138: We Are 138!

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 December 4th, 2015. I am Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How was your break there, Jason? It was long. It was a little longer than I liked. It was really weird not doing a show. And actually, I kept forgetting we didn't do a show. And I kept looking at tech news and dropping things in. And I was like, oh, this is going to be really old by the time we actually record.

Yeah, yeah, I did that too. No, I took that train ride out to Chicago. Yeah, I don't need to do that again. Oh, good. I'm glad you finally got that out of your system. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm done. The romance of train travel has faded for you.

Well, the problem is Amtrak rents rails from the freight companies, right? Right. So they're not the greatest rails in the world. It's, you know, when you're in Europe, it's all smooth sailing. Yes, it is. Trying to sleep on this train was like being locked in the trunk of a car with a crazy man hitting the horn going about 100 miles an hour.

Nice. Yeah, it was not fun. I will take a pass on train travel in this country. I think the only thing that I would do is there's one up in Canada that goes coast to coast that's supposed to be really cool. That sounds like it'd be fun. Mm-hmm. But don't do it in the winter. Oh, no. It would just be kind of like you just look at the, you could just put a white piece of paper.

Yeah. On the window and that'll be it. Pretty much. And did you have lots of turkey and things like that? I did indeed. It was a very mellow, low-key Thanksgiving. My parents live in the area, so I didn't even do any traveling. So it was kind of nice to really kind of just do nothing.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I could have gone for that. I ended up working like 50 hours in four days. Ouch. I was out there, yeah. It was a whirlwind. But I didn't have anything else to do. I'm like, ah, might as well work.

Might as well work, yeah. Actually, funny, I was contacted by a potential new client this week, and this drives me crazy. I mean, I think I've been complaining about this since episode one. Nobody has patience anymore, and nobody realizes that things take time. Everybody just expects things immediately because they're all egocentric and complete idiots, and because they can tweet from their phone, they think that there's no problems associated with technology.

So somebody contacted me basically on Monday, and of course they wanted to meet the same day, and I'm like, can't, scheduled. How about Wednesday? So talked to them on Wednesday, and just kind of full bore, went crazy with it. And it's a relatively complex project. And then, you know, the next day after I sent back an email wrap-up and kind of like, okay, so this is a rough budget. This is what we're looking at. I can get started next week. They write back and go, yeah, we'd like to launch this on January 1st.

Okay. I'm like, this is probably a good two-month build at minimum. It's relatively complicated. And in the past, I probably would have said yes and just spent the entire holiday doing it. But I just wrote back and said, sorry, I'm actually going to take Christmas holiday, so that's not possible. If you want that done, you can find somebody else.

Okay. And their reply was? I think they're trying to go find someone else, which is fine by me. I'm not going to do that anymore. We talk a lot on this show about how it's important to have downtime, and people, you know, I'm not going to slide into this insanity of just always having to work. It's not good for you.

No, it's not. It's not. But, you know, we've been doing this for so long, I just don't know what to do when I'm not working. Get a wife. You'd be amazed at how much your time gets filled up for you. And with home remodeling and things like that, and driving to Home Depot back and forth.

Buy a house, get a wife, and do all those things that you're supposed to do as you become an adult, and you'll be amazed at how much time it takes. I think I'm going to pass on that one. All right. I finally got my cards for mindfulness from the Budaphy guys. Oh, yay. When did you order that again?

It's been a while. Okay. Yeah. No, Kickstarter, when you absolutely never, ever want to get it on time. We really need to bring back the Kickstarter segment. Speaking of that, did you see, I know you also relatively recently got your drinking jacket from Zane Lamprey, which was also Kickstarted.

You know, shortly after you got it, he was rolled out drinking jacket 2.0. Of course. So, yours is already obsolete. Yeah. Just like my computers, and yeah. I tell everybody, like, if they want to buy an Apple, wait a month after, or 31 days after I buy mine, because that's the time when I can't return it, and that's when new models will come out.

Yeah. On the plus side, you don't have to go to Kickstarter to get Zane's drinking jacket 2.0. He's actually just selling this one straight up. Interesting. I wonder what the new features are. There's a whole chart. Does it come with Bluetooth and a battery charger? No, no, no technology.

But it is, it's still, well, it's $85 on sale right now, which is pretty expensive. Well, the thing is, I moved to Los Angeles, and I don't really need it. Yeah. And I'm trying not to have clothing that basically exemplifies my drinking habits. I know.

I get enough gruff for that. I don't need a big sign that says, hey, Lush. Yeah, exactly. Although I have many t-shirts that say Lush on them, because I like the band. Yeah. They were a great band. Yes, they were. And they're coming back. So, that's all very exciting.

I'll talk a little bit about that later. But now that we moved on to music, the big music news has, of course, been Adele's album, which has sold more than any album ever in the history of mankind, and mostly because she refused to put it on streams. So, it was, the only way to get it was a good old CD or digital download.

Yes, I see you have a lot of math in this piece here. Well, it's interesting. Why don't you walk me through this, because there's a lot of numbers in here, and I'm tired. I was listening to, basically, a very simpatico show, a podcast that I enjoy called Geeks and Beats. It's kind of the Canadian upbeat version of us, because, well, Canadians are upbeat to begin with, so, of course, it would be.

And one guy is a tech guy. The other guy is a radio guy who's been in the music industry forever. And he did a pretty interesting breakdown of the album and the finances while he was trying to kind of explain why Adele did not want to put her album up on streaming media. So, let's run through the numbers really quick.

This is just first-week sales, which is ridiculous, and it's already outdated. She sold 3,327,992 copies. Mixture, roughly, I think it was 51% digital and 49% digital, or 51% CDs, 49% digital downloads.

