142: That Drone Really Tied the Room Together

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for January 8th, 2016. I am Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How's it going, dog whisperer? Oh, Jesus Christ. I have not slept since we last spoke. And my life pretty much consists of feeding, picking up poop, and trying to sleep, but not sleeping.

Excellent. Good to hear. Yes. There are fun times with petting and chasing in the yard and then stepping in poop and inadvertently dragging it into your room, which is, you know, it happens. It is a poop fantastic life. That sounds lovely. So, anyways, what else is going on besides you and the dog?

There's supposed to be something else going on? No, no. Not really. Not judging from your social media updates. No. There's almost absolutely nothing. All right. I've got another two months of this, easily. Can't wait. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, yeah. There you go. What's been up with you? Come on. Tell me. Is it Mr. Exciting? I'm not terribly exciting. It's a re-entry back to work. This has probably been the roughest re-entry that I've ever had. This week has totally sucked. I have not wanted to work at all. I really enjoyed my break where I didn't do much of anything.

I'm fantastically uninspired by coming back to do what I used to be doing, and I'm definitely taking to heart the whole idea of trying to change. 2016 is going to be the year of change for me. I want to do different things. Don't you mean pivot? Well, yeah. The pivoting. All of that sort of stuff.

And I do want to give a shout-out to a friend of the show, Tara, because she actually posted – let me see if I can find this link. This is coming off the top of my head. I wasn't expecting to talk about this. But she posted this most effective goal-setting plan you'll ever find link over the break because she was sitting down trying to figure out what the hell she wanted to do with this next year.

And she said this was a really good way to kind of set your major goals and keep you on track throughout the year. It's both a shout-out and a slap because it's interesting, and I've just started to do it. But, man, this is a huge process, and you actually have to sit down and really, like, figure out what you want to do with your life.

And I've never done that before. No shit. I never would have thought about that with you. Yeah. Well, you know, I've always been pretty good at just drifting along and seeing where the currents take me and enjoying that. But now it's time to take the reins a bit, I think. So thank you, Tara, and goddammit, I'm still working on this stupid thing.

Yes, put it in the show notes so I can see it too. I will throw that in the show notes right now. Yes. Oh, yeah. I think at some point I'll have to sit down and do that. Or actually I want to look at it because I know a lot of these goal-setting gurus who come up with different plans, and I want to see if this one has any merit.

A lot of this stuff is mumbo-jumbo. But this one, if you just kind of focus on the figure out what it is you want to do and then give yourself mini goals throughout monthly goals, weekly goals, all that sort of crap. It just keeps you on track, most of which I'm pretty good at anyways.

It's more the overarching, I want to use my skills for good, not evil, and try to figure out how to do that that I'm working with. I think you need a five-year plan. Go back to the five-year plan. Oh, Christ. I hate those damn things. Yeah.

So, you know, in the meantime, what I basically do is the same crap that I used to do and fart around on the internet and find interesting things for the show. All right. One of them being an article on Distract... A listicle on Distractify. We haven't had a listicle in a while. I know. It's been a while, but I like this one. 21 people reveal what they miss about life before the internet.

Everything on that list is everything we've ever said on this show, though. I know. Well, it was tailor-made for us. I particularly like I miss my attention span. Videos more than 10 minutes, pass. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, that was good. No, it's a fun little thing to read.

You know, all of the sort of stuff. I mean, this is going to a record store and stumbling upon a record. You can't do that anymore. Privacy. Yep, that's gone. And being unreachable, also totally gone. Yeah. So, poor kids. They're going to miss all this stuff.

Yep. No, they're just screwed. Yeah. There's a post going around talking about what it was like taking a train across the U.S. for $213, right? Well, this is right up your wheelhouse. Exactly. Not mine. I would never do this.

So, this guy basically traveled across the country on Amtrak, like, you know, I've done before. Yes. And there's a rebuttal post because I don't think that – why I'm mentioning this is not about the – how to get across the U.S. on $213 because it's a load of crap.

Yes, because you romanticized it every single time. You were looking forward to chatting with the locals, sitting down and writing, taking some time to yourself, enjoying the meals. None of that actually happened. Yeah. So, this guy – what's his name?

