135: The Satchel of Life

Nope. Nope. Nope. Motherfucker! This site is killing me. 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 November 6, 2015. I am Jason DeFilippo. And I am Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? I am doing good, and now I want to see the Star Wars movie. I'm actually a little glad that you wanted to start recording late because I was able to watch this trailer about 19 times.

Yes, this is the Asian trailer that just came out today, and holy shit. This one actually shows you a little bit of what the story is going to be, finally. Finally. Yeah, which is, you know, basically a remake of Star Wars 3, no, 4, I guess now, A New Hope.

So, except now it's the chick who's on a desert planet and about to embark on a great adventure. Yes, yes, this is the hero's journey. This is some Joseph Campbell shit going on right here. But, hey, I'm in. Yeah, it looks great. I'm very excited about this movie, and I'm very excited about my Disney stock, which I just see going through the roof.

Okay, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Mm-hmm. So, what do you got? What have I got? Well, friend of the show, Fergal, sent me a link that we should discuss because it's certainly in our wheelhouse. It's from 538 Economics, and this is about maybe Spotify isn't killing the music industry after all, written by Andrew Flowers.

And it goes back and discusses David Lowery, singer, guitarist for the band Cracker, and before that, camper van Beethoven. Both bands I actually quite liked, who a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, wrote a very infamous blog post lambasting Pandora for basically only paying him $17, despite over a million plays of their hit song, Lo.

And then it goes on and on and on and starts talking about how Spotify may be paying some people, maybe not. But the only interesting thing I found about this is at the very end where basically Lowery is discussing his two bands and how he actually sees Spotify as a bonus for Cracker because Cracker had big hits, and the big hits are getting played as opposed to they probably just would have been ignored.

But as he sees it as a bad thing for his other band, Camper van Beethoven, because they were more of an album-oriented culty band, and they basically, you know, you had to buy the album for him to make any money. So there you go. Winners and losers. Yeah, I went through this, and, you know, it's kind of comparing apples and oranges, though, because Camper van Beethoven was out at a time when people still bought albums.

You know, it could have been different now, but we just don't know, because you can't replay the same script in the future, you know? Yeah, well, as I was having a little bit of a discussion with Virgil about this, I said that the point that makes me the most sad about this is the fact that if you are writing interesting album-oriented stuff, you don't have to stand a chance anymore.

And that's the way that the music industry has shifted, and that's what streaming has done. And I think that's very, very unfortunate, because as we all know, basically if you want to make it right now, you're writing hits, and that's that. Right, because everybody has the attention span of a gnat. Exactly. So, speaking of that, moving on.

Moving on. Another Uber Economy, Web 2.0 Economy, Permalancer angry article, also in the links. This one is more about how every, you know, all the big companies are basically trying to make everybody into freelancers so they don't have to pay for anything.

Right. I read this article, and it made me very angry. This one made me extremely angry. Well, it made me angry at the author, not the content. Yes. Okay. I hated this article, because it's just bitching and moaning. It's like, okay, find another way to make money.

You know, if you feel that way about bitching and moaning, you probably wouldn't like our own podcast. Oh, I would hate our podcast. That's fine. No, I just did not like this article. It really made me angry. And it was just like a wah, wah, wah. I think it's a very deserved wah, wah, wah, wah.

I think this is a horrible practice that we've gotten into that, and unless somebody's out there bitching and moaning, employers are just going to keep doing it. This is wrong. I mean, I know from personal experience, multiple people now that would have had a full-time job that are now working two to three part-time jobs because employers refuse to hire anyone full-time.

They're getting screwed out of health care. They're getting screwed out of retirement programs. They're getting screwed out of everything because this is now common practice. Well, if everybody stopped taking the part-time jobs, then they would get full-time jobs because the employers would have no choice but to hire full-time employees. Dr. Ben Carson DeFillippo. I'm just saying.

Uh-huh. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. It used to. It doesn't anymore. That's why we used to have things called unions, Jason. I'm fine with unions. Bring back the unions. I would love that too. Yes, but they're not here. They are not. Anyway, so we have a differing of opinion on this article, but it is worth reading.

You can either, you know, punch your employer or punch the wall or punch the author. Whichever one you like. Or all three. Or just sit home and punch the clown because you don't have a job. That's true. Punch the clown, that's got to be a euphemism for something. Gee, I wonder what that might be. Interesting. Speaking of clowns, Will Wheaton.

You don't like Will Wheaton? No, I meant it in a good way. He plays very funny characters. Okay. I'm like, Will Wheaton's not a clown. I like him. I don't like clowns. He wrote a good article. Oh, surprising? Yeah. You can't pay your rent with a unique platform and reach our site provides.

This has actually went semi-viral. Well, it's hard to tell because my particular group of friends, and I believe yours as well, were all big fans of Will, so it would, of course, go viral in our little group. He was contacted by the Huffington Post, asking them basically to grant permission for the site to republish his post. About seven things he did to reboot his life, and as we all know, that's all Huffington Post does.

It repurposes other people's content to make a lot of money, and they don't want to pay for it. So he basically told them to fuck off. Yeah. Let's file this under, this has happened before, this will all happen again files, because this is nothing new. Somebody bitches about somebody wanting to use their shit for free.

This just happened to be Will Wheaton. I always appreciate it when it's somebody that gets a lot of attention, and a lot of attention is drawn to it, and people can shame the Huffington Post. Okay. And anybody else that does this sort of shit. Yeah. No, that's the way it should be. I mean, people should get paid for their work, and Will is one of the best people that, you know, on that side.

If you listen to his Radio Free Burrito podcast, he did a, not this last episode, but the episode before last, he found somebody's post on Medium, Medium, and reached out to him, and paid him for the licensing fee to use the content on his podcast.

Now, that's a stand-up guy. Yes, totally. And the fact that, you know, the guy got paid, the story's out there, because Will wanted to do a quote-unquote lore-type podcast, which it would have been much better if he just kind of shut the fuck up at the beginning of it, and just did the podcast, and then did a follow-up.

Right. Like, by the time he started talking and got into the story, I fell asleep, so I have to go back and listen to it again. Anyway, I found a post on... Medium, called Millennials Got a Raw Deal with Social Media. I've just got to say, this is one of the first posts on Medium that actually looks like it's a BuzzFeed post.

Oh, completely. I thought this was on BuzzFeed. Yeah. No, so this idiot girl who was a quote-unquote model on Instagram quit this week, and she's just like, I'm just a piece of meat. This is terrible. There's no real social interaction here.

Well, duh. This whole thing just, you know, yes, you did get a raw deal. But you know what? God damn, you're in a bad mood this week, Jason. No, I'm in a great mood. You are really cranky. I'm in a great mood this week. Because... You mean everyone who's complaining about things that we agree are horrible.

Right. But you know what? The thing about what's horrible about what happened to these quote-unquote millennials is me and you, you and I, in our generation, we're the guys that made this shit because we thought it was cool back then. These kids grew up with it and didn't know how to handle it. You know?

Yeah. I mean, I don't feel bad for these people. It's... We knew this was a stupid waste of time. We knew it was just something fun and interesting to do. We didn't base our lives around social media and they've all grown up with it, bought into it, hook, line, and sinker, and now they're getting pissed off that it's all faked?

Right. Tough shit. Well, I mean, they didn't know what life was like before this shit, you know? We would go out and play. We would go out in the fields. We would have fun. We would hang out with our friends. And when this stuff came along, it was just like, oh, this is a nice, fun little escape. They had no idea how to actually eat a meal without taking a picture of it first.

Yeah. Seriously. No, it was going... This post was going viral, so I thought I would pass it around and see what people thought. And everybody that I said it to was just like, oh, shut the fuck up, you little whiny bitches. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it is what it is.

I mean, I'm sure the generation before us hated that article that went around about Generation Xers that we've talked about a couple times on this podcast as well. So yeah, it's a bunch of whining, whatever. I, again, much like every other article that we just discussed, I am happy to have people out there complaining and saying, what the hell are we doing?