That doesn't really matter, because we're just going to count it as what it is, and the math is roughly the same. So, for a CD and or a digital download, an artist gets paid a percentage on the wholesale price, which is roughly, let's say, $8, which is about what it is, and it's roughly similar for digital downloads.

Artists can negotiate with their record labels in terms of what percentage they actually get, and all that stuff is kept behind closed doors and hidden, because, say, you're an artist on, let's say, universal music, and you know that another universal artist is getting a way higher percentage than you, you get pissed off.

That's the same reason that everybody in your office doesn't know what salary you make. Okay. Same deal. But the level is, it's roughly somebody at, like, Adele's stature would probably be about $2 for her, probably more, really, but let's just say $2 per album sold.

The profit, then, that she has made in the first week is $6,655,984. That's not a bad haul. Not a bad haul for one week. Average payout per Spotify stream, now this is where it gets fun, is 0.0084 cents per stream.

On the high end, 0.006 cents on the low. So, let's just take the average, 0.0072 cents per stream. So, to earn the same amount of money that she made in the first week from just physical sales or digital, she would have to have gotten 924,442,222 streams.

So, basically, almost a billion streams to make the same amount of money in a week. That's a lot of streaming. Yeah, that's all. So, thanks to Geeks and Beats for all that math. But then I was a little bored, so I decided to do, I decided to pull some numbers in the calculator myself. So, let's go with this.

There are 604,800 minutes in a week, every minute of every hour of every day of every week that the album was on sale. 1,526.5 tracks would need to be streamed to equal the revenue she got from full album sales. There are 11 tracks on the album, so it would have to be streamed in its entirety 84,040,202 times to equal the 3 million some odd sales that she made.

The album is 48 minutes and 20 seconds long, exactly. It would take over 7,728 years to stream the album back-to-back 84,040,202 times.

So, remember when, you know, the streaming proponents told us that this is going to be great for artists? And remember when people used to say things like, hey, it's a plus for a musician because you get paid every time somebody streams your song as opposed to like a CD when you just get paid once. Yeah.

The numbers do not bode very well for any of that. That's a lot of man years. Yeah. So, let's just say streaming fucks the artists. I think we've just proven that. Okay. And if you want to know how else you're getting fucked by the music industry, I'm not going to go too into this.

This is from Lefsitz and we know how we feel about him, but occasionally he does get it right. It's only tangentially related to Adele because it's about how Adele recently kind of rigged the system to be ticket outs for her tour. The link is in the show notes, but it goes into kind of exhausting minutiae back-end deals and finances on the touring industry.

It kind of explains why you, unless you have connections, will never, ever get a good seat to a show ever. Okay. It's quite depressing. Oh, yeah. The ticket sales industry is just such a horrible, horrible thing. Oh, yeah. It's geared to fail and it's geared against the normal person, as is basically everything these days.

Yeah. You buy a $50 ticket and then $30 in service fees after. Mm-hmm. Yep. And you'll never get a front row seat. Ever. Ever. In the news. So, this week was Cyber Monday, the day that we're supposed to all spend money online for some reason that I can't really understand.

Goodies. You got to go buy goodies. You got to go buy goodies. So, a really interesting story was making the rounds and I was actually kind of surprised by this. Do you know what the first thing ever sold on the internet was? Porn. No. Surprisingly not.

Actually, I wonder if that counts. I don't think so because I think they're talking about physical items. Yeah. They're talking about the first, because of Amazon and all that sort of thing, what the first physical items sold on the internet was. There's a really interesting history behind this and I'm just going to hit some of the high notes.

So, the link is in the show notes as per usual. The trail starts on ArapNet back in 1971. Arpanet. Arpanet. In 1971, between two computer science students at Stanford and MIT, they sold, one sold pot to the other.

Okay. Well. This is the first known transaction apparently, but this doesn't count because the money wasn't exchanged online. They only used the network to arrange a meeting place. And then there's a couple other interesting weird things that happened, including a grocery delivery in England. But again, she paid in actual cash.

It wasn't an e-commerce transaction. The first one was in 1994, which seems late to me. I feel like I was already ordering shit off Amazon at that point. Not in 94. No. Because we didn't have like SSL or anything like that or TLS then.

Well, interesting because that's why this item actually counts as the very first one. They actually exchanged credit card information using PGP, which is funny. But the very first item ever sold on the internet in that fashion was a copy of Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales.

I know. Isn't that ridiculous? It's a great little story. I like it. Yeah. Actually, I quite like that album. That was before he went all looty. Oh, really? Yeah. I did a website for him in 95. Did you? I didn't know you worked on Sting's stuff.

Yeah, he had a special section on Rocktropolis for one of his albums. Oh, my gosh. And we had a castle, this virtual castle that you could walk through. Wow, Rocktropolis. A long time ago. That was a very long time ago. And we also had a special section for the guy who did She Blinded Me With Science.

What's his name again? Thomas Dolby. Thomas Dolby. Who is now a massive internet engineer in audio stuff. Yeah, he was actually the first celebrity I think I really met when I moved out to L.A., and he was super nice. Yeah, cool guy. Great songs.

Mm-hmm. Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg had his kid, and he and his wife have basically, well, they put out a big long statement saying that they were going to put $45 billion of his Facebook stock to charity. Mm-hmm. That's what he said. And then the next day, everybody started posting, wait, hold on a second.

No, you're not. Because we can't have nice things. Of course not. Yeah. No, he's not technically, it's not a charitable foundation. He's put it into a limited liability company, which lets them skirt a lot of the rules that you have to do if you're a nonprofit, so they can privately fund different investments, whatever, whatever, whatever.