Eric Fadden. Eric Fadden or Faden? I don't know. So, he does a rebuttal post to this, which is just hilarious. I just recommend it for that because he nails every single point. I did scan through this and it just confirmed everything that I thought about it.

You will never, ever, ever catch me taking a cross-journey train here in the States, ever. I will do this in Europe happily because it's the easiest way to get around and trips aren't that long and the trains are much nicer. You will never see me do this here. Yeah. No, you should not do it.

Like I said, I've been through it twice now and it was not the trip that I was expecting. But this guy, like, really just – he kind of lays it out. People are horrible. That's what you really need to know. Yeah. So, yeah.

Don't ever do this again, Jason. I will remind you next time you tell me about how you're going to – because you'll forget this is what you do. Like, in a year when we're doing this podcast, you're going to be like, I'm going to take the train back to Chicago. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to interview people for my newest podcast. I'm just going to sit there, podcasting on a train.

This is what you're going to come up with in a year and I will send you this article again. No need for that one. Trust me. Okay. I've learned my lesson from six days. Like, well, no. It's three – trust me. I've been on that goddamn train long enough to know that I never, ever, ever want to get back on it.

We shall see. In the news.

Bring us in when you're ready. All righty. It is CES in Las Vegas right now, which has increasingly become a massively big deal online, apparently. So, let's see what happened in the first day. Netflix is expanding everywhere. So, everybody gets to see Adam Sandler.

Okay. How awesome. Why is there Netflix news at the Consumer Electronics Show? Because it's all just one big thing for promotion these days. Okay. It's kind of like what South By has turned into where just everybody goes. Or Comic-Con. Or Comic-Con is now, you know, any movie known to man, not just science fiction.

Yeah. Wherever there's a bunch of people, somebody will come in and just say, I'm here. Let's talk about stuff. Exactly. What else? Oculus Rift, as predicted in our little Christmas episode, is the biggest news, of course, because they've started their pre-orders or whatever for that stupid piece of crap.

What else is going on? IBM is going to team up with Under Armour to make their own fitness app because we don't have enough of those on the market. Oh, good. Goody, goody gumdrops. Like, IBM is the first thing I think of when I want to go fitness. Me too. Yeah. Big blue, baby. It's big as in the name, people.

It's not slim blue. Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer needs to go. People are upset and talking about her there, apparently, and saying it's time for her to go. And the Chinese stock market completely crashed. Okay. None of that, nothing that you just said had anything to do with just about any consumer electronics themselves.

I don't write the crappy news. I just report on it. Okay. Well, I've got some interesting news. The U.S. Marshals have raided a hoverboard booth at CES. Oh, why did they do that? Because it's a knockoff. And they're like, oh, well, apparently it's from this old Kickstarter campaign that I think we talked about a long time ago.

It's called One Wheel. Okay. It's like a, it's literally one wheel and a plank on it. But this company came in from China and started to put them out at CES. So the original company just called the Marshals and said, hey, we have patents. They're infringing.

Go. And apparently that's what the Marshals do now. Do not the Marshals have better things to do? Apparently not. Okay. Yeah. So. All right. Okay. I know. I know. This is the world we're making for ourselves, people. I say this all the time.

This is what we're doing. Yes. I can call the police. You know, somebody could be breaking into my house and I could call the cops and they wouldn't show up for four hours. But hey, there's some Chinese people with a false hoverboard here. Yeah. Well, they would probably. Here come the Marshals. Yeah. They'd show up and shoot you is the problem. There's a company called, I think it's Quanergy.

I don't know. It's a horrible name. Yeah. It's Q-U-A-N-E-R-G-Y. So I'm going to go Quanergy. Okay. They've just announced a $250 solid state LiDAR unit for cars, robots, and more. Now I put this in here because it comes from CES.

Yes. Yeah. But I'm thinking, man, you know what I want this in? I want this in one of those crazy nuclear robot dogs from Snow Crash. You can start making those yourself at home now. That's great. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. These are actually pretty damn cool.

Uh-huh. I don't know what I put it in, but it's cool. So that's that. Okay. We'll get it. You know what? I'll strap it to my Arduino that I've never used. Yes. Get right on that. Okay. Let's talk about the Tempest in the teapot for the day.