With our society. So good on you, crazy chick who quit social media because she thought it was all real. But she quit social media on social media. That's how you have to do it. I mean, come on. Talk about just... If the Pope quit social media in a forest, who the fuck's going to hear it?

She should have just gone silent. Yes. Well, that's boring. And then I found one other thing last night that I just lost my mind. I thought this was absolutely hilarious. It was posted on Adweek and it was just a video that somebody did, which is great.

Watch people in other industries react hilariously to being asked for free spec work, which is something you and I are very used to having to do and very annoyingly so. And this was... I just died laughing. I thought this was one of the best videos I've ever seen. Okay. I'm going to have to watch this after the show because I didn't get a chance to watch it yet.

Because I mean, you had me at spec work. You know, I've never done spec work. I don't... Now I know you're super cranky because you haven't even watched the video that I posted on my Facebook and you made a cranky Facebook post about it and you didn't even watch it first. I did? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. That was the whole thing about where we were complaining. Well, it started with the spec work stuff and then it took a tangent to clients that have never paid us back or have never paid us for work. And then you were just like, this is what... That's what the legal system is for. Get a fucking lawyer, dipshits. Yeah, totally.

Well, now watch the video and rethink it. Okay. But still, if somebody doesn't pay you, get a lawyer and sue them. Well, come on, Jason. You know, as well as I do, that the time and money investment that you'd have to do for a small claims court to sue wouldn't be worth it. I mean, it depends on the amount of money that you are owed, granted.

Yeah. Here's the deal. Small claims court, I went through this. My old business partner went to small claims court and won and got a judgment and got his money back. It costs like 250 bucks to file for small claims court. There are no lawyers. You just present your case to the judge and then you get a judgment. Then you get the ability to put a lien on somebody and then get paid for the work and the money that they owe you.

It's actually a really straightforward process. I may have to try this then because I'm still annoyed by one particular client. In the news. Ben Carson.

A doctor. Dr. Ben Carson. Use the term loosely. He really is a doctor. I know. He's a brain surgeon. Just goes to prove that you can be really smart in one area and really stupid everywhere else. Ben Carson Wikipedia is, I think, the best thing to happen to Twitter in years.

The hashtag Ben Carson Wikipedia. Yeah. My feelings on Twitter are somewhat well known, but I did load this up this morning and I laughed very, very, very, very hardly. And then I cried because this guy is actually leading. I know. What the fuck, America?

Yeah. What the fuck, America? Oh, there's our show title. Okay. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I don't even know what to say. I mean, I thought, you know, the whole Trump thing was funny enough. But once we were digging deeper into the onion, peeling this onion back on Ben Carson a bit more and more, my God, what is, what the hell is wrong with this country?

Yeah. And if you don't know what we're talking about and who Ben Carson is, seriously, just go to the show notes and start clicking around. We have links to everything in there. And it really started out with the fact that Ben, Dr. Ben Carson said that the pyramids were built to store grain.

Yeah. And archaeologists have been fighting back saying, no, you know, no, no, no. We know what they were built for because they told us, they wrote it down and said, oh, this is why we built the pyramids. Yeah. But he's standing by it. He's standing by it.

Well, much. Yeah. We try not to get too political on this show, but come on. Come on. Yeah. No. If you are a Republican with half a brain at this point, you've got to be saying, what the hell am I doing in this party? Oh, God. Or you're like, Marica.

That's all I know how to do, Marica. Ancient Egyptians. Pyramids were grains for Americans. Grains. So I've found out about this through Sean Bonner, who I usually find out about all my memes through. I would not be surprised if he's the one that started this, but I don't know what the etymology of Ben Carson Wikipedia is, but damn, he's got some funny stuff.

And if you go to the hashtag, his is like, they've got his as highlighted as the first one. So I don't know. But if Sean, if you did, if you started this one, kudos, if you didn't, you did some good work on it. I give you kudos for that. Well done. This is definitely the only time I've been interested in Twitter in years.

I told you, best thing to happen to Twitter in years. Yep. Good on you. There's a new Star Trek coming. Yes, I know. This would be very, very exciting. It is going to be very exciting. Well, I don't know about that. It is not coming because I don't like, well, I mean, I understand why CBS is doing this, but I am not thrilled about it.

It is not actually going to be on broadcast TV. It will be available through their app. So you'll have to pay monthly to be able to watch the new Star Trek. I hate to break it to you, but the next chapter of the Star Trek franchise will also be distributed concurrently for television and multiple platforms around the world by CBS Studios International.

Yeah. Which means what? It'll be on TV concurrently with the, you know, the actual internet distribution as well. Okay. Well, you can watch it on TV or you can watch it on CBS All Access. This whole, this whole brouhaha where they're saying they're launching it on CBS Access.

Yes, they're going to launch it on CBS Access by like a day. It's no big deal. NBD, as we call it. All right. Well, that is not the original release that I saw. So I'm glad that there is different information. And I hope that's true because I do not want to pay an extra couple bucks just to watch one TV show.

Because if that is the case, then especially with their target audience, which is techie, we're all going to just go to get it from our friends in Sweden. Okay. So here's the deal. Yes. This is what's very funny about this. You said this was not in the original release that you saw. What I just read to you was copy and pasted from the original release that you put in our show notes.

So I don't know what you said. I don't know where you're coming from. All right. So moving on. Moving on. This one's for you. I put this one in just for you. Leaked Comcast talking points admit caps not about congestion. So the data caps, the data caps that Comcast puts on everything has nothing to do with what they say it's about.

Yep. I agree. We knew this was coming. We knew this was happening. Well, no. Yeah. It's always been around, but like we finally have proof. Like we have, we have the Edward Snowden's of Comcast now who are, who are sending us the, uh, the talking points from the internals of Comcast.

Yeah. Yeah. I also saw, I don't think it was Comcast and I don't have the release in the show notes because I didn't bother copying and pasting it because I figured we've already beat this over the head. But there was some other major provider that's basically saying, oh, we're going to announce new tiered pricing based on your bandwidth and we're putting caps on everything. So, uh, well, you know, we're pushing everybody towards doing streaming all the time.

And then we're just jacking up the price for it. So the telecom still win. Well, yeah. And the problem here is that, okay, we're doing streaming, which is taking away the cord cutters who are waving their flag saying we're cutting our cords, which means, okay, Comcast is losing cable revenue.

So they're going to just jack it up on the other side. It's like, you're going to pay no matter what one side or the other, you're going to pay. And my bet would be that if you're a cord cutter and once all these restrictions come in, you're going to end up paying more than you were before. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, it's coming close.

It's definitely coming. It totally is. I mean, if you think about it, like I was paying, I'm paying a hundred something per month and that's all in, that's completely unlimited. If I started to actually chop everything up and figure out bandwidth and then not only just bandwidth, but if I'm going to be legal and not go to our friends in Sweden, then I'm going to have to pay $2 here, $3 here, $7.99 a month for that, $8.99 a month for that.

I'm going to end up way over. It's totally death by small cuts, you know, but winning. We're winning. We're beating them. Yeah. Nobody's winning. South by South by Southwest announces March 12th online harassment summit.

I am glad they're bringing it back. It does feel like that was a lot of brouhaha about nothing, but we'll see. Tempest in a teapot. Yeah. Well, it got South by Southwest in the news. It did. It got, well, oh, I'm sorry. Like South by Southwest needs more news. I know. It's like, oh, they're already sold out.

Boo hoo. Oh God, I couldn't go back there if you paid me. I, I, I, yeah, I mean, I agree. I'd rather just go, uh, I'd rather go to Austin some other time and eat a little delicious, delicious barbecue and not deal with South by Southwest anymore. I don't even want to go back to Austin.

I like barbecue. I like barbecue, but it's not worth going to, you know, Texas for it's like going to Afghanistan for some shawarma, you know, it's like not really worth the effort. But I bet it's delicious. It sure is. Uh, oyster. Remember oyster? I vaguely remember it. And I remember going, I don't want to pay all in for books.

