137: I'm a Belieber!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for November 20th, 2015. I am Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Good morning, Brian. Morning, Jason. Anything interesting happen right after we finished our podcast last week? I don't know. You tell me. I don't know. I think there's something about Paris. I don't know. Oh, everything goes boom? Yes, everything goes boom. It's always weird to do a podcast like that because then we take a few hours to edit it and write things up and then we put it up and we publish it.

And right after publishing it, all of a sudden the world changes. Whoopsies. Yeah. Yeah, that's the real-time nature of the thing. Can't really predict for that. No, no. Not that we would have had any insightful or interesting commentary anyways. No, I've actually run filters on my Twitter feed now for ISIS, Paris, refugees, Syria, and it has become a much saner place.

Oh, you might have missed the fact that some hotel in Mali just got bombed. I've been doing podcasts since 6 o'clock this morning. I have not checked anything. Well, the world continues on its fun pace. So, yeah, there's some breaking news this morning, but we won't talk about that. We'll talk about something even more breaking.

Suddenly, I find myself with an iPhone 6, Jason. I don't know. I wasn't really going to do any of this stuff and I was just going to wait. I'd always lingered in the back of my mind that I would like to jump tracks to the S track because that always seems to be a bit more exciting and better. Then it just kind of magically fell into my lap, mostly through my group of friends in Toronto. One of them is now working for Apple and was able to get a very nice discount.

And another one of them was more than happy to snap up my iPhone 6 at fair market value. So, it basically cost me about $150 to get myself on the S track. Well, look at you. It's very fancy. I really can't honestly tell much of a difference at all. It's a little bit faster. I'm sure the camera is better. That's your thing. I don't care.

Yeah, I'm on the 6 Plus though. So, I think my 6 Plus is still probably better than your 6S. Probably, but it's good enough for me. Oh, have you seen this Fast Company article about Ello? I read it. I found it amusing, but probably not in the way that what's-his-face hoped for. What's-his-name here?

But Paul Budnitz. Do you believe anything he said? No, I didn't believe a damn thing. I don't believe a damn thing. I would love, I mean, I like how he's going to say, we're not going to talk about numbers because we're privately held and we don't have to. But let me tell you, we have millions. I'm like, bullshit.

Yeah, there's too many. You do have millions because I still have an account on there. Grumpy Old Geeks has an account on there. You have an account on there. None of us have ever just logged in in months. I also don't buy anything about how he's building this crazy base of really, you know, artists and musicians and all that sort of thing who are just going hog wild on their platform with their art.

No, you're not. And even if there are people there that are posting it, they'd be idiots not to be posting it everywhere else because you have no eyeballs. Yeah. And that's the whole thing. It's like, okay, why don't you just put it on Etsy like everybody else? I mean, I see their vision now, their quote unquote vision. Well, the very last paragraph.

Yeah, that's kind of cool. And if they would have launched with that, they may have had a shot. But you and I both know you get one chance these days. Oh, yeah. And they had their chance and they're done. So, you know, they could be this little niche thing for a while. But even what they want to be, they aren't yet.

So they still have to build what they say they're going to be. Yeah, indeed. Okay. No, they should have titled this article, I meant to do that. That might have been a little bit better. That's actually pretty funny. Or they could have done the whole, you know, the whole thing that's going on with Adele and Lionel Richie.

And it could have been, hello, it's not me you're looking for. There's another article that I found in Gawker that comes back to something we talk about a lot, and that's making fun of people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Yes. This guy.

This actually upsets me. This guy, David Shing? Yes. He upsets you? Yes, he upsets me. Let me guess, it's because he makes six figures and says nothing? He makes six figures for drawing a cartoon of a bear wearing zebra print pants and a shirt covered in ones and zeros and presents it to the chief marketing officer of AOL Advertising, who then says that she loves it and hands him a big check.

It makes no sense. I mean, I watched the video. What upsets me isn't him. I think good on you. What upsets me are the people that are paying him. Well, you know, that's, I don't know. I don't, I, I'm actually a bit tongue tied about this because it makes me feel like every time I see somebody talking about their, you know, their Silicon Valley, go get them startup.

All I can see is this guy's picture now in the video. He's a digital prophet who hallucinates about the future and he's an idiot and he doesn't say anything. And this whole, I mean, I know they're cherry picking his stuff to make fun of him here. I'm sure there are some decent things that he's actually come up with.

There, there has to be, I have to believe. You don't want to live in a world where there's not. I don't want to live in a world where this guy hasn't come up with a couple of good ideas because otherwise I just want to kill myself now. But, uh, you know, they're cherry picking it, but I love this last one at the end.

Everyone is talking about so Lomo, which I don't hear anyone talking about social local mobile, but they should be talking about homo, home mobile cell phones used on the couch. Yep. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Thanks for finding that.

Cause, uh, uh, you know, I was almost potentially in a good mood this morning until I read this article. Thanks. Thanks Jason. Sure thing. A little more followup on, uh, the autonomous driving thing that we keep talking about. I found this article on medium called the auto industry won't create the future.