The Lumosity scandal. Okay. FTC slapped them with a suit. Couldn't get all the money they wanted. Ended up settling for a little tiny bit of money. But Genie's out of the bag now because they settled. It's like, okay, we all knew that it didn't work. But now they're, I mean, how the hell are they going to advertise this thing now?

Look, well, I don't know if you've noticed, but they basically stopped advertising. I haven't seen a Lumosity ad in months anyways. Probably as soon as the suit was claimed against them. But I did Lumosity for, what, a year? Didn't I do? Yeah. I did it for a year.

You did not get any smarter. Trust me. It got me better at playing the games. And that was about it. Anybody that actually believed that this was going to train your brain and make you younger and smarter was an idiot to begin with. I'm disappointed that basically the only person getting money out of this is the FTC.

They're making 2 million bucks. I would have liked a class action lawsuit so I could have filled out one of those online forms in about six months, gotten a check for $15 that I wasn't sure what it was for anymore. Yeah, no, definitely. You should have got some money back. And well, that's what they originally went after and they just couldn't quite get it going. Yeah, it sucks because, you know, it was bullshit advertising and it was completely wrongful.

And I should be refunded a little bit of money for the $79.95 or whatever I paid for one year access to give it a go. Oh, still, I use it as a tax write-off. What the hell? Yeah, but then you'd be making some money. It was for the show. Yeah, 15 bucks. Great. Yep.

There's an interesting article on Vice on Motherboard about how driverless cars are going to kill insurance companies. I don't know if they're going to kill insurance companies, but it's an interesting thought experiment, I think, to go through. But when you don't have, you know, people behind the wheel, you're just, what's the insurance going to cover?

The insurance will be, it'll be transferred from being, for us as individuals, as drivers to the people that manufactured and or own the driverless cars. Right. But I think most of the people aren't going to even own their own driverless cars. They're going to be in fleet. They're going to be fleet vehicles. Yeah.

It's going to be Google paying car insurance. It's fine by me. Basically, they'll just buy up the insurance industry and they'll pay themselves. That's what Google does. Okay. Well, I thought it was a fun article. It's good. It's good to think about. I mean, you know, the insurance companies are thinking about this already.

Oh, yeah. Planning for who they're going to screw. Oh, yeah, definitely. And speaking of that, General Motors, well, the goddamn Wall Street Journal. Now this article is behind the paywall, so you won't be able to read it. But General Motors is investing $500 million in Lyft and plans to bring them to the self-driving car future as well.

So Lyft is now getting investment and will be slowly working to fire all your asses, too. Oh, God. Okay. There you go. And, you know, so this is a natural move to talk about Uber again. What happens happens all the time, and it happened this New Year's Eve as well.

People woke up to realize they spent hundreds of dollars on their Uber ride home. Yeah, it happens every year. Yes. Dumb asses. Well, yeah, you should be aware that there is surge pricing. Uber does not exactly hide this, so I'm actually going to defend Uber on this part.

You're an idiot. I mean, you really get what you pay for, and this is what Uber does. And you're supporting them, and you just wanted to get home, so $200 for your 15-minute ride? Tough shit. Tough shit. Exactly. And in an interesting turn of news, Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, has joined Uber.

Hashtag fail. I don't know. I mean, I was surprised when he went to Google before, but now he's going to be the developer experience lead on the developer platform, which means they're going to have, you know, some APIs out there to use Uber as a service. Yeah, Uber as a service.

Whatever that means. I'd have no idea. I have no idea why I would want to write anything against the Uber API. I could think of reasons. Like, say, well, say you're Live Nation or any kind of concert promoter, and you wanted to, you know, add that as part of your event structure.

I guess you could add it to your app. Yeah, there's more than a few reasons that I could see to do this, but it's still, it's such a limited thing. I mean, Uber seems to be starting to do kind of a nascent Google in that they're going to try to expand to a gazillion things that have nothing to do with their original business plan.

You mean Alphabet? Yeah, sorry, Alphabet. Yeah. You know, anyways, so maybe he's going over to Uber to get involved in that sort of thing that I could support and kind of understand. If you're just going over there to augment their existing business model, I find you to be evil.

Yeah, I don't know. That's the funny thing. It's like when he's talking about the developer platform, it's like I used to work on developer platforms for a living, and it's like it's been six months since I've probably written a single line of code. And it's like that part of my brain is just, has run fleeing into night and says, no more code, no more code, no more APIs.