Yep. And, uh, apparently nobody else did either because they're shutting their doors. Well, first off guys, uh, nobody reads. Let's, let's start with that. I mean, uh, there's not enough people out there that actually read to support a concept like this. And again, it's not, it's not like you ha you would have had to Spotify it.

You would have had to license everything for it to be worthwhile. And you didn't. So, and also you have Amazon with Kindle unlimited for the same price using Kindle hardware, which, which Oyster didn't. Oyster was an app that you had to have on another device. You could not use the Kindle that you already owned.

Yeah. Uh, so Amazon just basically said, uh, you know, it just, they flicked the tick off their leg, which was Oyster. Well, and Amazon rolled out their own all in, didn't they? That's what I just said. Kindle unlimited. Yeah. Right, right, right. $9.99. Exactly. So, uh, and again, I don't think, uh, do you use that or do you just purchase your books when you want?

I will get in. I will get into that very shortly when we get to at the library, because I have, uh, some stuff to talk about there. But, uh, I think the thing to talk about with Amazon right now is the, the, oh my God, Amazon has opened their first physical bookstore. In Seattle, of all places, uh, very ballsy.

Yes. First we kill the market, then we revive the market. Yeah. It's, it's dirty pool, but, uh, it is filthy, dirty pool. I, I, I don't know how I, I mean, luckily here in Los Angeles, we still have not only a handful of very good independent bookstores, but we still have some of the major chains that are around.

So I, I'm not worried about this, but, uh, and I would never go to one, but, uh, smart business move on their part. You got to say, and it's a perfect time to get all that publicity because Christmas is coming. Yeah. Honestly, they should have just named the bookstore FU. Pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. It's just, it's, it's, it's mind boggling. Like the, the cojones to do that. It's like the corpse isn't even dead, like, or cold yet. And they're just like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's, let's rifle through the pockets. And then. I'd love to see the spaces that they're looking at and, uh, looking at picking up to open up more of these.

Cause I'm sure it's, it's, uh, you know, on the skeletons of old Barnes and Nobles. Wouldn't that be amazing. Oh my God. Yeah. And we have pictures of the, in, in the show notes, we have pictures of the actual store in the links and they're doing the, they're saying that they're revolutionary now because they're putting the covers out instead of just the spines because they're using the algorithms to say, oh, well, we're going to use the, you know, the shelf space intelligently because everything is based on Amazon ratings and reviews.

Right. Yeah. So yeah. Gaming the system a little bit more. And, uh, I'm sure they'll announce at some point that instead of actually having human employees, there will be walking, talking drones that will go around the stores to take care of everything. Yeah. Yeah. The drone will bring you your latte and your, um, Activision has bought the developers of Candy Crush, AKA King.

Uh, 5.9 billion billion. That's insane. More than the entire Star Wars franchise sold for. Candy Crush. Put your head around that. Put your head around that for a second. Than Star Wars. Candy Crush is worth more. I know I've spent more, I've, I know I've spent more money on Star Wars shit over the years than I have on Candy Crush.

So I don't get it. Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, it's weird because you're the gamer too, but you, you, you've never gotten addicted to Candy Crush the way that I've seen many, many people. Um, I am on level 450 of Candy Crush Soda Saga. And I've never spent a dime.

So there. I don't, I don't understand this world anymore. It's good for the pooper. I understand why Activision bought them, uh, cause Activision is very much an old school gaming company and, and they want to get, uh, get access and to the brains and thoughts behind, uh, basically gaming 2.0 and what's going on with, with, you know, social gaming and all that.

So this, it's a good purchase for them, but I just can't believe it's 5.9 billion. Yeah. Now I understood when they bought Blizzard, I understood when with many of their acquisitions, but this one for that price point does not make any sense. No, but we talk about a lot of things with, uh, that are vastly overvalued on this, on this particular podcast.

And this is just yet another one of them. So, yeah. Um, okay. Now let's, let's move on to Google. Speaking of overvalued, uh, Google's Google's new AI will reply to your email. So you don't have to really. Oh yes. Well, that's great.

Yeah. Thank you for knowing what I'm thinking. Actually, I almost don't mind this because I've noticed that most of my clients are so bad at responding to emails that I don't even know if they've got any from me. So now at least maybe I'll get a response. Well, I was thinking just anytime any client replies or sends you an email, your Google AI will just say, fuck you.

Where's the check? Yeah. Where's my money? Fuck you. Pay me. That's your, that's your Google AI response. Pretty much. Yeah. But I prefer typing that myself. It's cathartic. But if you read the blog spot post, uh, for those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing.

Add more time playing candy crush. Oh, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time. Time spent typing. How precious is your time? Well, what are you doing? Are you in the middle of curing cancer that you cannot reply to an email?

Why is your time so precious? You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake reply to your fucking email. Well, I mean, half the tech world right now is solutions to problems that don't exist. Right? I mean, that's just it. Um, and then next week, I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast by Google Brian and Google Jason, because we've got, we've got other shit to do and we'll just set an AI app to do this.

Yes. We're going to save our precious time podcasting by just sending it through, sending it through the Google AI. No, this is, uh, this is absolutely ridiculous. Oh, well. Yeah. No. And here's the, here's the, here's the security segment that bums me out this week.

It's news. I think what this is, is a loophole to let them, if you, if you opt in for this, it's a loophole for them to, exactly. Well, not even advertising just to, to give them the data to hone their machine learning for the future.

This is the, we've always joked about the beginning of Skynet and how AI is, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever with that shit. But this gives them a huge data set to look at what, so if, if you turn this on and it can go back through every email chain you've ever had, and it can learn the conversations and learn you, you know, think about, think about the implications with that.

That's insane. No, I mean, Google has now gotten to the point where I don't really want to use their products that much anymore because I'm terrified about the sheer amount of data they're sucking up. I was even having a conversation with a couple of friends over the week and we were talking about like, well, if you, if you wanted to kind of stop doing your, your own thing and wanted to go work for a company, who would you work for?

Because so many people have moved into this, this particular area here in Santa Monica. And I think it was a consensus around the whole table that anyone but Google, because Google is fucking evil. Uh, yeah, I don't know. See, I, I, I just, I don't care anymore. Yeah, let's get into that.

That's, but that's, that's how they win. They just beat you down to, you don't care. Well, we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about that shortly, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it is what it is. I mean, there's nothing that you and I can do to stop it besides stop using them, which will, which will affect everything not, you know?

Oh, you and I stopped using Google. Great. Okay. Well, the other 17 billion people on the planet haven't. So yeah. And you can't convince people to stop using shit. That's free. Exactly. And they, and people just don't understand the consequences of what they're doing with their data because they don't understand technology because most people in the world are stupid.

Here's looking at you, Dr. Ben Carson. Uh, what's not stupid is the autopilot on the Tesla model S it is. It is actually becoming self-aware faster than Google. That's pretty frightening. Yeah, no, they've already, they, people have already noticed that their autopilot is learning and getting better, which is crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, did they even mention it would do that when they released it? Okay, good. Absolutely. Cause I've also noticed that things like details like that tend to be left out of products these days and there are no more manuals. So here's the fun thing that I like about this story. And this, this comes back to what we were just talking about with Google.

Google has been working on the self-driving car for how long now? And have been very public about it and whatnot. Tesla totally scooped them. They've got self-driving cars on the road and completely just pull the rug out from under them and their cars are getting better.

Like because they have the data from all the people who are driving now, this is where the big data comes in. And Tesla just basically said, fuck you to Google. And I love that. I love that too. And Tesla has got the way of head lead on batteries on this sort of, uh, for these kinds of cars.

And, uh, they're basically they're, they've single-handedly pretty much already won the self-driving car race. I mean, I, yeah, I know Elon Musk is a super villain, but I love it anyway. I'm like, I want to see super villain versus super villain. Let's say we're heading there.

Have you been watching Gotham this, this year, the whole rise of the villains? Oh man, it's all about the villain. So now it's like the internet has come to Gotham. It's great. Excellent. Excellent. Uh, so have you ever heard of a writer called Christopher Null? Yes.