We're basically going on his word that he will use this $45 billion to do good, which is fine for me, because at least he's doing something. And I think we should stop bitching about it. Yeah. I mean, it's something. Yeah. Yeah. $45 billion is an awful lot, and he's going to use it all for good.

And now everybody's got to whine and post and say, well, he can actually make profit of it. Well, if he makes profit of it, he doesn't need the money. He's just going to toss it back in, in theory. So let him do it. Who cares? This is a good thing. We have so little good news in the world. We have to shit on the only good news we get. Yeah, pretty much. Okay. I mean, granted, that's our podcast job, but whatever.

Yeah, that is our job as entertainers. This one time, I'm being nice. We will poop on you. Yes. Now, we talked about Amazon's drones, the prime air delivery, and you finally get to see one in action. It'll be okay.

Yeah. TechCrunch has an article with video, because they put out a video, and I think it's a pretty cool little drone. It's a pretty cool little drone, and they perfectly timed the video to make sure that it got tons of airplay everywhere, because, you know, this is news for news stations these days, just in time for Cyber Monday.

Yeah. Can't use it yet, but it's coming. It's coming. I also saw there was a news story today that they bought an entire fleet of trucks, so they're not going to be relying only on drones. I saw my first Amazon truck when I was in Chicago. I'm like, that's an Amazon truck, like a delivery truck, a van.

Oh, I've seen those around. Oh, I've never seen one. That was my first time. I had my Amazon truck cherry popped. How nice. I know. Well, you know what? We can get delivered with our drones. The iPhone. And all the new jacks that we're going to need, because they're changing it up once again. Now, I really hope they don't do this and take away- You know they are.

God, why would you take away a headphone jack? That is like the most basic thing that you need when you want to listen to your phone. They are getting rid of the headphone jack, because apparently, I'm looking at my iPhone 6 right now. This is not thin enough for Apple. It's got to be wafer thin.

It is wafer thin already. I don't really think that shaving off another 5 to 10 millimeters, which is what they're planning on doing, is going to really increase any aesthetics. But that's what they want to do. And apparently, they've been thinking about it for a very long time, including they released specs privately for the new lightning jacks that they're going to do to headphone manufacturers to show them how they can actually make a headphone that would work with it.

So, new jacks for everyone. New jacks-y. We're getting jacked by Apple again. I know. Because those cables are fucking expensive. Well, that, and I just got those new Sennheisers. Yeah, which will no longer work. No, I'm just, I'm going to keep my 6 forever. Me too. Or we'll just get a goddamn dongle.

Yeah, that's probably going to be it. That's what, we're all just going to have to carry around another piece of crap with us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm certainly not going to Android. No, no, no, no. I mean, it's not, it's not really that, it's not that dire. No, things aren't that bad. I'll gladly spend another $80 to replace all the cables around my house.

Anyways. Well, I won't gladly do it, but I'll do it. I'll begrudgingly do it. Yes, I'll begrudgingly do it. Although, after reading this next article, I'm going to talk about maybe I should stop giving these people money. This is what we all kind of know anyways, but it's a nice reminder. Please do go check out the show notes and read this article in its entirety.

Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft's Mega Billion Con, How Titans of the New Economy Screw Us All on Taxes, basically runs through all the tax avoidance schemes that they're using, the money havens, the money basically laundering, because it should be considered that even though it's technically legal through loopholes, and the fact that basically like the top five companies in the U.S., the money that they're basically screwing the government out of could basically put every single unemployed person to work for two to five years.

Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's a shit ton of money, and we should be up in arms about this. Okay. Yeah. Woo-hoo! I'm up in arms. I mean, apparently this country is up in arms every day and shooting people left, right, and center. How about we focus it? Well, don't go shoot anyone. Let's make it clear.

Let's start there. Let's be up in arms figuratively, not literally. Yes, not literally. Yes. People were up in arms in Toronto. Toronto taxi drivers are staging a hunger strike to protest Uber because Uber is basically going into Toronto and avoiding the, and just kind of ignoring some of the rules that the city has set down.

Like Uber does in every place it goes. Yes, and at least these people are trying to do something about it. And to be fair, Toronto cabbies always been pretty nice to me. Really? Yeah, I've never had a really bad cab experience there. A lot of, I mean, Toronto is very much the melting pot of Canada.

It's where all the immigrants go, so they're mostly immigrants, but they're very nice people, hardworking, just trying to get by. And they generally don't know where they're going because I've had two cab trips in Toronto, and the cabbie did not know where anything was. Right.

Well, I suppose that happens, but everybody has GPS nowadays. This problem can be solved. It can be solved, but yeah, we were warned about that. They're like, yeah, you better bring a map because they're not going to know where they're going. And it was true. Like, oh, this certainly isn't London. Right. Okay.

What else? Okay. This is the interesting news. Li-Fi. We talked about this about two years ago. We did, but apparently it's getting really, really close. This is a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication, VLC.

They've had a couple tests now, a hundred times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds, one gigabyte per second. So basically, you're going to blow out your entire cellular plan for the month in one minute. Well, I mean, it's a Wi-Fi replacement for your home or office. It's not really for your cell phone.

Yeah, I know, but it was a good joke and I had to put it in there. I'm just wondering how easy it's going to be to steal signal through a window. Yeah, yeah, that's going to be interesting. But one thing that they were talking about, which I thought was really cool, is instead of having necessary, you would be getting wireless data from light bulbs.

Yeah, that's it. That's amazing. It is pretty cool. And the fact that it's faster than Wi-Fi is pretty incredible, too. Yeah, those are pretty serious speeds. I mean, that's going to help a lot when Facebook rolls out its live streaming video service. You see how I strung all these together? Oh, look at that. Yeah, pretty good. I had some time on my hands.