And it has been making the rounds. Did you get a chance to read this? Uh, I scanned through most of it. I, there's nothing terribly new here, except for the fact that they kind of quickly brush over Tesla and Tesla kind of already did this. And they're an auto company, not a technology company. Although the lines blur now lines, but I agree with, I mean, you know, we all knew that Toyota and BMW and these established car companies weren't going to go reinvent the wheels themselves.

They were always going to make a deal. We always kind of assumed it was going to be an Apple dashboard that would get plugged into your BMW. Right. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Um, the, the, the, the way that he puts the, you know, the disruptors with this, I'm using air quotes.

I'm using sarcastic air quotes because he says it in the, in the piece. Uh, how the big data is really like what is going to be the key, but I don't think what he really mentions is it's like, okay, well you can just sell the data to BMW, you know, the data providers, they're there to provide the data.

And once you have your fleet going, I mean, yes, granted Tesla's fleet right now is logging more miles a day than Google ever has by itself. Yeah. Is Tesla going to sell that data? Who knows? Well, I mean, if we're going to be realistic and, and have these self-driving cars everywhere, I think this almost has to become a, a, for the good of the planet, we all share our data.

We co-mingle our data because that's the only way that it's going to be good and safe and, and the best that it can be. And we're talking about lives here when, when it's all just cars going out there and they're all autonomous. I would like all that data shared. I don't want to, you know, have to hope that my Tesla has good enough data to not run into that GM or BMW over there.

Wait. So you want to open source it? Yeah. Kind of like WordPress. Well, no, this is just data, not the operating systems, just the data. Yeah. We'll see. Um, so, and I also want to give my first opening shout out to my friend, Jason Bryant from the short time wrestling podcast.

He, uh, took some time for me last night and, uh, we, we talked to podcasting, so I just wanted to give him a shout out. So if you like wrestling and not professional entertainment wrestling, but real, like, you know, down on your, down on the floor, scrapping wrestling, go check out his podcast.

Like with a lady. What? Down on the floor, scrapping wrestling. That's the only kind I like with the lady. In the news. So, yeah, we had the Paris thing and I don't want to get too into it, but, uh, this does kind of dovetail a little bit into the music industry.

And I do feel a little bit compelled to talk about that. Um, obviously, uh, all sympathies for the Eagles of death metal and everybody that went to that concert. And, um, I don't personally know there were two people that were directly in the music industry that died there. Um, I don't personally know them, but you know, I'm one degree of separation away from them.

I do know people that did know them. So massively, horribly tragic situation. Uh, but I do want to talk about kind of what happened in the aftermath of that. Um, you two canceled their show the next night, which is kind of understandable is the next night. Uh, Marilyn Manson canceled their show in Paris.

Papa Roach canceled their show in Paris. The Foo Fighters canceled their upcoming show in Paris. Natalie Portman canceled a premiere in Paris. Coldplay canceled a show that was in Los Angeles. Not even Paris out of respect. Uh, I guess that one, that one is a head scratcher.

That's a, that's a head scratcher. Yeah. It's a, yeah. Um, and here's the thing, uh, it's cliche to say it at this point, but we have to keep on going as if nothing happened, uh, or they win. You go play your shows, you go entertain, you go do your thing.

Or as George Bush famously said, go shopping. Well, yeah. I mean, basically, uh, you know, that's, that's it in a very stupid nutshell. Um, yeah. So guess who is the one person who went on and did their show? Uh, wasn't it Simply Red?

Uh, I don't know if Simply Red did a show or not, but I can tell you that Justin Bieber did. Ooh, where was he playing? Uh, in Paris. Okay. So who'd have guessed? I'm a fucking Belieber. Oh, that's so scary. I know. Uh, good on you, man. I don't know anything about you except I know I probably don't like you, but I like this.

Okay. Uh, yep. It is what it is. Now, uh, Adele's new album is, uh, besides being already leaked completely. Yeah. Yeah. It's out in Swedish. It is. It's out in Swedish. And there are many reviews of it already. If you can just Google, uh, Adele leak and there's a lot of news for it.

Um, but the other news is that no streaming, no way, no day. Well, they're saying that now it's, it's going to be windowed. That's what people do now. So it'll, it will not be streaming for the first couple of weeks. And then as soon as the record labels notice that sales are dipping, they will go to streaming.

Um, yeah. Once the algorithm sees that, okay, well we can, once you hit the tipping point to get more out of the streaming than your actual sales, I'm just wondering where do people actually go to buy a CD anymore? Walmart. Okay. Uh, that's, I mean, they're going to sell it, you know, people will buy it on iTunes.

Uh, whatever. Uh, this tells you all you need to know about how the record industry is lying to you and themselves about streaming being the savior of music. Uh, the big scuttlebutt and the, you know, everybody is basically saying this is the last great album.

We will never see an album that is this big again because of the general nature of the music industry, the fracturing, the, the, wait, wait, wait, wait, didn't they say that about Taylor Swift's last album? They said this about Taylor Swift. Exactly. The exact same thing. But I do think this is it because you can look at the numbers on CD sales and you can look at the numbers on digital sales and they have dropped again, another 30 to 40% since last year.