I have never, I've never heard of him. Yes. He's been, uh, he's been around doing vaguely semi-techy stuff for quite a long time, right? Yeah. Well, he's a writer for Wired and I just saw this, I saw this article this morning and I was just floored. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. The article is titled, hello, I'm Mr. Null.

My name makes me invisible to computers. Yes, I'm sure it does. I'm sure he has countless problems with doing anything. I think here's, I think this is like a, the canary in the coal mine for bad programming. So if you put in null, the actual string null, it should never cause a problem.

If the programming that is going through is well-written. True. It should not because it's a string. It has length. It's four characters, but these people are testing against the wrong parameters and it just, it, it, it highlights bad programming. So I found this fascinating.

I mean, if you're not a programmer, you probably won't understand it, but it's amazing. It's a good article and it's interesting, but you and I have discussed countless times that the entire internet is basically MacGyver together with shit programming. And a lot of it hasn't been updated in 35 years and was done horribly the first time around.

And that's, we don't have like this clean, nice technology based system that works perfectly. We have a hodgepodge of different crap, most of which is horrible. Yeah. If you calculated the technical debt in that is built into the infrastructure of the internet, it would be probably three lifetimes of the known universe.

At this point, yes, exactly. But I mean, I've always, I'm, you know, me, you've seen my code. I've seen your code. I always make fun of your code. I'm one of those people that hack shit together. Yes. You, you, you, however, I have never had a dull issue.

Mr. Dull, your, your, your name will work perfectly well at all my code. I'm going to go through all your, all your old sites and try and try and register with the name null. Okay. But yeah, so this is just a fun, it's a fun read because if you, if you've ever written code, and you know what null means, it's, it's, it's, it's fun.

It put a smile on my face this morning. Yes, it was very good. This one was kind of scary. It's from business insider, which I thought was very strange. We're on the cusp of a revolution that will change the world as much as computers did. It's about genetics. Oh yeah, I think so.

It's going to change the world way more than computers did. This is going to be a massive leap forward or we'll all just be dead in about five seconds. It's going to go one way or the other. Yeah. This is all about genetics hacking. And the fact that you can build a $2,000 lab in your home that will rival most, you know, state of the art labs and do, you know, gene hacking.

It's scary. Yeah. The, the CRISPR is, is the kind of an acronym that they're using for this. I mean, I've been kind of reading on about this on and off cause I'm super interested in it. This is a good overview of kind of what's going on. It's funny cause everybody's like, Ooh, it's a maker revolution.

Cause we have these boxes that lay down plastic and we can build things. I was like, you could, you have no idea what being a maker is. Wait until you get one of these. Yeah. Seriously. You will literally be making life. Yeah. No. Oh, what did, what did you make today? Oh, I made a, I made a, a sprocket for my, my weed whacker that broke.

Isn't the, the 3d printing revolution. Amazing. You know what I made, I crossed a piranha with a butterfly and now there are flying things that are going to eat everyone. Oh, you know, I, I, what did, what'd you do? What'd you have for lunch? Oh, I just made anthrax. Yeah. That's exactly what it's going to be.

Uh, it's yeah, this is where we're headed. We, we've kind of, we're unraveling the code. We are, we're understanding how and, uh, how life works and how to create it and how to tweak it. And that's super exciting, but also super terrifying. Well, fortunately the people, I mean the, the skillset to do like gene splicing and gene hacking is a little more complicated than doing regular expressions in Pearl for a web script.

So I think that, you know, the people that are going to be taking advantage of this are pretty smart to begin with, but also we know that we trained a lot of nuclear scientists in this country that have gone to Iran or other places. So we've probably trained a lot of bioengineers who are doing the same thing.

Well, no, but the, here's the real issue. There's, there's a massive problem with, with the world and where we're at right now. And we're in this transitory period where there is a high barrier to entry in terms of knowledge, but such a low barrier of entry in terms of equipment or whatever.

Execution. Of execution. So yes. No pun intended. Yes. We will have, you know, in theory, this requires you to be extremely smart and knowledgeable in a certain field to be able to do something. However, for $2,000, I can monkey around and do whatever the fuck I want and create who God knows what. That's true too.

That is the biggest problem with our society right now. And that's why there's also a lot of bad coding out there. Cause it was kind of the same thing. When you and I were started doing coding, it was not cheap or easy to get into this. Now everyone fucking does it. And the level, you know, it's just, it's that problem where access is easy.

Knowledge is hard and people don't wait to get the knowledge. And they leap in because the access is so easy. And you know, when we crashed a server, we would delete the code and reboot the server. When you crash a species, it's a little harder to reboot. Yeah, that's true. And this last one comes from the Atlantic, which I thought was amazing.

Programmers, stop calling yourselves engineers. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. I don't remember when the term first started, when it, when all of a sudden, instead of being a programmer, you became a software engineer. About 2000. It started around 2000. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Coders are not engineers.

We aren't. No, and I've had to deal with this my entire career because everybody kept saying I'm a software and, you know, that labeling me a software engineer. So I had to like take on that, that mantle. And I completely had imposter syndrome going, going with this. I'm just like, I felt just guilty every time I'm like, okay, before I started doing this, guess what I was doing?

I was making copies, you know, at Kinko's. And before that I was an artist in a photography school. I am not an engineer. Engineers build bridges. They build skyscrapers. We build scripts that, that, you know, hopefully check for the word null in a last name properly, but that doesn't make us an engineer.

That makes us a programmer. Yeah. And hopefully not a bro-grammer. Oh, it's the worst. Security? Ha! Oh, Anonymous.

I'm still on the fence about you guys. On the one hand, I can't stand vigilante-ism at all. And I wish that there were, you know, entities to which we have entrusted some sort of sense of public entitlement to go and take care of things. But there isn't, so Anonymous leaps in to take care of things most of the time.

They kind of screwed up a bit on Monday. Hashtag OpKKK was announced, and the Anonymous basically said, hey, we know a whole bunch of people that are affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. We're going to start releasing their data. On Monday, a OpKK-affiliated Twitter account claimed to have obtained about 1,000 of the people and released it, which was not actually technically, theoretically done by Anonymous.

Although how one decides what is official in a loosely affiliated group that has no leadership and what isn't is somewhat interesting. And the initial release was apparently debunked as there were a bunch of people on there that had nothing to do with the KKK whatsoever, so oops. But then they were going to release something on November 5th, which was yesterday.

That was more official, and apparently they did. And apparently it is actually quite a good list. And there are a lot of people that are – although the problem is, again, and I read through this, it's not – it's a list that includes people who may have liked or starred on social media things that are vaguely related to the KKK, which isn't quite the same thing.

They're KKK-adjacent. Yes, KKK-adjacent more than anything else. Now, obviously, even that's not good, and I haven't looked through the official release. I kind of am doing what I usually do, which is let the internet tell me what is important in there. I haven't seen that yet, so.

Oh, lazy journalism. I love it. Yes, yes. So that's what happened. So we'll see. Okay, yes. Remember, remember, the 5th of November. Yeah. Again, Anonymous. Occasionally, I totally agree with what they're doing. Sometimes I don't. I think it's an interesting organization at the very least.

And, yeah, I mean, if there are actual, like, mayors of major cities that are, are affiliated with the KKK, I'd like to know that. Okay. So we'll see. Okay, well, I mean, this also comes back to freedom of speech and the First Amendment, but people can think what they want to think and do what they want to do as long as it does not, you know.

There's nothing, in theory, illegal about what they're doing. Exactly. But I would like to have that information when I go to the cast my ballot. Yes, that is good information to know when you're going to the polls. Exactly. But, you know, being affiliated with the KKK, being an asshole in the United States, is not against the law.

It's not against the law. Otherwise, we'd be shut down. We would be in jail. Yes. Yeah. Oh, man. So the UK has stepped on its dick. Okay. It's collective dick. Internet firms to be banned from offering unbreakable encryption under new laws.