Oh, yeah. So Facebook is putting out their version of Meerkat. By the way, whatever happened to that? Does anybody even talk about it anymore? Meerkat just got destroyed by Periscope. Oh, yeah. I have a feeling that Facebook's version is going to destroy Periscope. So there you go. Do people still Periscope?

I don't see it that much anymore. No, nobody really talks about it anymore. Remember, there was that period of like four months when all we heard about was how this is all going to change the world. And then all of a sudden, we realized how stupid it was. Yeah. Well, now Facebook is being stupid as well. Yeah, I've been on a couple of Periscope videos that were somewhat entertaining.

You get somebody famous doing a Q&A, you know, wandering around waiting at the airport. It can be mildly entertaining, but... Yeah, it can be mildly entertaining, but really, no, not so much. Everybody wants their own TV channel. And everybody's got one now and no one gives a fuck. It's too much to watch.

Exactly. Security? Ha! All right, security is back. Woo, back in black. Yeehaw. So our first story, we got to give a hat tip to Kenny.

On Twitter, who sent us this one. Toymaker VTAC hit by the largest ever hack targeting kids. Right. Ooh, that's a big one. That's a big one. It's a big hack. I'm not so sure about the headline. I mean, targeting kids. I mean, technically, who else?

That's most of what Target sells and Target got hacked. True that. But this was like the database of these kids' online activities. So they have their names. They have all their goodies. And apparently, the quote-unquote hacker who got it said he's not going to do anything with it. Oh, okay. So he's a good guy hacker?

Yeah. We'll see. We'll see on that one. This did spawn many, many hysterical articles about how you should definitely not buy any online connected toys for your kids for Christmas. Okay, yes. Cue Grumpy Old Geeks 1 through 137. Yeah.

As per usual. We had another big, big hack. So we've got two hacks of the week. The United Arab Emirates Invest Bank customer database was hacked into. And the hacker started Hacker Bubba. Hacker Bubba. Which is great. He started to actually release date.

Well, he asked for money. And he wasn't getting money. So he started to basically tweet out one account a time over Twitter. And the bank said they're not going to pay for it. So he dumped the entire database. They should have paid for it. I don't know. You're not supposed to negotiate with terrorists. Not a terrorist.

His name's Bubba. Come on. Yeah. Anyways, that's what happened. Yeah. Because Bubba ain't so smart to begin with because he could have sold that for a lot of money. He could have. He definitely could have.

He could have got more than the $3 million he was asking the bank for. Yeah, if he'd have just sold it out piecemeal on the dark web. On the dark web. Yes. But apparently the dark web isn't so dark anymore. No, it's actually not. No. You probably, if you want to do some nefarious stuff, don't do it on tour.

And don't do it on the dark web because they can find you now. And this is a story about the Carnegie Mellon attack where they were, you know, they were doing a proof of concept, but it looks like there's a lot of speculation going around if Carnegie Mellon actually gave the technology to the FBI and told them about it.

They're saying they didn't, but who knows? But these guys wrote a paper on how to basically break tour. And the guys at tour just kind of ignored it when they saw the attack was happening. So it was like six months where people were getting found out. And that's some dangerous stuff because these are like not just the criminals that are getting caught, but the people who actually need to use tour to keep themselves safe.

You know? Yes. The dissidents of the world. Yes. It's an interesting story on how it kind of came to be. I definitely recommend reading it if you're interested into the dark web or thinking of jumping on there to, you know, do something bad. Don't. Well, I mean, you can also jump on there and do something that really isn't all that bad.

It's surprising how the dark web has evolved. Do you know what we can get on the dark web now? Many things, but what did you have in mind? Well, in addition to all these illegal things like drugs and weapons and all that sort of stuff, you can also get lifetime subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, Spotify, and HBO for as cheap as 50 cents.

50 cents? 50 cents for a lifetime Netflix account. First off, I didn't even know you could buy a Netflix account that was a lifetime account, even legitimately, but certainly 50 cents is a hell of a good price for it. Yeah, good deal. Now, what's interesting about this is the reason that these are all hacked accounts, basically.

It's not like these are real ones. These are all stolen or hacked or whatever. They basically have a help desk for these purchases. So if you buy the lifetime one and at some point the account gets shut down because you don't actually control it, they'll just give you a new account. Nice.

Yeah. That's service with a smile. That's better service than I get from Netflix. Yeah, tell me about it. I think I might have to fire up the tour here. Do you have to pay with Bitcoin? Yep. Who the hell knows?

Probably. I would imagine. I wouldn't put my credit card out of the dark web. Exactly. That's what I was thinking. So I have to get me 50 cents worth of Bitcoins. Yeah, because you basically buy a Netflix account with your credit card for 50 cents and then they turn around and sell your credit card on their other sister site.

Yes. Now, if they actually sold an Apple music streaming account that worked, I'd go buy one, but there's no such thing in the universe. No, and trying to just use the music app on my phone now, it's impenetrable. I'll get to that in a little bit.

Let's move on. Okay. So anonymous went to war with ISIS and I don't know how you can call it going to war when all you're doing is getting Twitter accounts shut down, but it's, it's a clusterfuck because you know, they're just, they're just going willy nilly after everybody.

And it's like a twofold problem. One, they're getting people's accounts shut down that actually aren't in ISIS. Yeah. So problem number one. Problem number two is when you shut down the accounts, the people who are doing surveillance on them can't find them. Yes. Derp. Derp.

Didn't really think that one through. Did you anonymous? No, this one was not well thought out. I've supported them in the past for various things. I certainly support the call to arms that they do against things such as ISIS. I, you know, I'm all, I'm really happy. They're all fired up about it, but let's not, let's not fuck it up.