Don't think about it. Don't think about it, man. Oh, well, yeah, it's not like he's coding. He's high level, you know, thought process. He's sitting in a room with a whiteboard going, what if? He's a thought leader. Yes, he's a thought leader. But he actually coded back in the day, so I give him some props. Yeah, yeah, we have, you know, good for him. Okay, speaking of Uber, I really enjoyed this salon article, Uber Fail, Why the Startup Giant Stumbled in Europe and How It Could Happen in the U.S., and I really do hope it happens.

It's an interesting run through on why, I mean, the reality is, Uber swooped in, broke the rules, ignored local customs and traditions, and pissed off a bunch of people. This is nothing new. Companies do that all the time. What was new is that Uber is a millennial company, and they couldn't believe that they were getting backlash to this, so they picked a fight, and basically they lost in most of European governments, because European governments don't take kindly to that sort of shit.

And we're seeing all of that happening here, but so far, a lot of our local governments have kind of caved, and we'll see what happens. I think it's time for Uber to start realizing that they have to play nice. They don't get to do whatever they want, and we're starting to, I think we're starting to see somewhat of a backlash towards these companies being able to do whatever the hell they want to do and not play by rules.

We'll see. I could be wrong. I've been wrong many times before. Yeah, yeah. So, on the heels of that, yellow cab in San Francisco is filing for bankruptcy. Yeah, well, of course they are. They have to pay by the rules. They have to pay all their fees.

They have to have the insurance. They have to shoulder so many other things that Uber does not have to have, so shocking. And, of course, I mean, this is in San Francisco, where everybody works in the tech industry anyway, so of course they're going to take Web 2.0. Companies over traditional companies.

Well, yeah, and also, you know, the, what is it? There's 580, they own 580 taxi medallions, Yellow Cab does, in San Francisco, and there's 16,000 Uber drivers. Yeah. You know, it's just, you're going to lose to inertia at that point.

There's just almost nothing you can do. Yeah, it's like that crappy third Star Wars movie. I've got the high ground. You can't win. Anyways. There's an interesting article in Slate that tries to pick apart who is actually controlling your Facebook feed.

Of course, it's the small team in engineers and a panel of anonymous power users around the world, which is interesting because basically it's still being mysterious and nobody knows who they are. And in theory, this article has a, has a very kind of optimistic approach saying increasingly you, which I don't believe.

Yeah, I could do, I could, I could have written this article in one word, nerds, nerds and admin at this point and marketing people. But there's a, I don't know, Facebook's newsfeed is a mess. I have too many friends anyways. I'm, I'm out of the, yeah, once you are, supposedly once you have over like a hundred and some odd friends, your Facebook feed becomes basically useless.

And I've definitely found that. I never see really my friends updates anymore. I just see suggested posts and all that sort of crap. Oh, well, I mean, you just got to always turn it back to most recent and it kind of works. I mean, it works if you keep reloading all day long. Yeah. I mean, that's all you, that's the only way to do it.

And you see reload and scroll, but I, uh, because that's the one thing I do have time to do is look at Facebook because I'm usually sitting on the floor playing with the damn puppy, of course, and posting pictures of her because I'm sitting on the floor having to play with her. But yeah, the, the, when it switches back to, you know, the, whatever, whatever most, the other one that's not most recent top stories, I think.

Yeah. Um, that's when it's just useless. That's completely useless. And that's the default on the app, the mobile app at this point. So you always have to kind of manually go to, it's such a pain in the ass. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In related Facebook news. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg does not listen to our podcast. I don't think he would really listen to our podcast.

It's a shame. He should. We're smart. We're smart and stuff. We'd have to make it a hoodie cast. Oh, well actually I've conveniently, I'm wearing one at the moment. So am I. Oh, well, there you go. Zuck. Come on. Uh, anyways, he does not listen to our podcast because he has not listened to us rant about the internet of things.

Um, he wrote a gigantically long post on Facebook that he intends to build an AI that can run his home and present him with virtual reality visualizations of his work. Uh, he's basically trying to be Tony Stark. Um, I mean, everything that he wants to do sounds really cool, but we also know that it's not really ready for prime time.