They're now almost, almost useless, uh, almost useless, except for the fact that everybody knows that everybody wants this album and this will be the one. This is it. I, Christmas time. These are the, this is the last big album. There will still be CDs, but this is, this is really it.

And this is why, you know, they're fucking hypocritical liars because, oh, please go to streaming. Please go to streaming. Please go to streaming. Holy shit. We can sell a lot of this. Don't put it on streaming. Yeah. What a fucking bunch of bullshit. And yes. And then of course the same thing will happen next time Taylor Swift has an album.

And then the next time Adele has an album and we'll just keep until we're all dead. Well, let's, uh, let's take a note of this 1120, uh, around this, uh, the show, uh, in 2006 or 2016, we'll see what happens. I really do think this is it. I, I can't, there's no bigger star and just, uh, everybody now, because they've told us to has kind of moved to streaming.

So I think this might be it and we'll see. Uh, we're not going to go back to CDs. We're never going to see a CD resurgence, like the supposed vinyl resurgence, which is 0.000001% of the market. Yeah. But there is actually a vinyl resurgence. It is going up.

So that is an, you know, an actual point that it is going back up. It is definitely a very small portion of the overall music audience, but yes. Yes. And it's generally hipsters with typewriters or old punk rock dudes like, like our friend Mike. Well, I think he is single-handedly caused the bump, although he's been doing it all along.

Yeah. Serious. He's been keeping it. The vinyl presses in action. Okay. Um, now since we have merged the security segment and yes, I'm, I'm, I'm mixing it up here. All right. Speaking of, uh, ISIS previously and all of the, uh, encryption stuff that we've always talked about and how, you know, the government is saying, oh, we, we, you must, we must not have a actual end-to-end encryption because the terrorists will win.

Yes. Well, it turns out they didn't even bother. Yeah. They didn't even bother. There's so much signal to noise ratio out there. Why? They don't need to. Right. You know, you make up some code words and then you just chat or not even make up code words.

Who knows? But anyway, uh, I liked that Bruce Schneier, uh, points out, he said that they did use encryption. They, they, they use double, uh, wrote 13. Yeah. Which I believe the, uh, Roman legionnaires used. Yes. This has been around for a while. Yes. But wrote 13, you shift it by 13 letters and then double wrote 13, you shift it again.

And then you're back to this, you know, the starting point. I thought it was just very cute. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Uh, anonymous has gotten involved. They've thrown their hat into the ring and declared war on ISIS. Uh, they've even handily posted a, a noob guide. If you want to get involved, a how to guide to help in their cyber war campaign against ISIS.

Have you found it yet? I haven't been able to find it. I didn't really look that hard cause I didn't want to get tagged on that list. It's on IRC and I haven't been on IRC since 1990. So yeah, really? I didn't really go out and search for it. I'm also not planning on joining, uh, anonymous with their, with their war against ISIS because there are, you know, it depends on who I, I, I'm so torn on this issue.

So I really am because I feel like good on you. You know, everybody should get involved and do what you could do. And obviously they're taking down thousands upon thousands of Twitter accounts that are associated with ISIS or ISIS members. And that's great. Yeah. See, that's, that's, that's one thing I'm curious about is are they just reporting them to Twitter and Twitter is taking them down or are they hacking into the accounts and deleting them or taking them over?

Because if they, if they, if they're, yeah. Cause if they're, if they're hacking into 5,500 Twitter accounts that fast, Twitter's got a problem. Yeah. Yeah. That's a real issue for Twitter, isn't it? Um, they, I mean, they also supposedly took down some forum, but I mean, you know, and I know how easy it is to hack into a forum because how crappy those open source softwares are.

Yeah. If you're, if you're running PHP BB still, then yeah, well, yeah, you, yeah. You and I could become anonymous in two seconds and take down a forum. Yeah. It's not that difficult. Um, I, you know, we'll see what happens. There's a lot of reports going on about anonymous doing a lot of stuff, but then, you know, agencies are saying we don't really want them doing this because if they take out the easy channels that we may know about, they're going to move to something we may not know about.

Yeah. Then they say, well, it's harder to monitor them. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Uh, same story as last time. Same story. Same story. There was an article on recode about what we know and don't know about how the Paris attackers communicated. Um, I like how it starts with what we know very little.

So why am I reading this article? I don't know because, uh, yeah, they should have waited a day or two because then now we know. Yeah. Yeah. Now we do know. Uh, they were saying WhatsApp and they were saying PlayStation. Uh, apparently a lot of it was going through the PlayStation network. That was one of the main channels of communication, which kind of makes sense.

Um, Telegram, uh, that old app that you and I tried a long time ago was apparently being used as well. They blocked over Telegram itself got involved and blocked over 78 ISIS messaging channels and 78 channels. Ooh, 78. Yeah. And, uh, over 12 languages.

So, so it's super fast, simple, secure, and free, except for the fact that Telegram is obviously monitoring the channels themselves because they found this and shut it down. I think that somebody was monitoring the channel names and not the actual channel content because you can't monitor the channel content. So they say, because it's end to end.