Too late. Okay. Another hack of the week, the world bank. Yes. They got, one of their sites got hacked. It basically just had a PayPal phishing page. It looked pretty good. Okay. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's a simple one.

It's no, this is no like mastermind of the world here, but it's, I thought it was pretty funny. It's a good target. I like that. So, and for the last little bit in our, our, our return security segment, I think everybody should probably go read this article on the Washington post federal privacy laws, law lags far behind personal health technologies.

It's a really long story about all the various ways that your, your health and data and such is not being protected, is easily accessible, can be accessed by anyone, anytime, anywhere, particularly using the most simplest, not even hacking, just social engineering.

Every bit of data out there that, that you're giving to doctors, like my medical group has decided they want to put everything in an app. And I said, no, I'm not going to be doing that. Even to Fitbit and how basically people can hack into your Fitbit accounts and see, you know, where you're going and establish patterns.

Yeah. Not good stuff. No, here's the thing that I don't do. I don't go to the doctor. Yeah. That's worked out so well for you so many times on the show alone, Jason. I know. I know. Tell me about it. Hey, but I got insurance yesterday. Congratulations. Yeah. I just need to, are they making you use an app?

No. Okay, good. No, it's a little plastic card. Now, do they do the other thing that drives me effing insane and makes me want to lose my mind? Are they, are they, is your ID number your social security number, which they then put on mails that they send to you? I haven't looked. Okay.

Check for that one because they do that kind of shit too. Yeah. No, it's, some people just don't think. I don't get it. Most.

Comment of the week. Well, we took all of last week off and apparently if we're not active, neither are you guys. Come on, people get with it. We have only one comment this week from grumpy old geeks.com. This is from a Ross Thomas. Your podcasts are a recent discovery are a recently discovered and newly favorite podcast for me.

Thanks. So I've missed a lot. Don't go back too far. Don't, don't, don't go back too far. Don't go back too far. Which episodes cover the Jeep hacking and VW emissions controversies so I can listen to them? I now feel vindicated in my disparaging views of infotainment systems and cars and my belief that car companies are gaming the emissions testing.

Also, are you no longer doing the Does It Have Legs podcast? I enjoyed the trips down memory lane from it. I had a couple of movies I'd recommend if you restarted it. Thanks for the fun. Well, thank you, Ross. Thank you very much. You can just go to grumpy old geeks.com and use the search box to try and find those old ones.

I don't have them off the top of my head. Yeah. I don't remember either. I probably should have looked that up, but. You're lazy. I am a little lazy. Yeah. Just go there and search for Jeep or VW and it should come up. What about does it have legs, Jason? Yeah. Well, I moved and my co-host is in Chicago and trying to get the timing to sit down and watch a movie together when you're not in the same house.

A little difficult. Yeah. And not as fun because you can't sit there with beer and snacks. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you miss that like in room fun because we've watched the movie immediately and then do the show. So if I can find somebody in L.A. to do it with at some point, I would love to restart it. But the problem with that is driving in L.A. is terrible.

And I'm not a movie guy, really. So you can't use me. And I'm already I'm already doing one with you. Exactly. I don't need to talk to you anymore. Yeah. I've been trying to find somebody, but slim pickings, slim pickings in the city of Hollywood where movies are made.

You can not find somebody local to you to watch movies with. I live in the valley, which doesn't really count as Hollywood. That is true. And most movie production has left Hollywood and is gone to Canada. Yeah. You should probably go to Vancouver, really. Yeah. All right. So we're back. We did a show and now it's your turn.

You guys got to get active with us, send us your comments, send us your questions. You can find us at Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks on Twitter at Twitter.com slash GOG podcast at Grumpy Old Geeks dot com at Patreon.com slash GOG. We could really use your donations.

You guys are basically keep keeping us on the not air. I guess soon the light five and Grumpy Old Geeks dot com slash iTunes. We or you can give us a five star reading and leave a comment. We really, really appreciate it. And tell a friend. Yes.

At the library. Previously, we didn't have a whole lot on at the library because I had kind of pulled my media diet back and wasn't really doing a whole lot there, but kind of made up for that now. Yeah, you read quite a lot over the break.

I listened to quite a lot. Of course you did. Yes, because I was on a train and I was supposed to be reading a book by Maria Konnikova on the train, which was a physical book that's coming out in January. But remember when I said it felt like I was, you know, shoved in the trunk of a car and knocked around?

Yes. Yeah. You can't really read a book in that condition. It does make it difficult. You get a little, you get a little queasy. So I opted for knocking back as many of my audible credits as I could. Now, the first book is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

Okay. My dad had me pick up this book because he needs to tidy up his house quite a bit. Right. He's been in that house for 20 years and stuff just piles up. So he was looking for something on that vein and my stepmom just read it. She liked it.

It's a very strange book. This Marie Kondo woman is insane. She's clinically insane. She should have been, you know, hospitalized for OCD. She's been a tidier upper since like grade school, like when she was like four or five. Right.

And she's turned it into a full-time business. But listening to her backstory about just her trials and tribulations of tidying, because she's Japanese and it's a very Japanese book. Yeah, I got that impression. Yeah. And it's bizarre.

I can't really actually recommend it, but if you got nothing else to do, it's a short read, but it's bizarre. Yeah, it feels, I mean, it just sounds to me like this is one of those situations like when people go buy a book about not procrastinating.

And then they procrastinate while they read the book. Yeah. Instead of reading a book about tidying up, how about you just do it? Well, she has her system. Oh, there's a system. There's a very detailed system. You know what my system is? And I actually, strangely enough, did this last week. I just picked up a box and started going through it.

And throwing stuff away? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's my system. And it seems to work. Okay. As long as it works for you. All right. Okay. Next one. Mastermind, How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by the aforementioned Maria Konnikova. Okay.

