read this today. I don't know. Do you know what the difference is between red peppers and green peppers? Ripeness. Damn. You're right. Exactly.

Okay. That's the only difference. Do you know that some peppers have three nodes at the bottom and some have four? Yes. I do know that. They're male and female. I did not know that. Yeah. Which one's three and which one's four. I don't know.

Peppers are gender specific. I did not know. I don't know why the difference is, though. Which one is which. Yeah. But yeah, the reason that red and orange and yellow peppers are more expensive than green peppers is they're actually the right ones and the green ones aren't.

So you have to grow them longer. Do you know what the difference is between green olives and black olives? No. The black are right. Black or green or not. That makes sense. Yeah. See, again, in retrospect, it makes sense. That's the whole point of the article. That's why they named it that. What is the difference between green beans and beans?

Green beans are the outer part and beans are the inner part. The green beans are picked young before the seeds develop. If you don't pick them in time, the beans keep growing and the pods wither and you end up with a pod full of navy beans. Same plant. Zucchini or just baby squash? You let them keep growing, they'll become a squash.

Disagree. That's bullshit. Let them dry out and you've got a gourd. That's true. Okay. You're just saying bullshit on the middle step. I'm saying bullshit. Like, you know, I've grown zucchinis. Okay. And you can grow them and grow them and grow them. They're still zucchinis. They don't take on the, you know, any other shapes.

They just grow bigger. Okay. We'll write in. Let's see. Baby bella mushrooms are really baby portobello mushrooms. Baby corn is really baby corn. Baby carrots, however, are not. Not baby carrots. That is a complete load of shit. Oh, I saw it. When I read that story for the first time, I've never bought baby carrots since then.

Really? Out of protest. Huh. It's kind of bullshit. It kind of is. It's wasteful. It is. It is. It's ridiculously bad for the environment. Yeah. And there's no difference. But just get a damn full carrot. Nah, they're very convenient. You know, I often sit there with my carrots and my hummus.

You eating your baby carrots in your Uber are the reason this society is falling apart. But no, I agree. It is wasteful. And I was shocked when I heard that. Yeah, I was shocked about that. Asparagus are the young shoots of a plant with delicate fronds that will actually grow taller than us.

That's very cool. And still make your piece smell funny. Oh, God. Artichokes are thistle flowers that haven't bloomed. Really? Really. That's what it says. Okay, that's it. I just thought that was kind of interesting. That's good. And the other interesting thing, we are coming up on Halloween.

This episode will come out on the 23rd, which is the week before Halloween. There is a decent size. And when I read it, I was like, it sounds fucking big to me. Asteroid that's going to safely pass Earth on Halloween. So please do not post the links about how the end of the Earth is coming.

You can file that in the bin with your memes from Back to the Future. Do not post it. We are not going to die. It's not going to hit us. But it's very big. And the cool thing about this is that there is a website that will let you watch the virtual telescope.

The virtual telescope project will be observing the past. This is the same thing that all the main scientists are going to watch. And you will be able to watch that exact feed online as it passes the Earth. That's awesome. Pretty damn cool. So yeah, you know, asteroids pass the Earth every day.

Yes. Are pretty regular. We cannot. We have tracked less than 1% of 1% of 1%. And you know, when they come upon them to go, oh, and sometimes they're only like a week or two out before they actually see them. Yes. But they're tracking everything that's coming towards us.

Yes. Or that's in orbit around us. Yes. It's still slightly worrying because, you know. Well, it's terrifying. We don't know. Yeah. We really don't know. And sometimes an asteroid will come towards us and could bounce off the atmosphere. Yeah. But some could come right through. They could come.

And if you've been wondering where. Damn it. No. I have to die hard guy. Bruce Willis. If you've been wondering where Bruce Willis is, since he hasn't appeared anywhere recently, he is sitting in Cape Canaveral, waiting to be launched at a moment's notice, along with the other space cowboys or whoever the fuck was in that stupid movie.

Which is why I totally blew the joke. Yeah. I'm not even going to edit that. No. I blew it. I'm screwed. Yeah. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know anything. And we really need to start building a system. And a lot of this has been a big topic for a lot of well-noted scientists saying that how about we start just building a lot of things that are looking out at all angles.

But at the end of the day, they move so fast. We can only see so far. Certainly. They're small enough, big enough to kill us. Small enough not to be noticed. But hey, you know, we as atheists, you know, you can adopt a perspective that if something's coming and it's going to hit us, it's going to hit us.

It's going to wipe out the earth. And that's it. Shit happens. Yeah. And in another billion years, some other planet will spawn a couple of other people and hopefully they won't need an emoji to stop online trolling. Or water parking. Maybe they will know in advance that it's going to be ineffective.

Exactly. Just like water parking. Yes. Deep thoughts by the grumpy old Germans and Irish. Well, I'd very much like to thank Fergal for coming in and filling in for Jason, who actually isn't on vacation.

He's just taking a personal day, apparently. Oh, we totally forgot to make fun of him about the gun thing. I know. I was thinking about that. I'm going to circle back on that now. So my closing shout out is for Jason. Our buddy, Elliot, who was water parking us, did his one good joke was the guy who likes to talk about guns.

Jason, I know you were looking for a new Twitter handle because you figured Jason.com doesn't work anymore. And as per usual, you change everything all the time. Anyways, I've had the same email address for like 25 years. I never change anything. But at the guy who likes guns. Sounds good to me.

It's all yours, Jason. Please take it. So it's all yours. But again, thank you very much, Fergal, for coming in. I'm sure you won't be promoting this online because you'll probably get fired by Symantec if they hear all this stuff. But I appreciate you taking the chance. Thanks, Brian. It's been a pleasure being here.

And the beers were fantastic and Grumpy Old Geeks will re-inverse. Yeah, they will. We're getting to it. That last one was kind of strong. Had a little kick to it, didn't it? Yes, it did. I think that might have been up around about a 10%-er. Yeah, so good times.

Thank you all very much for listening. Please do follow us on Twitter. Go to our Patreon page. Give us a couple bucks so we can buy more beer for Fergal when I have to get him in. Jason has a cold or a shot himself. Which people with guns tend to do. I'm Brian Schilmeister.

You can follow me on Twitter at Slender Funnels. I'm Fergal Lyons. You cannot follow me. Yeah, there you go. You can't follow him. Until next time with Fergal, well, that will involve a gun death. But you could be here. It'd be fun. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. Talk to you soon. 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. It's a few words and a five-star rating.

And please do 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. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog. And get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stochansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy.

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 33.

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