So, so, so they say, so they say, so let's end all this ISIS discussion on, on a high note as it were. Uh, there's a link in our, in our show notes and rather amusingly from Walter Mondale jr.com. Oh my God. I just noticed that. Oh, you didn't notice that?

That's why I picked this one in particular. Uh, this is out over the website quite a lot, but I enjoyed the, uh, domain name, uh, picks of ballsy, topless Lebanese girls burning ISIS flags. You go girls again. Yes. Keep going. Yep. So awesome. This is the best thing ever.

And this is exactly what we need. And we need more. Forrestondalejr.com. Yes. It doesn't necessarily need to be topless, but we do enjoy people in that society standing up against the things that are going on. Thank you. Okay. Soapbox off. Okay. Going back to streaming news, uh, Pandora is buying up RDO.

Maybe it still has to get, uh, bid on, I guess. Right. Cause it's, you know, it's like a fire sale, but, uh, for 75 million, they're taking some of the, uh, the tech, some of the people, except for the CEO, which I don't know. I would, uh, wholeheartedly recommend that they do.

Uh, yeah, I would recommend that they do that, but I would recommend to the CD CEO of RDO to take the money and run. I don't think he's going to get a whole lot because the investors are the ones that are getting really screwed on this deal. Yeah. Well, already a lost. I mean, there's no doubt about it. They didn't get the market share. I know they're better.

I know they look nicer. Uh, they just never, they never broke it here. They were huge in Canada, but that's not going to get you. That's not going to get you a winner status. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, Spotify like kind of took over the European market before RDO could really get, you know, the ball rolling.

Yeah. And Spotify beat them here too. So yeah, it's a shame. I did like RDO and I, you know, I don't know what Pandora is going to do with it. Are they going to move into that space? Are they going to continue just being radio? So now they're going to go on demand subscription. Yep. That's what they want to do. Well, they, they need to, uh, there's no doubt if they, if Pandora wants to make it, they're going to have to do that because people want to be able to listen to what they want to be able to listen to.

Now we've got a whole bunch of millennials that want to do what they want to do when they want to do it. Yeah. But Pandora is still the second biggest, you know, service out there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, they've built up, they've been around long enough. That's, and they built up their thing. And you know, when, when I go over to people's houses and they're having parties, they generally just throw on a Pandora station that they like.

Yeah. That's all I've got. I've got like multiple Pandora stations that go through the Sonos, just go on my phone and boom, go. And then it's, you know, you at least get variety. Yeah. And for something like that, when you want, you know, when you just want the radio on, it's nice. But now again, but like I said, I mean, I, I talked about this a while back.

I think Apple has done a really nice job with their radio stations. It's actually quite good. I like it more than I like Pandora. Like you could, you find whatever artist or whatever, like I'll listen to the cure radio station and it's just related music based around that. And the algorithm is very good. It used to be very good.

Now it repeats a hell of a lot. Like I have the same cure station that you do. And now it's like, I can go in and I'm like, Oh, that's the same exact order that it played last time. Oh, really? I haven't listened quite a little bit. So yeah, I haven't either. Cause I've been on Pandora. Well, I, I, yeah, I generally don't do the radio thing.

I generally listen to an album. So, but yeah, that's, I know I'm an outlier that way. Yeah. Different, different strokes for different folks. Totally. So Spotify has opened up some of their data. Apparently quite a lot of it. They have a fan insights portal, which is completely free, but access is limited to musicians and the people who work for them.

Which is going to be interesting because that way they can see exactly how much they're streaming and how much is being reported by the labels and how much money they're getting. So yeah, it's actually quite a big deal for musicians. I'm a little disappointed that they didn't throw this open to everyone though, but I understand why they didn't do that, but it would have been nice.

I would love to be able to poke around and see who's listening to what and what artists are actually getting a lot of streams and all of that sort of thing. But this is good for if you're, if you're an artist, this is fantastic. Yeah. As far as I know, I think, you know, a few musicians, so maybe they'll let you like lend to the password.

Well, my, my, my understanding though, is you can get into an insight, but it's only for your own streams. You still, if I were to do it for a, any particular client, I could see their data, but I wouldn't be able to see other bands data. Right. I want to be able to see everything. You want to see, you want the power.

Yes. I want the keys to the Spotify kingdom. Now, uh, Instagram is killing off their feed, which is interesting and sucks because I, how many of these damn things do you think we've written? I know I've written at least one for you for Coldplay.

Uh, yeah, yeah. And I've got at least 30 other clients that have websites that have built in Instagram feeds and they're just, they're shutting it down. Yeah, that's not good. Um, in fact, I actually just built something like this for another client recently. And now I'm wondering if it's going to continue to work.

Uh, well, until June. Okay, great. That's all. Well, you know, yeah. On the plus side, the client will have to pay me to figure it out. You won't be able to figure it out. That's the, that's the downside of it. And you know, the speculation is because it's, they want to be able to control how their ads are displayed.