It's a strange thing because, in general, the UK is so much better with privacy. It feels like a push-pull thing that's happening over there. I'm sorry. They got the GCHQ over there, MI6, MI5. All the big spy agencies are part of the Five Eyes, which are in with us.

So we probably are the ones that made them do this. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. And the entire point of it is that I don't think it's going to work. I don't think it's going to happen. No. Yeah, because these tech companies have – they're getting to the point where they almost have more power than the government.

Almost. They're getting there very quickly. Yeah. They certainly have more money. Well, as soon as Amazon gets drones, we're good. Yes. Amazon is about to get weaponized. Yes. If we can weaponize Amazon and Google, we're all good. But, yeah, and I took the poll at the end, and there were 24,500 people in the poll at the end saying, what do you think?

Should companies be allowed to – or be forced to do this? And 93% of people said, no, this is bullshit. You should not – we should have end-to-end encryption so we can protect ourselves. And I don't know who the 7% are, but they're morons.

Yeah. I have no – of course. I mean the expectation when you buy a device like this is that you should be somewhat protected and it's not an open book for everyone, especially as we move our entire lives to the digital realm. I mean that's just what we're doing. It's reality.

Right. I mean – but we've been fighting this here in the U.S., but the British obviously haven't been reading the Washington Post or any other publication that has everybody coming out of it, even the ex-heads of the CIA, saying, no, no, do not put back doors into this shit. Stop it. No.

Yeah. Knock it off. And on that side, 9 out of 10 of the Internet's top websites are leaking your data. Yes, we know this. Yes, bad programming, et cetera, et cetera. No, no. I mean it's – Well, yes, there is bad programming, but there's also – On purpose.

Okay. I want to put a little bit of backstory on this. JavaScript widgets. When I was building BlogRolling back in the 90s, I saw how much power I had as soon as I could put a JavaScript widget on somebody else's website. Yep.

I got everything. I got every bit of data about that user. I got their IP address. I could do all sorts of fun stuff with that data. And that was where, you know, I mean, this was what, 97, 98 when I built that thing? Yeah.

And it hasn't gotten better. I think it's gotten worse. Oh, it's gotten much worse because now what you can do with the JavaScript – if you put a JavaScript widget on somebody's thing, now you can do that crazy Canvas browser fingerprinting hack. Yeah. It's not going to get better.

It's going to get worse. Everybody that has a JavaScript embed on their website, which is everybody. Every single website that you go to has a JavaScript embed from some tracking company, Google advertising company. All these people get the data.

This is not news. But it was making the rounds like this was an amazing revelation. And it's like, no, we've talked about this for 100 fucking episodes. Come on. Yeah, but nobody listens to our podcast. Unfortunately, that is actually true. Yeah. So, yeah, we may have talked about it, but it's not getting a lot of traction.

It's funny because remember we discussed the Privacy Badger extension a while back, and I installed it and basically tried to use the internet with that on. You can't. And disabling everything. You can't use the internet. Nope. I had to turn it off. I had to actually uninstall it. I had to get rid of it as well. I have it completely uninstalled because it made the internet useless.

So if you do not want to be tracked and you don't want this to happen to you, kiss the internet goodbye. Yeah, stay off the fucking internet. Yeah. Honestly, stay off the internet. That is the only way to not be tracked on the internet. We always end up with the same conclusions by the time we get to the end of the security segment. I know.

I know. But we have one more story, and then we're going to talk about the security segment in a second. TSA airport screener's ability to detect weapons declared pitiful. Yeah, this comes from Mars Technica. This angers me so much. I'm so fucking pissed.

Why? Get rid of the fucking TSA. What a snow job that has been forced on the American people for 12 years now. So much money spent on these systems. Fucking take the shoe off. Take the shoe off. What I'm going to need you to do for me right now, sir. Do this.

Do that. Take laptop out. No, put the laptop back in. Fuck you. All for nothing. You guys can't catch shit. It's a snow job. Well, yeah, it was not for nothing. It was to pipe money to the makers of all the equipment that was, you know, Chaney and Rummy's friends from way back in the bush days.

Everybody should be up in arms about this. You should be pissed that this has happened. They're coming out and basically saying all of this. It was really for nothing. You could have. We caught that one singer with a gun. That was all. I used to travel with a friend.

I'm not going to even come close to naming who this is, who would always carry a six inch knife with him, put it in his in his carry on and carry it through. And then as soon as he got out of the the x-ray machine, would basically put it in his back pocket and carry it with him the entire flight.

Yeah. Every time. Never had a problem. And this is this is through international borders, by the way. I've spent the past 12 years eating my goddamn meals with a fucking cardboard knife. Yep. You assholes. Nope. Nope. He would walk through and just cut it with his giant Spyderco knife and be all happy about it and smile.

It's what you do. Just so much money was spent on this. So many promises. So many. Oh, we understand. We're making your day. This is for you. So much. So the entire travel process because of the TSA has become so annoying and dehumanizing.

And now we're finding out, well, just really, it didn't do anything. No. Well, I mean, honestly, we knew that. We knew that for a long time. It's one thing to know it is another thing to have it proved. Oh, so shall we call this the Snowden effect?

Yeah. Yes. Now, with that said, we're going to start moving the security segment into the news because you know what? This is all tied together now. And it seems kind of silly to keep them apart because the stuff in security really kind of ties into everything we talk about in the news, especially when we're talking about Google's AI reading all of our mail and fun stuff like that.

So this will be the last week of the security segment. I'm going to miss that little bumper. R.I.P.

Comment of the week. Our first comment of the week is an iTunes five-star rating. We do love those. Thank you so much. This is from Mighty Momo, which is a great name, and it's titled There is Hope, which means he probably doesn't listen to the whole podcast. No doubt. You really have to listen to the whole show, man.

Okay, here we go. If the definition of a cynic is an idealist who's had their dreams crushed, then I am a tech cynic. Okay, he does listen to the whole show. He does listen to the whole show. Jason and Brian managed to explain why and how my dream of a future was crushed by the corporate overlords and make me laugh while doing it.

Oh, my. I can feel my cold, cold heart warming. Could that be hope? Open a beer or pour a glass of wine. Sit back and enjoy. Also makes for a great antidote to the afternoon commute. Oh, thank you very much, Mighty Momo. Thank you very much. That is the kind of five-star rating we like. Indeed.

And we got a comment from Egghead Games, who is a Patreon supporter. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. He writes, or she writes, I don't know if it's a he or she, Pocket Casts on Android is a great podcast app by Shifty Jelly. Good name. Links nicely to their iOS and browser versions, too.

Not free. Good. So they should be around for a bit with a bit of luck. Supports casting and all that good stuff. So, yeah. I mean, the reason he wrote that, you know, we talked a little bit about the Android side of things, and I haven't found a really good one. But I'm relying on my friends to tell me what's good in the Android side.

So thank you, Egghead Games, for giving us a little bit of an insight into how to listen to podcasts on Android. Yeah. And yeah, especially with Google now getting into podcasting. So hopefully people will find us that way. Exactly. We shall see. We appreciate all your comments, your suggestions, and you can tell us if you don't want to hear the death knell of the security segment, although Jason seems pretty set on that.

So security, bye-bye. But you can comment to us on our Twitter at twitter.com slash GOG podcast. On our Patreon page, patreon.com slash GOG, right? Exactly. Okay, good. I remembered that. And you can give us a few bucks to help keep the lights on, which is very appreciated.

GrumpyOldGeeks.com. And don't bother with our Facebook page, but feel free to like us there. Or now you can favorite us on, or is it like now? It's like now on Twitter, right? With the hearts? Oh, it's the hearts. Isn't that love? Shouldn't it be love? We can't degrade. A heart to a like. Yeah, seriously.

It's like junior high school. At the library. This is kind of a bit of a follow-up for At the Library. Brian, you talked a lot about Ian Tregellis' Milkweed series.

A great series. Great series, yeah. I have to concur. I finally finished Bitter Seeds, the first book in the series, and I loved it. Wasn't it great? It was really fun. I was, it took me a while to get into it. I almost stopped it because I was just having a hard time getting like, letting it pick up.