So maybe he'll push, push the tech who knows, maybe, uh, maybe Facebook will get into doing the internet of things so we can all update our statuses from our refrigerators. Well, I mean, he already bought Oculus Rift, so, you know, he'll, he'll just start buying up other companies and piecemeal it together and then he'll have his own Jarvis.

Yeah. Well, it was interesting enough to make me actually follow him on, on, uh, on Facebook. I've, I've liked him because he's going to share his updates. Oh, okay. Guess what? Uh, it's not that interesting to me. I can, I am interested in this field. I really am. I make fun of it a lot and we, we know the dangers and it's the security risk is massive and somebody actually has to recognize that and start to deal with it.

But I love the idea of, of, of, you know, the smart home. I really do. I'm, I'm into it. So I want to see what he does. Yeah. I think, I think by the time we're in a nursing home, the smart home will probably come into its own. So we'll have robots to wipe our asses. Hey, amen to that. Oh wait, we already have those.

Just go to Japan and get the self-cleaning toilet. Right. True. It's a little squirt up the butt. Okay. So I found another interesting article that is on the heels of the AI for Zuck's home. It's, uh, from neuroscience news called human machine, super intelligence can solve the world's most dire problems.

Or create a living hell hole. That too. Uh, this is kind of, it's an interesting article of talking about a paper, but when they were, um, it's, it's kind of like taking the best of both worlds, using what computers are good at using what people are good at and merging the two, which is what we kind of already do, but it's like taking it a step further.

Yeah. It, I mean, it's interesting enough. I, I, I bookmarked the article. I'm definitely going to follow up on some of the links that they have in here because again, like I'm super interested in this whole area. I think it's cool. Uh, the yard map.org site is super interesting and I spent some time looking through that, but, uh, uh, how are we there yet?

And I don't know. Well, we've got baby steps, baby steps. That's true. Yes. Okay. Super interesting. I like it. Uh, what isn't super interesting and is super stupid, uh, Twitter is invested in music spelled with a Z and a K music, a connected headphone company.

Now this is very similar to Apple and beats to some extent. Uh, yeah. Cause they were both dumb buys. Exactly. Well, well, uh, beats are horrible headphones, but the market share is ridiculous, uh, because people are stupid. So if you're betting on people being stupid, the Apple beats deal was actually quite smart.

It was. Yeah. Yeah. It hasn't really helped their stock much, but no, no, but everybody's wearing those stupid things. Anyways, uh, this is, so this is a wireless headphones that gives users the ability to control the tunes they're hearing by swiping on buttons on the outside of the device, which is on your head.

So that's already somewhat not intuitive. They should have just named these Tourette's cause that's what it's going to look like as you're swiping your head. Yeah. Now it's going to be even more difficult to play the crazy or on the phone game. Um, uh, the other thing that they do rang alarm bells for me.

Now they can also use those buttons to share clips of songs they've listened to, to social networks, which is, uh, legal, illegal. Yeah. You cannot do that. There is a reason that there isn't just music sharing that it's basically just YouTube that you see shared everywhere.

Uh, you have to make deals with the record labels to do this sort of thing, which I'm sure they haven't. But as I've discussed many times, hasn't stopped them before, hasn't stopped any companies before. So I'd expect we're going to see a lot of this, uh, happening and then Twitter's little investment is going to get the shit suit out of them.

So look forward to that. Fun times. Fun times. Mm hmm. There's a great picture on extreme tech of a Tesla model S that caught fire in Norway. I just thought it was a really cool picture and completely smoking and whoopsies.

Yeah. And foam, lots of foam. Cause you can't, you can't put out those fires with water that kind of exacerbates the situation again, which is why we don't have any of our motherfucking hoverboards and our motherfucking planes. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and finally, let's talk a bit about drones. Cause again, uh, my other prediction, this is the year of the drone, uh, drone safety.

The FAA has released a new app. Um, basically that's, uh, it's called God, because we can't call anything normal or use English or spelling. It's letter B number four, letter U fly before you fly before you fly.

Now the theory being this, uh, that you would launch, you would, you would be a, a good drone owner and you would launch this app and it will tell you all the areas around you where you can fly and you can't fly. Okay. I got no problem with that. I actually think it's fine.

Okay. Oh, why they crap on it? Uh, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta start somewhere. But I mean, if you get one of the DJI phantom ones, it's all built into it. Yeah. But a lot of, I guess if you're building your own, you and you're building your own and you're doing all this other sort of stuff, but, uh, you know, fine.