Yeah. I mean, most of the, you know, ads won't show up in these things. So now if we force everybody, it's a, it's a horrible, horrible plan. I hate this. It's there. Hey, you can get it. You can get a refund. Yeah. It's totally free. This is the world we decided we're going to have.

Right. Anyways, uh, Amazon has finally joined, uh, I don't know. The rest of the internet. 2002, 2008, something like that. And now has a two factor authentication. So feel free to go turn that on and you will be able to browse Amazon somewhat more securely. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Out of all the accounts that I've ever had hacked, Amazon was never one of them. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I do have my credit card in there, so that would be bad. But otherwise it's like, oh, Hey, look, you can see what I ordered. Oh, look, look, I got some paper. Okay. Fantastic.

Uh, Uber got dealt another blow in the lawsuit that is threatening its business model, which I'm happy about this is the ongoing lawsuit that will be occurring here in, uh, I believe that the ninth us circuit court of appeals, uh, where Uber is basically trying to argue that, uh, they don't actually employ anyone.

Yep. That's pretty much it. The judges are kind of saying, okay, so who's driving all those cars. Yeah. So that's pretty much where the argument came down to. So they're going to lose that one and they should. And, uh, Tinder has kind of going public and apparently the CEO is a massive douchebag who gave a disastrous interview the night before it went public.

Yeah. It's actually the match group that went public, but they own Tinder. And this guy is just like, I don't know who let him on camera or who put him in front of a reporter. Yeah. His name's Sean Rad. What more do you need to know? Yeah. He's got a very rich family, very rich family.

Of course he does. And he's a bit of a douche, which is shocking. He is not a bit. He is a large douche. Yeah. He's a douche.

Comment of the week. We have another lovely five-star rating on iTunes. Uh, the title is Modern Life is Rubbish. Great album. Uh, by Truck2112. And he mentions the album. Okay. I think the title of that Blur album perfectly encapsulates why Brian and Jason are so grumpy.

The pervasiveness of the internet in our lives today is both a blessing and a curse. This is an entertaining and informative listen about the frequent frustrations and occasional joys that we experience on daily basis due to technology and the people behind it. And I don't mind the cursing. Fuck yeah. Uh, thanks man.

We love that. Uh, love the five-star rating. Love the comments. Thank you so much. This one comes from grumpy old geeks.com from Andy Solomon. This one is for at Slender Fungus. That would be Brian. You should check out Sam Harris. He has tons of great material on his blog. I'm bringing this to your attention after hearing you say that there are no respectable atheists left to follow.

Sam is a very logical guy and great writer who is always up for a good debate. I like Sam Harris. I, I, I'm aware of him. Um, yeah, that's just, uh, we seem to have touched a nerve with the atheist thing. Oh yeah. Well, you always do. Yeah. Anyways, whatever. Uh, no, he's, he's, he's pretty good.

It's, uh, I kind of burned out on it, I think a little bit. And especially when, when the people leading the charge right now, I don't necessarily agree with their approach to things, but, uh, no, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Um, let's, let's go into a little bit more atheism because another comment from grumpy old geeks.com from Joaquin Morin, uh, you guys might like one or all of these podcasts all by the same guys, basically skeptocrats, scathing atheists, god-awful movies, uh, really enjoy your podcast and keep up the good work.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, I probably will not be listening to any of these podcasts because again, I, I, I don't really need to have my personal opinion bucked up by other people. Uh, I'm good. That's yeah. Yeah. That's the whole point of being, I like Penn's thing. The whole point about being an atheist is we're not joining a group.

Yeah, true. True that. True that. And I have a comment from, uh, one of the co-hosts of grumpy old geeks. I think we made a mistake with, uh, pulling out security. Ha. I think we need to put that back next week. Uh, who decided that? I, I, I just, I, I'm putting it out for debate.

I said we shouldn't get rid of it at all in the first place. I know. That was totally your call. I think we should keep it. Okay. So, uh, my comment of the week is I'm reversing my previous decision and we will be coming back next week with security. Ha. Especially since I just got a story that came in right now that the entire Star Wars hotel chain has been hacked.

Oh man. See, we would have, we would have had a hack of the week. Well, technically we just did. Yes. There we go. So yes, let's bring security back. Besides, I like that little bumper. I did too. That's why I miss it. So if you, if you disagree and you want to let us know, go to grumpy old geeks.com and you can leave us a comment there.

Uh, you can tweet us at twitter.com slash GOG podcast. Please do go to our Patreon page. Remember that is the only way that we are paying for everything here. So we really do appreciate your support. Patreon.com slash GOG. Of course, we love the iTunes ratings and the five stars and the comments there.

That really does help grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes to get to that and tell a damn friend. We need to build our listenership. At the library. This week, I've got two books.

One is called So Good They Can't Ignore You. Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport. This book was fantastic because it, it reverses that whole thing where it's like, you know, if you do the job you love, you'll never work a day in your life, you know, self-help crap that's been out there for 20 years or 30 years.

Yeah. This is, it's, if you, if you are on my side with the whole follow your passion is bunk thing, read this book. You'll, it'll give you a lot of ammo to, to throw at people when they, they come back and say that. I wonder if David Shing read this. Oh my God. Yeah. The other book I've got is Living with a Seal, 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet by Jesse Itzler.