Great little book on the psychology of Sherlock Holmes. Even though Sherlock Holmes wasn't real, it's still a fun read. Excellent. Uh, the next two I have are by Marcus Seiki, the brilliant series. Uh, I believe I read them and talked about them on this very podcast. Yes. And I'm going to back you up because I loved them.

Yeah. They're great. Aren't they? Yeah. They're really good. And the next one comes out in January. So the third part. Funny enough, I was looking around Amazon just three days ago and I saw that as well. Yep. I pre-ordered it. I cannot wait. I think these are just some of the, it's a really fun, just sci-fi, you know, world that he created.

Yeah. It's not, you know, it's not a world changer or anything, but it's good. It's just solid and fun and interesting. Yeah. Good popcorn sci-fi. Yeah. Now talking about sci-fi that isn't popcorn sci-fi, I finally finished the, well, refinished, uh, the final actual Frank Herbert written entry into the Dune series, Chapter House Dune.

Uh, heavy ass stuff. Um, it's an epic series. Everything that he wrote was absolutely fantastic. And I finally finished this one again, which is number six. And I remember why I went to go read the stupid ones written by his son, because this ends on such a cliffhanger.

Oh no. Oh, but it was so good. It was, it was so, such a good read. It was so great to have gone back and reread the whole series again. I highly recommend it to anybody that hasn't read it in the last, uh, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. Go back, reread it. It is fantastic. And, uh, again, I got suckered in because as soon as the cliffhanger ended, I went to go get the continuation by his son.

Oh man, here we go. Still going down the dune hole. Yeah. Gone down the dune hole. But this will, this, there's only two the son wrote to carry out the original thing. And then they went off and wrote crazy ass like precursors and all that. None of which I'm going to read again because they were all horrible, but I am going to go ahead and finish the, the actual series.

They were based on notes that they found from Frank Herbert. So it's actually really his story that they're trying to finish. The writing just isn't as good. Okay. Well, yeah, you got to finish it at this point. Yeah, I got to, I got to, I don't have a choice. So. Ah, the dune must flow. Yes.

Software, apps, and gadgets. It's the holiday times, which means you have to find gifts for everyone. We're not, we haven't really done a gift guide and I don't think we're going to, but maybe next week we'll, we'll do a little heavier on the things you can get for people. Although at that point it'll be too late, wouldn't it?

Anyways, if there is something out there that is fantastic, if you have a young girl in your life, nieces, daughters, all that sort of thing. Check out the Kithub shop run by our friend Tara. There's a do-it-yourself girls creative electronics kit for $49.99 that looks pretty damn awesome and perfect for, like I said, any young girl in your life.

Excellent. That sounds pretty cool. I don't have any young girls in my life, but, or old girls. I have no girls in my life, so I won't be buying this, but go for it if you do. Wow. You just made it sad. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Well, I found something that's good for you, Jason.

Sonos has finally added support for Apple Music. That means nothing to me. It's a shame that Apple Music doesn't work. Exactly. Okay, now I can use my Sonos to not play Apple Music some more. Yes, exactly. Well, this is what I was waiting for, to go buy a Sonos, except for the last three months of my experience with Apple Music, which I will talk about in the next section.

I still recommend the Sonos. I highly recommend them. It works great with Pandora. I think that will be my Christmas gift to myself, is I'm going to start with the bar for my TV and move on from there. Okay, yeah. I have the Sonos Ones. I have like four of those around the house, and they work perfectly, and they sound amazing.

Excellent.

Media Candy. All right, first, Apple Music. Again? My God. It's, yeah, it's 100% confirmed now that I can never use Apple Music because my library is too big. I attempted again to try to upload everything, and my computer spun around for about a day and a half, and then it just kicked back a message saying it was only able to suck in, what was the, what's the limit?

25? 25,000. 25,000 songs. So, and it doesn't let you determine or decide which ones. So, I have a random collection that went in and out of my phone and is up in the cloud somewhere that I can actually access and play. So, I was able to play some songs, and then I got so sick of it, I canceled, finally.

So, I'm no longer paying for it. And when it came up that, when my description ended, I was out walking around listening to music. The app basically just shut down. And then when I tried to relaunch it, it brought up an ad for Apple Music that I could not close. Yeah, I got that ad too. I couldn't play any music, not even the music that I own and had on my phone to begin with.

Turn on airplane mode. That'll get past that. Yeah, that's what I finally did. But I was, you know, by the time I actually walked home, I was done trying to listen to music walking, and I was extremely pissed off. So, screw you, Apple Music. You really suck. Enjoy the silence, Brian. Enjoy the silence.

Yes. What else sucks is Amazon's app. It's not good. No, it's not good. The Amazon Video app is really bad on Apple products. I don't know if that's baked in on purpose, but I was, well, I'll talk about in a second. I've been watching The Man in the High Castle. So, I've been streaming the app, or using the app to stream it and, like, kick it up to my Apple TV to watch it.

That thing pauses. Even if you download the entire episode ahead of time, it does buffering pauses every five minutes for no reason whatsoever. Interesting. It's absolutely horrible on the iPad through the Apple products. So, then I got so sick of it.

I have a smart TV. It's got the Amazon app on the TV. So, I went through my Samsung and used their app, which was marginally better, but still pauses all the time. It was such a frustrating experience trying to watch an Amazon show. I don't think I'm going to do it again. And the other reason I'm not going to do it again is because I hate that effing show now.

You're not the only person that does not seem to like that show. I was a sucker for it. I was sucked in. I talked, I said good things about it on this very podcast when I was first watching the first three to four episodes. I was into it. It's beautifully shot. The art direction on it's amazing.