Good. Yay. I was actually somewhat considering getting a drone this year and, and trying to, uh, immerse myself in, in starting to learn it. But then I was, I was going through Tara's, uh, plan for my year. Uh, you're basically supposed to focus on just two things total. And that was, that would have been number three. So I think I'm cutting it.

Okay. Yeah. And slate says 2015 was the drone or the year of the drone. So you, you might be a little late. Yeah. I think it's going to be a big year. I definitely think it's going to be a big year. These things are selling like hotcakes. Yeah, definitely. It's a, it's all going to be about the Oculus Rift and the drone this year.

You'll be hearing a lot of it from, uh, from us and we'll be laughing all the way. Security. So we have a hack of the week, except it took place on December 23rd, but they've just kind of like finally released information about what happened.

Hackers shut down the power grid in the Ukraine. Oof. It's thought to be the first cyber attack to cause a blackout, which actually is not true because in related news, my mom for Christmas gave me Ted Koppel's book lights out, which I've just started to read.

I'm not ready to talk about it at the library yet, but it's a, it's all about a cyber attack on, on basically the power grids in the U S and, and it's a God, it's like 500. No, it's 300 something odd pages about how this could happen and whatnot. And at the very beginning of the book, he reminded me that there was in 2014, an attack against the power grid up in San Fran that actually did knock out power for 24 hours.

And that was the first cyber attack that caused a blackout. Okay. Well, these guys over at Engadget aren't doing their homework. No, they are not. But that's journalism. Anyways, so far the Ted Koppel book has been really, really interesting. So I'm looking forward to finishing that and talking about it and, uh, that, uh, shutting down power grids and the whole security and technology involved with the grids, particularly here in the U S is, is going to be interesting.

Okay. Yeah, no, definitely. It's, it's a scary prospect. Totally. Yeah. Uh, also scary. Time Warner cable says data from 320,000 customers stolen. Now, hold on. Yeah, this is, it gets, it gets better. Scary, but not. Why?

Because it basically, okay. 320,000 customers may have had their at time Warner cable email password stolen. Who the fuck uses the email that comes with your, your cable provider? Uh, a lot of people do.

All right. Honestly, a lot of people do. Okay. Then in our circles, they don't. Exactly. I've got family members with a lot of the default email addresses. Well, in that case, they're in trouble. So change your passwords.

If, well, to be honest, if you're using your at time Warner cable email address, you may not know how to do that, but you know, try to change your password. Try. And the funny thing is they emailed them on how to change their password. Well, well, if you're, yeah, take it over.

Yeah, exactly. If it's already been breached, then it's kind of hard to do that. So we mentioned every key a little bit on the last episode. Yeah. Um, so I did a little bit more research cause I had a little bit more time. They had, they've raised a lot of money from a Kickstarter and an Indiegogo campaign.

Cause apparently. Exactly. You can't have just one. Um, so it's been three years and there's still nothing. But, but, but Jason, there's a, there's a video grade security. There's a video. There's a video and a scrolly website like everybody has.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And big, a big, nice text. So feeling this sign up, but no product yet. No product. And, uh, if you actually end up using this, you're an idiot. I, yeah, I wouldn't trust it. It hasn't had any security audit so far.

Yeah. We, we have no idea. It just sounds, it's like. Three years is, this is never going to come out. It's never going to come out. I mean, you, you, here's the problem. You have Kickstarter and Indiegogo together. So you're going to have double, double the delays that you'd normally have if you did just one of them.

And maybe I'll get two t-shirts. Yes, exactly. Oh, so going back to Zuckerberg, uh, people using Comcast's experience. Infinity home security system, uh, found themselves screwed. Uh, tons of vulnerabilities, uh, including falsely reporting, uh, properties, windows and doors are closed and secured, even if they've been opened.

Ah, we called this one a long time ago. This is, this stuff is just not ready for prime time. And I would, uh, it's not cheap either. Like I looked into what, uh, Comcast is offering and what Time Warner is offering for their, you know, super high-end home systems.

Uh, they charge you a lot of money for this stuff and it is not ready for prime time people. No, not at all. Do not, do not do this. Definitely. Yeah. Cause, uh, uh, basically somebody with $130 can go out and jam your home and walk right in. Yeah. And you'd never know.