Now, Jesse, you may know, is the co-founder of Marquee Jet back in the day. Okay. And Zico Coconut Water. Ugh. I've never tried this stuff. Ugh. And he's, he's married to, uh, Sarah Blakely, the, the founder of Spanx.

Okay. But, uh, the thing about this book is he's, you know, it was in his forties. He was a runner, but he wanted, he wanted to get his ass kicked. Okay. And so he hired the seal and he, they never name him in the book, but they just call him seal. And it's not the seal that we know with the fucked up face.

So. Hey, that, that guy with the fucked up face was, uh, he nailed, uh, Heidi Klum. So. Many, many times. Yes. As you can tell by the brood, um, it's hilarious. It is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. It's a quick read. I highly recommend picking it up.

If you want to hear about somebody getting their ass kicked training, uh, with a very humorous bent. Software apps and gadgets. It was 30 years ago today that windows 1.0 came out.

So it's been now 30 years that I've been annoyed by windows and I'm still, I'm still using it today. Oh yeah, I do, but it's, I just still find it annoying. It's always frustrating, but, uh, we have a link in the show notes that takes you to a page that talks a little bit about it, but, uh, even better, it has the best commercial that they released with Steve Ballmer way back in, uh, 86.

It's amazing. Yeah, it is an amazing commercial. I remember when my mom came home with the windows 1.0 floppies and she showed it to me and I'm like, Whoa. Yeah. It was crazy stuff. I love, I miss the command line. You can still get it back, but you can't do much with it anymore. That's the problem.

Oh man. I live in the command line or at least I used to before I retired. Yes. Yes. And a very cool thing has come out. This is a seal, S-C-I-O. It's a new gadget that can instantly measure the molecular fingerprint of just about anything you see.

And it fits in your pocket. This thing is pretty cool. I just wonder how well it works because it is really small. It's really, really small. Yeah. I wonder how, I mean, I'm sure you, you know, this is not lab quality, but in terms of just like running around and like sampling everything that you come across, it's pretty badass.

But it, and it also uses the cloud. You have to have a phone with your phone with you. And then through Bluetooth, it sends the data in. Oh, you have to have the phone with you. Like anybody runs around without their phone now. If I'm running around with a spectrometer in my pocket, I can, you can guarantee that I'm going to have my phone with me. Yeah, I think this, you know, this is pretty safe bet that you're going to have your phone.

It's retailing, I guess, for $2.49. And, you know, this, anybody listening out there that wants to get me a nice Christmas present, this would be pretty badass. I think this would be awesome to carry around.

Media Candy. I do not remember if you mentioned this show that I just started watching because you've been big up on the Amazon platform. I've talked about quite a number of Amazon shows in the past. And my argument has always been, I don't give a shit about the ingenuity.

I don't give a shit about the platform. I don't give a shit about the splash and what you're trying to do. I want good content. And they finally have a good show. And I've been watching the man in the high castle. I've seen the first two episodes. The third episode drops tonight and I'm loving it. Oh, you can only, I thought you could binge watch these.

Oh, that's. No, no, they are there. See, this is where everybody is just trying something out to see what happens. Amazon has decided not to binge it and is going to be releasing it scaled out. Oh man. Cause yeah, I saw the first one when it was in the pilot stage and I did talk about it on the show because I loved it.

Yeah, I thought you did. Yeah, no, it was fantastic. And I was waiting for, they, like a month and a half ago, they released the first two to watch again, but then you had to wait a month and I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I think they're going to drop on weekly seems to be the plan now. So, um, yeah, it's, it's frigging great.

I mean, I only knew about it because they've actually started to do advertising. So I started to see banners everywhere and it's always a little off-putting when you see a big Nazi sign. Uh, so that catches your eye. Yeah, it does. Yeah. So I saw that and I was like, Oh, I vaguely remember Jason maybe talking about this. And I went through the whole process of, you know, I had to bring it up on my iPad and then I threw it over to the TV to be able to watch it decently.

And then it was buffering cause I was watching the HD version and it took a while, but finally when it started playing so far, it's a really good show. I like the, I like the concept, uh, the acting is great in it. The plot seems to be pretty good. I'm trying to figure out where they're going with it. All kinds of double crossing. I mean, it was a great book to begin with.

Um, alternative, uh, history fiction is always a lot of fun. Um, I can't recommend this enough so far. We'll see. Excellent. I will have to check it out. Uh, they don't let you download yet. Do they the, through the Amazon video app? Like if I wanted to download it to my iPad and take it on the train, if you're prime, you can, I believe.

Okay. I'm gonna have to check that out for sure. Cause I haven't tried that yet and I'm going to be on a train. That's right. You are. So, uh, that should be fun to watch. Another thing that came out today is Jessica Jones. It's kind of a side story from the daredevil universe in, um, that Netflix put out.