You got to buy into the premise and that takes a bit, but once you do, it's a good time. Yeah. At about like 15%, I finally was like, oh, okay. Now they're starting to get into it. And it was really cool. I really enjoyed it. I think you're going to love the entire series.

It gets better from the first one. This is not one that disappoints as you go along. Okay. And there are three books total, correct? Yes. Three books in the series. And then he went on to write some other stuff, which is also good. But The Bitter Seeds, if you have not read it out there, now that Jason is concurring, please do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the Milkweed series by Ian Tregelis. The first book is Bitter Seeds. Start with that. And definitely, if you're into, you know, honestly, just read it. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, if you listen to this show, you probably have the same sensibilities. Yeah. It's, you know, revisionist history slash science slash mythology slash weirdness.

It's great. Okay. So I want to talk for a second here about, so I listened to Bitter Seeds from Audible. I listened to it. Of course. I am reading In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, the longest book ever written. You are, you pick the weirdest things to read versus listen to.

Now, I probably would have listened to In Search of Lost Time, but okay. It's like you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're destining yourself to fail to finish to read this. No, I'm not. I mean, yes, it's a 1.2 million word book. It is very long. I bought it on Amazon.

It cost me $50. It's a $50 Kindle book, okay? Because I'm trying to kind of, honestly, the Ian Tregela series are probably the last books I'm going to listen to for a while, and I'm just going to save up my Audible credit.

Okay. Or buy books for my dad or whatever. But I'm trying to read more, like read quite a bit more. And here's why. I'm also stopped. I've stopped listening to podcasts. I actually, I scaled back considerably to last week, and I was listening to music again, which was nice.

I'm actually listening to nothing. Wow. Okay. That's the part where it's like, I realized that my focus has degraded so poorly. With a hundred and some podcasts in my podcast player, there was always somebody talking at me all day, every day. And I'm like, you know what?

I think I need to kind of tone it back a bit. So I got In Search of Lost Time by Proust. And, you know, if you're going to do something, you might as well just do it all the way. So no podcasts. I'll listen to the Tregela's books because I'm hooked now. I have to finish that series.

It'll take me a while, but I'm just reading, you know, words on a page, silence in the room, and it has been calming. It's been really calming. And we talk about this, we go back and forth with, you know, the attention problem and shit like that. But recently, it's like, since I podcast for a living and I have to deal with this stuff all day, I've always got audio in my ear.

So when, when my spare time comes, I think really it's like time to cut back. All right. Well, good luck with that. I'm sure next week you'll have a 17 different podcasts you've listened to that you want to talk about. Oh, we'll see. I found something for you, Jason, because you talk about, is it called the Brevia?

What, your, your super tea machine that costs like $200 or something ridiculous. It's the Breville tea maker and it costs $275. Yes. There you go. Well, I've got something new for you. I've got the Teaforia. It's a tea brewing robot. A robot? You can step it up and you can connect it to the internet of things and it will robotically create your tea for you.

Oh, well, mine is actually a robot. It does have a, a robotic arm that moves up and down and brews tea for me. So the Breville does do that already, but it does not connect to the internet of things. And this one's $649. Kiss my ass. For a tea machine.

Oh, it'll leave it. Well, at launch, it'll be 1300. Whoa. Yeah. It's pre-order for 650. And for a launch, it's going to be 1300 bucks. So about the only place you're ever going to see this is on goop. What's that? That's Gwyneth Paltrow's ridiculous thing for super crazy rich people.

Yeah. What's that? Exactly. So, okay. Yeah. No, my, my Breville tea maker is fantastic. I love it. I get the same tea every day when I, when I have tea, but, uh, this just looks cray cray as they say, say.

All right. Well, that was horrible. So as, as we were ending the podcast last week, you were, you were packing up from your office and running home because you had been informed that your Apple TV, your brand new Apple TV had been delivered. Yes. What do you think? I love it. So far, I'm, I'm really digging it.

Okay, cool. Awesome. I mean, I'm, I'm probably gonna, I mean, obviously I'm going to upgrade and, you know, I've got to tell the parents something that they could possibly get me for Christmas that I would want. And probably the Apple TV upgrade would be it just for the remote alone. Cause I can't stand the old remote on, on the one I have now. Okay. Before you, before you continue, the new remote is a bit janky.

I'm going to tell you out of the gate. It's hard to get used to because it doesn't, it doesn't exactly act like the old one did. Like, like going up a level, it's a little difficult. Sometimes you can't quite figure it out. Like if I'm in the app store and I just want to go back to the next menu, sometimes I can't figure out which button to get me there and it will take me back to the main menu.

Then I go back to the apps and then it takes me back to that. But what you can do, which since it's based on iOS, you can, uh, force quit the, you know, the app store and then go back and it'll take you back to it, which is the worst kludge of all time to figure out how to get back to the top level of the app store.

Yeah. That doesn't sound so great. But for the most part, the speed is great. The new, um, look and feel is great. Uh, I, the screensaver is like this motion screensaver. It's like a video screensaver. I like the old animal screensaver from the original Apple TV because I've had it for so long and that's just kind of like an old friend.

What do you know? Yes. Yeah. It's my, it's my old friend. I got to figure out how to turn that back on. Um, and cause it took me a while to find it with the last generation. I'm hopefully they still have it in here, but for the most part, it's, it's much faster. It's more responsive. Everything works and it does not crash on Netflix every 10 minutes.

Ah, see, I never had that problem, but the speed is, I mean, it's noticeably slow to me now and it always kind of was on the old one. So I'm excited just about the, the actual speed thing. That's, that's a massive, uh, upgrade for me. Okay. And pro tip, I bought the 64 gig version, get the 32, get the cheap one because you know, you need the disc space for the apps.

Yeah. And I don't, you're not going to get that many apps. I mean, you can play games on it if you want to go buy like the a hundred dollar game player, but you fuck no, I'm not going to be, you're not going to be playing rain, like rain man or Ray man or whatever the hell it is on there. No, I'm going to need to be able to get to Netflix, uh, one or two.

Other streaming services that I may or may not use, uh, like the HBO app and all that sort of stuff. And I need to be able to connect to my, my media library. Uh, that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. So go for the 32, go cheap. Okay, good. Uh, speaking of cheap, I got a new Kindle again.

I did get one again. You know why I got the new Kindle paperwhite, the six inch one, which is the same size as the voyage that I bought before that I ended up returning. Yeah. Because when I got that, it was $229. Okay. About the same size as my six plus.

Right. But $229. So the, the new Kindle, uh, paperwhite came out with a $30 off with, with a prime subscription. So it came out to be like 89 bucks. And I got a new cover for it, like a leather cover. Yeah. Gorgeous.

Very fast. And the difference with this one is the backlighting. Cause I got it and I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to test it out and see if it works because the voyage, the backlighting on it was terrible. Um, all the way around it had like ripples where the lighting was coming in. It just did not look right.

And there were dead pixels on it. That's not good. So I returned that one. And then a friend of mine was like, Hey, check this one out. It's on sale now. Give it a go. And I'm like, okay, since I'm trying to read more and I want to distance myself from having my phone in the room when I go to bed at night, uh, I gave it a shot and it's amazing.

It's 89 bucks. If you have prime, uh, I got the, the cover was expensive. I got the leather cover, which was like almost half the price of the damn Kindle. Right. But, um, really nice. Uh, I got the persimmon leather cover, which is orange for those of you who don't know what persimmon looks like.

And I love it so far. I have, I have been devouring on this thing. I still just use the Kindle app on my iPad, but, uh, this does look nice. Um, they certainly did a, actually, I think I could never buy this because I'm very frustrated by the hipster-esque photography, uh, for the, for the page itself, using it as an ad.

Here I am drinking tea in the Himalayas with my Kindle. Here I am with a wrist tattoo drawing on a map while I'm also still reading on my Kindle. Damn hipsters. Just because a douchebag uses it doesn't mean you can't either. That's true. Uh, but all in all, so far, I'm really liking it, but I also like the, uh, the variable backlight.