Yeah. In fact, it'll continue to tell you that everything's okie-dokie. Comment of the week. Gilbert Davis writes on Twitter, GOG podcast, looking for a snarky replacement to twit since they no longer have the real Dvorak and you guys are it more tech, less crazy.

Oh, more tech, less crazy. Yes. Okay. I believe we're less, we're less crazy. Okay. Cause I'm thinking techless crazy. We talk about tech some. Well, thank you. Thank you, Gilbert. We're, uh, on Patreon where you can help support the show and keep the lights on here. Uh, Egghead Games wrote us again.

I like Egghead Games. Um, re-selling old phones or tablets. You'll almost definitely get a better deal than Apple offers by selling on swappa.com. It's become my go-to place to buy, sell devices. It's especially good for getting last year's model unlocked for use on any carrier I prefer on a prepaid monthly plan.

No mystery taxes, no surprise bills. Rest in peace contracts, about time, number portability, unlocked phones, and no contracts finally gave consumers the ability to talk with their dollars and move elsewhere when a carrier gets greedy. Other countries with functional consumer protection laws have had this for years.

About time it finally got to the USA. In theory, I agree with you. In theory. In theory. Why only in theory? Uh, because we have almost somewhat monopolies, uh, not real monopolies, uh, but I use Verizon because that is the only thing that works in my house.

Yeah. I don't have a choice. So yes and no. And I find that if you could actually do accurate apples to apples comparisons of, of different, uh, providers, that would be one thing, but they do an excellent job of, uh, obscurifying absolutely everything.

So you never really know what's going on. Um, I hope this all gets better. It looks like it's moving that way, uh, pushing and shoving the carriers to get to that point. So I'd like to believe that. And I hope so. We'll see. Yeah. It might be a couple of years. We also will need those functional consumer protection laws that we don't have. Yeah.

So we don't have those. That's a big deal. Uh, as far as the, the buying and selling devices, I haven't bought any, I've been selling devices. Um, Jason reminded me about Gazelle. Uh, I've used Amazon's buyback program. I actually just used it to get rid of one of my old iPads cause I upgraded.

Um, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't seen swapping.com. I'll have to take a look at it. I have a feeling I don't want to look at it right now because I'll probably get pissed off and find out I could have made like another 50 bucks. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Uh, we got a five-star review, uh, from Julian Theroux from Canada.

Great podcast, a perfect balance of humor, information, and grumpiness. Yeah. This was a, uh, this is an old one from November 24th cause we're finally starting to get all of our international, uh, reviews back, which is nice. Yes. Thanks for that iTunes. So if you'd like to talk to us, you can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG.

We have a website at grumpy old geeks.com where you can listen to shows, leave feedback or better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air. If you have any friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out and it'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes and it'll take you right there.

Software, apps, and gadgets. So Oculus, uh, has taken their pre-orders, but they're delaying the touch motion controllers until the second half of 2016. I don't know what the touch motion controllers are. I thought there was just a pair of glasses. Yeah. Well, you still have to like control things.

You can't just like, you can't, I mean, it's not just turning around and looking and seeing things from a different angle. Supposedly you're supposed to be able to move around. I mean, like I said, I think the one thing that this is going to be popular for is gaming. So you have to, you know, have 18 buttons. Yeah, that's true. Got it. You got to have a joystick. Exactly. So there you go.

And, uh, Fitbit released their own smartwatch. Uh, it's called the Blaze. And, uh, then their stock promptly tanked. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I'd have known about this before it tanked. Uh, because I, I ended up dumping all my Fitbit stock.

I was just, I was tired of it. Just looking at it going down, down, down. So, uh, thank you to friend of the show, Trent Hamilton for recommending Fitbit stock when it was a hot commodity. Well, he was also big on shorting. So you got to take all his recommendations with a, you got to be a day trader.

Yeah. Um, I just can't do that. No, I said it and forget it. Yeah. I, I did post a bit of a notice that, uh, Best Buy was having a quite the hell of a sale for iPads, which never really happens. And, uh, it was definitely time for me to upgrade. I got a iPad mini four, which I've now had for three days and, uh, ordered the wife, the first generation iPad air, because it was quite the good deal.