So she's a private eye, like, you know, kicking ass and taking names. Yeah. I hear she's a bit of an anti-hero and a lot of people are writing articles about how this is like, uh, the, the antidote to the kind of super girl bullshit, happy go lucky crap, feminist superhero types.

Oh, good. Good. I like that. Yeah. We'll see. Uh, yeah. I'll have a review of that next week for sure. Yeah. You let me know if it's good to watch. Did you, did you ever finish daredevil or start daredevil? No. Oh man. It's so good. And season two is coming in January, I believe. See the only, again, I've talked about it a bit when, when I was talking about having watched, uh, Ant-Man, I'm not really superhero movie guy or a TV show guy.

I don't care for them that much unless they're kind of out of the box and weird. This is out of the box and weird. You're missing out. Okay. All right. All right. Well, you know what? I won't be missing out on. All right. All right. All right. Unfortunately, uh, one of my favorite book series of all time is, uh, Stephen King's, the dark tower.

They have been talking about doing a movie and then doing maybe a TV show. And then it was going to be, well, we'll do a movie and then we'll do a TV show that ties into the movie and then do another movie later. And they've been talking about this forever. I honestly don't want an adaptation of this at all.

I think it's, it, it's too massive. It's too crazy. It's too everything that this will never be done well, but I can tell you one thing that will definitely make it a fucking million times worse casting Matthew motherfucking McConaughey. And apparently he's been offered the role of the man in black.

And if this happens, I'm boycotting the whole goddamn thing. I think you're going to boycott the whole thing anyway. No, I'll watch it. But McConaughey is a deal breaker for me. See, that's funny. That reminds, it reminds me of Constantine. The movie with, uh, you know, about Hellblazer, the comic book, and they cast Keanu Reeves as John Constantine.

And I'm just like, this is going to be the worst thing I've ever seen. And I was bitching about it, moaning about it, didn't go to see it in the theater. And then when I finally did see it, it was amazing. I loved it. Keanu's this great blank slate. He doesn't have, he doesn't necessarily bring a personality to the role. And that's why he was great at Neo.

And I'm sure he's great at many characters like that. Keanu's fine. Put Keanu in the man as the man in black. I'll be okay with that. McConaughey is a freaking, I mean, he is who he is. There's no removing the McConaughey from McConaughey when McConaughey is in a movie. You cannot dee McConaughey. Cannot dee McConaughey.

He is who he is. And I hate who he is. All right. All right. Hey, at least it's not, at least it's not Matt Damon. Fuck. They'll probably cast him as Roland. You know, it's totes cray cray redic.

What? The fact that the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year is a freaking emoji. I'm totally okay with that. Why? I think it's fine. I originally was just like you. And I, I do not relate totes cray cray redic. And that kind of phrasing with emojis.

I think emojis have become commonplace. And in a world where we are now texting, and I would rather text with someone than do a phone call with them nine times out of 10. I love emojis. I think they're fantastic. Ivy braced the emoji. Ryan, you are so totes adorbs. I know.

Well, that's why I send you smiley faces all the time, Jason. No, I'm totally okay with this. It makes sense. This should be the word because emojis have totally blown up this year. Beyond a doubt, people are using them constantly. And I find them totally okay. And I'm totally down with it.

I am smiley face with this. It's funny, though, because it's the one I've never used. Which one? The word of the year. Oh, emoji. Yeah. You've never used an emoji ever? No, the one that they picked. Oh, right. Yeah, I've never used that one either. But, you know, we have a middle finger now.

How great is that? The poo thing was fantastic. How can you not be down with emojis? I know it's just not a fucking word. It is a word now, Jason. We make them. That's the language. It evolves. It moves on. We have to create new words for new things. I want to go back to the caveman days. Are you kidding me?

Love it. So, we fly a lot, you and I, Jason. Mm-hmm. And I tend to, I like the window seat, personally. I always get the window seat. I hate the aisle. I don't like getting bumped into. I, uh, my bladder is strong like bull. So I can sit there and I don't have to get up and go to the bathroom every five minutes.

Uh, so I'm just staring out the window all the time. And there's always this little tiny hole in, in one of, in the glass window there. Yep. Or at least most of the time. And it always kind of freaks me out a little bit because you see like condensation and ice is freezing right around it. And I'm just like, is that thing going to blow?

Uh, there's a reason why it's there, which I was not aware of. And this was never in the Ask the Pilot books either. So I, I think I need to send this to him so he can include it in his next version. It regulates pressure. There are actually three different panes of glass on every window, an outer, a middle and an inner. And, uh, the middle pane has a tiny little hole in it to regulate pressure.

Yeah. I knew about this one. Cause I asked a pilot about it one time. I'm like, why is there a hole in the window? Yeah. Is this a bad, is that supposed to be there? Cause that's what I was usually always thinking. But now I know. And knowing's half the battle and see the photo in the article. If you go to our show notes, that is what I see.

And that always terrifies me. Yeah. It looks like somebody shot a hole in the damn thing. Instead of being scared all my life, I just asked somebody. So, uh, well, you know, by the time I think of it, I've had, four or five Jack and Cokes. And I don't really feel like trying to make a conversation. I'm surprised you can actually see it at that point, at that point, you know, especially at this point, post nine 11, I'd think they'd frown on that drunken guy stumbling up to ask a pilot a question.