The concept is great. The jarring visuals of just seeing the Nazi flags on New York and all that sort of thing. Stunning. Shame about the fucking writing. And the acting. Oh, the acting's bad, too? The acting, yeah. The younger characters are horrible.

The older ones are pretty good. But the two main characters they're trying to push everything on, my wife ruined it for me because she read an article that compared the guys acting to Dawson's Creek. And as soon as she said that, I could not stop seeing it. He just does these meaningful pauses all the time.

So their acting is absolutely horrible. And what they're doing with the story itself, by the last episode, I said I'm done. I'm not even going to watch it when it comes back. I can't handle it. Okay. Well, you just saved me 10 hours. So I appreciate that.

Yeah. Don't bother. And that's kind of what a lot of people have said to me as I've been talking about it. It's like, yeah, you just saved me a ton of time then. And it seems to be that's what most people who have made it through seem to be feeling as well, that it's just horrible. And you can't do a, what is it, 10 episode arc based on a short story.

Right. Yeah. Without, you know, they're making up their own stuff because you have to, because especially if you're trying to do a second season. The problem is the stuff they're making up is fucking stupid. Okay. Anyways, something that's really good is I finally, I finally reached out to our friends in Sweden so I could watch Homeland season five.

That is fantastic. Isn't it good? I don't know how they managed to completely reboot the show every season and it's always good. I agree 100%. I'm like one episode behind right now, but it got really good. It's that this season is frigging fantastic.

I'm enjoying every second of it. I love Mandy Potemkin. You can't go wrong with him. Oh, you really can't. Yeah. He's just fantastic anyways. And Claire Danes, just brilliant on the show. Absolutely brilliant as almost an antihero because you always can't stand her, but you're rooting for her. Yeah. I despise her, but I actually like her on the show.

I don't know what it is. Yeah. So that's been absolutely enjoyable. And I mentioned Lush earlier, the fact that they're back, they're going to put out an EP, they're doing a full tour. And the first interview that they've done in basically almost 20 years now is up on the quietus.com.

There's also one that I just found recently that was, I believe, on The Guardian where they actually have a photo of them as they look now. And I love that, that they did that. That's fantastic. They look great. You know, they're old. What are you going to do? Yeah. But they look fantastic. Mickey, I still love you.

Even without your cherry Coke hair anymore. Oh, Mickey, you're so fine. Yes. She does blow my mind. Anyways, I'm happy they're back. I'm looking forward to the EP and the shows should be fantastic. And I also recommend reading the interviews. They're very smart people. They talk a lot about that, that time in music and everything that kind of went wrong.

And especially being a woman in the industry, it's, it's really interesting stuff. I'll have to check it out. And one thing I checked out, Meru, a documentary about climbing mountains when you're clinically insane. Okay. It's just three guys that climbed this mountain.

They had to do it a couple of times because they couldn't quite get there, but it's beautifully shot. Jimmy Chin, who I did a episode of the Tim Ferriss show. I did the editing on that one. So that's my work behind there. He is one of the main guys and he's the most interesting character on there, but he's a brilliant photographer.

And this thing is just amazing to watch. I got it on. I did a rental on Apple TV in HD and it worked no buffering. Oh, it buffered for the first five minutes, but I had no pauses. It was great. And this was an old Apple TV, surprisingly. Yeah. I cannot recommend this movie enough.

It's really cool. The visuals on the site itself are stunning. I might have to watch this. Oh yeah. Yeah. And just when you see it in, you know, live action, these guys are insane. They're just insane. Why do you want to climb a mountain to begin with? I don't know. Yeah. Me either.

And we talked about hackers before. There's a really good article called, how did this get made? Hackers in oral history. Okay. It's on Slash Film. I'll just throw it into the show notes for the fans of hackers out there. It's a good read. Yeah. Great movie. Fantastic movie.

Now you got me saying fantastic. Fantastic. Everybody drink. Now, I also stumbled across something. This is Pornhub Wins Christmas. Okay. Explain. Pornhub put out an ad for their premium gifting service. And it is safe for work.

So feel free to watch it at work. And I will say no more. Okay. I'll check it out. Link will be in the show notes.

Now, I know it's the Daily Mail, which is never a good sign. Okay. What have you done now? But I found an interesting article based on the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, the UNODC, has released an interactive map.

Basically, this is fun big data stuff. It shows the number of people treated for drug abuse around the world. And it shows the most popular drugs, abuse, and map of overdose deaths all throughout the world. So you get interesting, cool nuggets, like the fact that Scotland is basically all cocaine.

Iceland smokes the most weed. And opiates are big in the USA. Okay. So you can go there and find out what your country's drug of choice is, which is good times. Bringing back the happy. Because you want to belong, don't you? Yeah, you do.

You need to know how to fit in. You know, this is travel tips. These are the grumpy old travel tips. Exactly. And speaking of belonging and fitting in, another great article did the rounds this week from the Washington Post. And I love this and believe in this 100%. And the problem is that dumb people will not read this.

Why people think total nonsense is really, really deep. Okay. It gets into the psychology of the people that Deepak Chopra, the people that buy those stupid posters that have inspirational sayings on it, why people think Atlantis' podcast is interesting.

Oh, burn. Well, it's jibber-jabber that sounds like it means something. And this kind of goes through the science behind why people think this stuff means something. And there was a related article that was also going around, which I forgot to put in the show notes, that actually has a correlation between lack of intelligence and people that buy this stuff.

Okay. Good times. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, no, man. Alanis' podcast. Ooh. Oh. You know, say what you want about her music. A lot of people love it. And she's definitely written some classic songs, but the whole self-help thing. Oh, my God.