Um, everything about it so far is just, and it's very fast, very responsive. And it's, since it's 300 DPI or PPI, it's the, the type is crisp and I'm just, I'm really enjoying it. I wish the Voyage was like this when I got it.

This is actually better, I think, than the Voyage. Right. That's my new toy. Okay. And I'm liking it. I'm going to have to bring that with you next time we get together. I'm going to play around with it. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Which, which hopefully should be next week if we can work it out. All right. Should be, should be good.

Uh, and my, uh, software recommendation is called tab position customizer two for Google Chrome. Okay. It just gives you a couple options on when you open new tabs, where they actually land if you have a bunch of tabs open. Okay.

For me, it's just like, cause I've always got like 12 tabs and it's like, where the hell did that new one go? You can, you can specifically say open next to the active tab. And do I switch to the new tab? It just gives you like three different tools. There's three different check boxes in it.

That's it. I just installed it. Yeah. It's a super easy little, uh, customizer widget that makes your life a lot easier. Nice. Yeah. This is going to be very helpful.

Media candy. Well, cereal is coming back. Yay. The, the save the world or save the podcasting world podcast cereal, which actually didn't do much for anybody else that does podcasting is returning. And of course the question will be what the hell are the United States?

And will it be as engaging as the last one was? Chances are no, uh, but Pandora did not miss the chance to, uh, hop on the bandwagon, get some free publicity by announcing that they will be providing the podcast. Um, Pandora is quite possibly the worst venue for a podcast.

I've, so they're just going to randomize the episodes every time you launch the cereal station. Are you just going to get a random episode? Yeah, probably. No, I don't know. It says, yeah, they want to get into the, yeah, they wanted to get press. That's about it. So yeah. So you'll be able to, if you are a Pandora, you'll be able to listen to the new, uh, serial podcast when it comes out, whenever the hell it comes out.

Or listen to it how you normally listen to podcasts. Yes. Yes. Or just do that. I mean, on the one plus it is, it may bring the idea of podcasting to an entire group of people who don't, uh, don't indulge yet. So maybe they'll get interested in that somehow. I doubt it's because podcasting has been around for a very long time now.

Yeah. And the problem is it's not going to give them the tools to listen to other podcasts. They're going to be like, where are the rest of the podcasts? I'm on Pandora. I'm listening to a podcast. Where are the rest of them? Oh, well, they're over here where everybody's been for eight years. Exactly. Uh, and Jon Stewart has announced that he is no longer retired.

He's coming back. He is going to follow John Oliver over to HBO and, uh, HBO is going to do that janky thing where, yeah, it'll be available on HBO, but we really hope you're going to watch it through with different digital TV services that we offer. Okay. I mean, he's just doing short form stuff.

Yeah. So Jon Stewart is now the Zay Frank of HBO. Yeah. He's, he's, he's basically a YouTuber. Yes. Let's, let's be honest. He's a YouTuber with a bigger contract. Oh man. Okay. So this dude, Daniel Fleetwood, who is dying, uh, finally got, uh, one of his greatest wishes fulfilled and got to watch the new star Wars movie already.

Big win for Disney. This was a big win. Yes. Uh, so they gave him a screening and JJ Abrams called him. And I think, you know, props to Disney for, for doing that. I think that's, I think that's super cool. I think that's very cool too. And it even warmed my heart.

Even when I read the sentence from his wife saying that she couldn't discuss it because they both had to sign NDAs. Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I didn't know what near death agreement. Ooh. Wow. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon.

Jumping the shark on that one. He's not dead yet. Not dead yet. Damn. That was a good show. Um, the Martian. Have you finally seen it? I finally went to go see it. Jesus Christ. Thank you. Finally. Hey, it came out the day before I left for Europe for two weeks.

What the hell do you want? You are closer to Sweden than anybody. You should have been able to see it anytime you want it because I did talk to my friends in Sweden and was unable to find it. So I had to drag my ass to a real movie theater. Oh my God. Okay. So have the Martian. Let's yeah.

Yeah, actually. Well, yeah, but the handheld ones from the theaters and I cannot do that. I just can't. Uh, it was for a cam, you know, it, uh, I was, it's, it's, it's a good movie. I was able to put up with it even though it had, oh, I still don't know what you have against him, but I, whatever.

I liked it. I liked it. I still liked the book a hell of a lot more because my favorite plot line from the book was not in the movie. Uh, yeah, they dropped a lot. They have dropped quite a few plot lines as you would have to. Um, but I thought it was a fairly good, uh, good version.

It was a good adaptation. If you don't like to read or you haven't read the book yet, go see the movie first. Uh, but yeah, this is definitely one of those. It's the book is a gazillion times better. Yes. And if you listen to podcasts because you don't know how to read, then go see the movie. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

The, the plot line where he figures out that the sandstorm is coming is my favorite in the book. Oh yeah. And they totally, they totally dropped that. Yeah. Well, yeah. You could see how that would be a bit boring cinema cinematically. So it would be completely boring. I understand why they did it. I was just hoping that Ridley Scott would figure out a way to make it interesting.

You know? Yeah. Uh, it was a very good movie. It's definitely worth seeing. And yeah. And, and we talked about the myth busters going away and, uh, there's a great piece in the New York times about it's called what we owe the myth busters about how they've brought science to, you know, the forefront of the conversation as it were, and inspiring kids to get into science.

And I, and I honestly agree with this. I think that they have done a bang up job over their entire lifetime. Uh, and I think they came around at a time where this was very much needed to happen. I mean, I think when you and I were, were in school, we, we had a lot of science and there was a focus on it.

And I think judging from everything that I know about society recently, uh, that has gone away and the myth busters helped fill that void that wasn't being provided by, by schools or government agencies or anything like that. So now we got, now we got Periscope stars. Oh God.

I get so sick of that area. I can't even talk about it Instagram. Yeah. Here, watch me, watch me get ready for my TV show on Periscope. Oh God. Um, so Quentin Tarantino is back with his eighth movie called the hateful eight trailer.

It looks good. It looks like every other Quentin Tarantino movie ever made. Thank you for saying that because I've gotten to the point now where I don't feel like I even need to go see the movies. It's pretty close to that with me too. The only reason I'm going to go see this movie is because Sam Jackson's in it. And that's the only reason I care about it.

And Sam Jackson is doing Sam Jackson because he doesn't even act anymore. He is just Sam Jackson in every movie he's in. Cause I hated him in the last one. That last, what was the name of it? Um, Django Unchained. I never even saw it. That's I've, oh, it was a great movie.

He's already, he's Tim Burton for me. Yes, he has Tim Burton, but Django Unchained was really good. Uh, but Sam Jackson was not the normal Sam Jackson. Um, oh good. He can still act then. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, but this one, he's back as Sam Jackson.

So I'm in, I'm all in, but you should definitely see Django Unchained. It was amazing. I loved it. All right. All right. I'll check that one. And I'm going to, I'm going to go see the hateful eight because I still, you know, even though it's the same movie, it's a movie I like, you know, I've seen Pulp Fiction 30 times. I still like to watch it.

So I will go see the hateful eight. I still, you know, you know, the movie I've never seen though is Jackie Brown. I actually liked that one. I, everybody says that, but I've never seen it. So I got the most un-Tarantino Tarantino. Okay. Okay. I see when I, when I think about watching Jackie Brown, then I go back and I'm like, oh, I'd rather just watch true romance because he wrote it, but didn't direct it.

So it's like, it's kind of the un-Tarantino. True. And I love true romance. That was a great movie. It was a fantastic movie. Go check out. Does it have legs? We reviewed that. And my last bit this week was Danny Elfman did, he was at the Hollywood Bowl on Halloween.

And I really wish I had tickets for this, but they did a live performance of the Nightmare Before Christmas. And at the end, he came out and did Dead Man's Party. Yeah. I wish I would have gone as well. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't go, but the exciting thing would be that, yes, Danny Elfman has, has finally after what, 20 years or something.