Yeah. Probably not going to go over so well. So, you know, get on me. Uh, I found another great article. Um, and this is kind of the, the no shit file. Um, we all age at different speeds and scientists have worked out how to calculate it. This is kind of cool. Uh, again, no shit files.

I mean, if you're, you know, 50 years old and you don't smoke and you don't drink and you work out every day, you should actually be a biologically younger age than somebody like tan mom or yeah, or us or us for that. Yes. So, uh, it's kind of cool.

It's a, they have a, they're putting together algorithms and you can kind of, I think there's a form at the end where you could like punch in a bunch of stuff and it'll tell you roughly what your actual biological age is. Oh, great. So it's a calculator to, to figure out when you're going to die. Yeah, pretty much. And I'm sure insurance companies, uh, will stumble upon this very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the new actuarial tables. Pretty much. Uh, now I, I think we may have talked about this one before, but there's a really cool trick that, uh, can turn a black and white photo into color. No, we didn't talk about this. We did talk about, there was that a weird animation that was created that supposedly would make you colorblind for like three months.

And neither of us did it because we were terrified. Yeah, no, definitely. This is a, this is a trick that just kind of uses negative colors to when you look at a black and white image, then they run it like in a false color image. Then when they take it back to the black and white, you can actually see color in it. Yeah, it's really cool.

It's really cool. I like watching the video. It's pretty bad-ass. Yeah. You can actually watch the video and see the effect. So since we're an audio podcast, I recommend going to the show notes and checking it out. Yeah. And if you watch it, it'll kind of remind you of, well, if you're old enough like us and you were trying to watch some naughty bits on TV late at night when your parents were asleep and had the cable thing and you fiddled around with the wire quite a bit, you could get boobies in about these colors.

You remember that, don't you? Oh yes. I learned to tinker because I needed to see some boobies. That's why I took apart my cable boxes just for that. And they ended up generally in that lovely purple and kind of orange-ish color that I'm seeing right here on this video. So I'm going to call this next one, uh, the vindication of Jason, because I'm not crazy.

Uh, there's a genetic reason why some people are born to travel all over the world. Cause as a lot of people who've listened to the show know, I have moved well over a hundred times, I've been all over the country and I like to go places and there's a genetic reason for it. I think it's funny that you feel the need to justify it because this is quite a lot of people, Jason, but, uh, you know, you need to work on your ego a little bit.

No, it's good. It's cool. Travel's great. I love to travel too. Uh, but again, this is kind of a no shit file. It's basically just a thrill seeking gene. So it's the same thing that makes people skydive and do crazy ass shit like that, but slightly less so, or there's just, Hey, we're here. Let's go see the damn world.

That could be it too. Yeah. Makes me not hate people and feel comfortable about immigrants coming here. You are just on the kick this week. Hey, you know, uh, there's a very good reason why, but I won't get into it on the podcast. Read my Facebook. You may have noticed it's a bit of a short show this week.

Uh, holidays are quickly approaching. Jason's packing up to take off for quite a while. Um, I've been dealing with a bunch of other things that are involved with, uh, families. So I actually quick shout out to my sister who is about to shortly give birth to, uh, my, my second niece. So that'll be fun.

Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you very much. So yeah, we're going to be taking next week off because it's Thanksgiving here in the U S and we're going to be spending it with our families. And, uh, Jason's going to go on a crazy train journey again. Cause I have the gene. Yes, you do. Because you're a thrill seeker.

I'm going to thrill seek my way across the country on Amtrak. Yeah, that'll be fun. So yeah, sorry about the short show, but, uh, we've been super busy and getting ready to take a little bit of a break, but, uh, we will catch you after Thanksgiving and we'll be back with, uh, our normal long show and hopefully get in a big fight about guns.

Cause I like to do that. Oh yes. That never gets old. And I'm just going to go take Uber every, I'm going to Uber back from Chicago. That'd be awesome. I dare you. That'd be great. I can't afford it. I know. Uh, there's one more link in the show notes for this week, uh, plan Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd with this spreadsheet.

Uh, so that if you are at the anal type and very meticulous, have yourself a happy, meticulously planned Thanksgiving and use the spreadsheet. Okay. Uh, no, but I'm just, you know, some people just go a little crazy with the data. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, this might be a little overkill.

It's my, I don't need the Thanksgiving hack. No, no. I really just want to sit, eat a lot of, a lot of Turkey and, uh, stuff myself with stuffing and have some wine and, um, actually have a nice little break for once. Yes, indeed. So, uh, if you are in the lovely United States of America, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving because I just said lovely three times now and I won't say it again, but I too enjoy the Thanksgiving and, uh, plan to do exactly the same thing that you're going to do.

Turkey, stuffing, wine. Yes. And, uh, read a bunch of books. So, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo and you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schulmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus. Until the next, next time. Yes. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan-supported show.

Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us.

You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Pandora, but not RDO anymore. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash houseofandy. 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 137. Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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