Well, she's just insane. I'm sorry, but she's just insane. Yeah. Did they do another episode? I think they were up to three or something like that. Now, the ratings on it are interesting. Yeah, they're a fun read. Yeah, if you're going to spend your time on anything with that, read the reviews rather than anything else.

Yeah, don't listen to the show. Just read the reviews. I've also found the most fantastic thing that you can put on your TV this year during the holiday season when you have people over. We have the YouTube update of the old local cable channel, Yule Log. It's an ad, unfortunately, but that is kind of appropriate for the internet age as well.

But it is Nick Offerman, 45 minutes of him sitting by a Yule Log in silence, sipping whiskey. And he's sipping Lagavulin. I believe that's the whole point. Yes, he's got taste. I think that they sponsored this one. Yeah, so I'm mesmerized by this.

I have left it on my monitor when I'm not working, just hearing the crackle and walking by and seeing him stare into the camera with that awesomely strange face of his. Yeah, I don't even know who he is, but it was pretty funny. He was on a bunch of TV shows I have not watched.

Oh, that's why I wouldn't know who he is. So I'm aware of him, but not his work. Okay. So this seems like it might be his big one. This is my favorite piece of his work so far. Are you kidding me?

Love it! Cards Against Humanity is quickly becoming one of my favorite companies in the world. I think I need to go work for them or something. On Black Friday, they made a lot of money selling absolutely nothing. Okay, how did they work this one out? Well, it was $5.

And it basically just said, give Cards Against Humanity $5. It's a special sale. You are getting absolutely nothing. You have to click on a box that says, I understand I am paying Cards Against Humanity $5 and receiving nothing in return. Over 12,000 people did this.

Oh my God. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We can't get people to donate a buck or two on our Patreon when Cards Against Humanity just says, give us money. And it worked. And it worked. And the interesting thing, they have done something similar. They're known for these stunts, which you brought up in the show notes.

Last year for Black Friday, it was poop that they sold. That's right. I remember that. Yeah, a hot steaming pile of truth in advertising, basically. Yeah, they sold poop. And what they did last year is they gave all the money away from that to charity. This year, they didn't. They split it all up between all their employees, and they decided what they're going to do with it themselves.

Some people gave portions of the money away to trivia. One woman that works there in particular is buying a very expensive vibrator. You can see all of this in the link in the show notes. Yes, it's very, very awesome. That sounds like a great place to work.

It does. It sounds like an absolutely fantastic place to work. And it's a really great game. If you haven't played it yet, I recommend you do so, but not with your parents. Okay. And then something else I saw, this is less fun because it just annoys me. This is another one of those attempts to make a viral video, which seems to be what most people in Los Angeles are employed at doing these days.

This is a guy, well, there's a video that did go semi-viral, which is a woman going around and asking men to have sex with her. And obviously, most people were in on that. So somebody had the bright idea of flipping it. And it's a video of a man going around asking a hundred women if they'd like to have sex.

And the results are exactly what you'd expect. And it's not very interesting. And stop trying to make these stupid viral videos. I've seen this exact same video before. Somebody else has already done this video. Of course. How many did this guy get? Because the other guy got two out of a hundred. Oh, I didn't watch it. Okay.

Well, that answers that question, then. I'm just frustrated by the fact that it exists. Everything frustrates you, Brian. That's why we do this podcast, Jesus. I want to wish health and recovery to Sinead O'Connor, who's always had troubles, but they kind of hit a high point this week.

And I hope she's well. I've worked with her in the past. I've met her. I've known her personally to some degree. She is a really, really nice person, but a deeply troubled person. And I hope she does well. Yeah, I saw that going around.

That was pretty sad. Yeah, yeah. It's not good. So I hope she comes through this okay and gets the help she needs. It's funny. I put this in the show notes earlier in the week. And another troubled musician, unfortunately, didn't get help in time. And Scott Weiland passed away last night.

Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, I mean, his troubles are well known. And to some degree, it's amazing he made it as long as he did, but still sad. Get help. Yeah. If you've got problems, get help, people. So mine is a little bit more upbeat.

Thank God. I'm so exhausted today because last night or yesterday I flew from L.A. to San Jose and then drove up to Napa to the Uptown Theater where I actually saw Adam Carolla do a live show. Oh, that's funny. I know.

As much as we talk about it, my friend, Jordan Harbinger and coworker and boss was the guest on the show. So I got to go backstage. I got to meet the entire crew, Bald Brian, the whole nine yards, hang out for a while, got to meet Adam. Super nice guy.

Really nice guy. Got to hear some really funny stories. And then the show was pretty funny. I got to say. I listened to it this morning. It was well done. And congratulate Jordan for me. Well, yeah, I can't speak today, but he did a good job. I thought he did a really good job. And I got to try some Mangria.

I've had it. It's a it's it's it'll sneak up on you. Yeah. Yeah. I only had two little ones and I was just like, OK, that's enough. Yeah, it's it's pretty strong. I don't think I'll be buying it again, but it's a little too strong. I like sangria, but man, you don't need to put vodka in sangria.

No, no. You know, if you drank an entire bottle of Mangria by by yourself, you'd be on the floor. No, it would definitely mess you up. Yeah. Well, until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. You can find out more about me at JPD dot me. And I'm Brian Schumester, and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

Talk to you next week. Grumpy Old Geeks is a fan supported show. Check out our Patreon page at Patreon dot com slash GOG. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate and still want to support the show, please go to Grumpy Old Geeks dot 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 Apple Music, or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at Patreon dot com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at Twitter dot com slash House of Andy. And he's also on SoundCloud at Grumpy Old Geeks dot com slash Andy.

Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at Grumpy Old Geeks dot com slash 138.

This January, Bear Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings and nonstop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast and the prices won't stay this low. So, reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA dot com. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living.

Shop now at QVC dot com.