Exactly 20 years. Exactly 20 years, uh, finally decided to play an Oingo Boingo song. Uh, if you grew up here in Southern California, I went to many of these, I used to, Oingo Boingo played, uh, Irvine Meadows Halloween, uh, like three nights leading up to and including Halloween, uh, basically every year that I was growing up.

And I went to two of them and it was amazing. And Oingo Boingo is just, uh, I know Danny Elfman is busy writing the same soundtrack, the same movie that Tim Burton is doing, the same acting that, uh, that Johnny Depp is doing with Helena Bonham Carter. Um, so when he's, you know, too busy doing that, I would love an Oingo Boingo reunion.

Talk about an underrated band and a band that like a lot of people out of Southern California, except for the Weird Science soundtrack, never heard. They're a great band. Uh, so many good songs. Go check out on iTunes or Spotify. Just pull up their best of, you will be blown away. Oh my God. Oingo Boingo is one of my favorite bands ever.

Like Oingo Boingo for me is like the cure for you. Because when I grew up in, when I grew up in like Virginia and Virginia beach, I had like all their cassettes. I wore them out. You know, only a lad is my like all time favorite before I heard, uh, was it, we close our eyes.

That's a good song. That's a fucking great song. Um, but anyway, I loved Oingo Boingo growing up. And when I moved to California, I moved here in July of 2000, or I mean, sorry, 1995. Their last show was October 31st, 1995. And I did not know. I found out about it like three days later.

Cause my friend went and I just about, I cried. I was just like, Oh my God, one of my favorite bands for like, you know, 15 years. Has, has just broke up and I don't get to see them. If only there had been social media, then somebody would have tweeted you. They could have Instagrammed it to me.

They could have periscoped from the show and you wouldn't have missed it. Ooh, fancy, fancy, ooh, fancy. So there's a super cool thing that's happening over in Egypt. I'm sure Dr. Ben Carson is paying close attention.

Uh, muons and drone mounted lasers are going to probe for secret rooms in Egypt. It's pyramids. I'm assuming they're trying to find the grain. What's a muon? I don't know. Some science-y thing. Way to bring the, bring the knowledge.

Mm-hmm. Are you kidding me? Love it. On foreignpolicy.com, which is a site that is annoying the hell out of me right now because it has badly placed pop-ups. And then when you try to close the pop-up, it takes you away from the article that I'm trying to look at.

But the Pentagon does have a plan to stop the zombie apocalypse. Really? Okay. It's got a name in everything. It is, it is con, con op 8, 8, 8, 8. It's a zombie survival plan, a how-to guide for military planners to isolate the threat from a menu of undead, from chicken zombies to vegetarian zombies and evil magic zombies and destroy them.

Okay, I'm trying to look at it too, but Jesus, fuck, what a terrible website. You were laughing at me and getting pissed off because it took me like five minutes to try to start the segment because I cannot get this damn article to come up. You guys are horrible, foreignpolicy.com. Wow. What a terrible website.

You know what? Here's the trick. Look at it on your phone because if you click on the thing, then it goes to here. Oh my God. This web, the Pentagon needs to come up with a plan of attack to kill this website. Screw the zombies. Fix foreignpolicy.com. I agree. That is bad.

So don't go look at it in the show link. Google it instead. Try to find it on anything except for foreignpolicy.com. It's over a year old, so people can probably find it. Yeah, I think so. And Ars Technica writes, which I thought was pretty fun, humans have lived in space longer than the iPod has existed, which is kind of neat.

I just thought it was neat. Yeah, it is neat. And now we have this weird symbiotic relationship with the Russians because, you know, we need their Soyuz and they need us to use their Soyuz. Otherwise, there would be no Soyuz. So what's really come out of this space exploration thing is the fact that it really helps foreign policy.

Look, I've always said, you know, all we need are things like this. Any kind of international cooperation, which is required to do things like space exploration these days, nobody can do it alone. This will bring the world together. It'll be a happy, shiny place until we blow ourselves up and or create super bugs with our $2,000 gene splicing equipment at home.

Or you can also go buy the Scroton Tote. The single worst crowdfunding campaign in the history of the world. Now, I'm going to tell you people that if you go to the website at grumpy old geeks dot com slash 135 and you click on the link to this, you cannot unsee it.

You cannot unsee it. No, you can't unsee it. And you did just you left out the best part, which is the subtitle. It's not just the Scroton Tote. It is the Scroton Tote, the satchel of life. The satchel of life. Yes. So this is this is a backpack that looks like balls.

Literally balls. Talk about Kickstarter and the balls. I know. I really wish we still had that around. I'd have to bring that segment back and forget and read a security. Oh, my God. The Scroton Tote show title, satchel of life, satchel of life. Yes. And there we go. Thirty seven percent funded with thirty seven days left.

They're looking for thirty three thousand dollars to bring this to market. If you go to Indiegogo and you give them money, Brian and I will come to your house and personally kick you in the balls. Kickstarter. Yeah. Kickstarter you in the balls. Not conveniently. The bags are available in ebony and ivory.

Ebony and ivory. Closing shout outs. Shout out to a friend of the show, Trent, who described the show as two old guys who say the word fuck a lot. And it's awesome. So this show was for you because we really did say fuck a lot. Oh, we did.

And that would be Trent Hamilton, the gentleman who wrote our iOS app, who surprisingly or I'm sorry, unsurprisingly, hasn't updated it for what? Two and a half years. Yeah. Because we don't pay him. Exactly. OK.

But he's getting exposure. Oh, that's right. Exposure. You're getting exposed, Trent. I think Trent likes to expose himself anyway. So does he have one of the scrotum backpacks? I don't think he needs a backpack. He just slings him over his back and goes around town. So my shout out, I've got a shout out to Patrick Norton from the Screensavers.

OK. I got an email from him the other night. He's like, hey, what's going on? I was thinking of you. I'm just like, what? Oh, OK, cool. And I didn't know what he was up to lately, but he's got a new show called Tech Thing. It's kind of a YouTube show where he kind of does his tech thing, where he's, you know, reviews stuff.

They're kicking our ass, getting like two and a half grand an episode on Patreon. Wow. Nice job, man. Nice job. We could use some of your listeners. Yeah. Well, you know what? He's been doing it for a lot longer than we have. Right. Right. And he's actually good at it. Oh.

That's that kind of. Yeah. There's that. And there's a cute girl on the show, and we don't have one of those either. I'd also like to throw a shout out to Mark Cantor and Joey Ito. Mark, as you may have heard before, he's the guy that built, was it broadband mechanics?

But before that, long, long ago, he did a company called Macromind, which became Macromedia. And he wrote to Rector back in the day. Seem to remember some of that. Yeah. No. For some reason, he posted a picture of Dave Weiner, the guy that, you know, co-invented RSS, with Ben and Mina Trott from the Movable Type crew.

And this was their first meeting. And I remember this because my friend Chris Perillo was taking the photo, but I photobombed it. And everybody chimed in. It's like, oh, man, the good old days, the good old days. So it was fun to talk about that for a while. You should throw that photo up in the show notes. I will definitely throw that photo in the show notes.

And I'd also like to throw a shout out to my friends Randy and Warren back from the old Locker Gnome days. We had good times at Locker Gnome. And Warren and myself pitched in to buy Evan Williams. Yes, the billionaire Evan Williams, his first lap dance at the lumber yard in Iowa, where men go to get wood.

Wow. I'm telling you, it's a throwback. It's a throwback Friday here, whatever you call it. Apparently, your experiment in silence is causing you to reflect a lot. No, everybody. These people have come to me. This has all come to me this week. Apparently, Locker Gnome is back in the news.

I have no idea why, because they're like a dying company. But it was just fun that all this stuff came up this week. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo, and you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brad Schilmeister, and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFungus. Until next time. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show.

Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars and 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 Apple Music, and maybe even Pandora along with podcasts or not. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog to get 10 exclusive tracks. Nacho music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. 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 135. From my heart and from my hand, why don't people understand my intentions? At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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