Uh, they're both great. Yeah. I've got, I've got my gen one iPad air and I've seen no need to upgrade that one because it does everything I need it to do. Yeah. That one's fast. It's great. The, I was a slight disappointment that it didn't have the, uh, thumbprint that, uh, what are you going to do? And it's not mine anyways. It's the wife's.

So tough shit. There you go. Does the mini four have the thumbprint? It does. It's fantastic. Cause I'm so trained to do that now to unlock. It was getting really frustrating. Always having to swipe on my old mini. Plus the old mini was just slowing down, uh, built in obsolescence. So, uh, Best Buy is still running the sale. So if you want to, uh, save a couple bucks and upgrade your iPads, I'd, I'd highly recommend it.

All righty. I tried to buy them on best buy.com and it was the worst experience of my life. So I ended up just saying, screw it and saved my money. It really wasn't that difficult. I couldn't, it just kept breaking. It would not let me go through. Okay. Well, I made it and, uh, I saved, saved a ton of money and it was great.

I saved all the money cause I said, fuck it and didn't buy an iPad. Well, you don't need to upgrade anyways. I was going to, I was going to get the mini cause it was just so damn cheap. Oh yeah. It's a good price and I love it. Uh, I also got the new Apple TV. That was another present, uh, from the, uh, the parental units for Christmas.

Um, what do you think? Uh, there's next to no real difference. Um, it doesn't crash every 10 minutes. That's a, that's a plus. My, my old one didn't either. So I, that was, that was a Jason issue as far as I know a bunch of people that had the same issue.

Okay. I definitely didn't. Um, it's a, it's a wee bit faster. Uh, the remote is okay. I wish they wouldn't have gone with the touchpad. I would. I hate the remote. The touchpad kind of sucks, but, uh, at least there's more functions than the first remote. And the, the main issue for me, especially during the setup process is the fact that you have to have like a 35 fucking character password for, for your Apple account and you have to

enter it about 18 times to get set up. And I was losing my mind doing that. Yeah. It, that, that part's fun. Yeah. That part sucks. But here's, here's the one password app for Apple TV. Yeah, no doubt. Uh, the one thing that when I got my Apple TV, the second gen or the next, the new gen, whatever generation it is, or it might be four.

Yeah. Um, the Apple remote app did not work yet for, for the, that generation. It does now. Yeah. So they finally got that working, which it, the remote app is the only way to go. Yeah, I agree. It's, it's a lot better.

So you get a full keyboard and you can just type things in super fast. Yeah. But, uh, overall it's fine. It's a good upgrade. And I was able, I like the fact that I have a second TV in my office and now, uh, with no cable connection and I just had the Chromecast on it, which was kind of useless, but now I've got my old Apple TV on it and it's great.

So there you go. Uh, and a company called Tableau is, uh, basically released in the app for the new Apple TV. So it's like a DVR for live video. Um, so we're getting one step closer to cord cutting my other big topic for this year.

We'll see what happens. All right. Yeah. I'll have to check that out. Yeah. I haven't checked it out either. It's still prohibitively. Well, I'm still paying for cable, so I'm not about to pay for another subscription to something else. So we'll see what happens. Yeah. I'm going to go check that out when I get home for sure.

Media candy. I have installment number two of drunk on a plane movie reviews. I watched three movies coming back. Uh, mission impossible rogue nation. Okay. What'd you think of it? It was okay. I liked it.

It was fun. Popcorn movie. It was a fun popcorn movie. Uh, Simon Pegg is obviously there for humorous, you know, relief and he provides it. And I think Simon Pegg should be in every movie. So I got no problems with that. He practically is. Yeah. He's getting there. He's getting there. He's been almost everything.

And it was decent enough to make me forget that I'm watching Tom Cruise, which is saying a lot these days because Tom Cruise comes with a lot of baggage. I don't mind watching Tom Cruise. I like his movies. Yeah. I, you know, it's fun popcorn movie. It was a straight up action movie, you know, checked off all the boxes.

Okay. Something crazy with the plane. Okay. Motorcycle chases. Okay. Car chases. Okay. Shoot out. There you go. It's the same movie as before. It's just set in a different place with a couple of different bad guys. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then I watched a bridge of spies with, uh, Tom Hanks. That was actually really well done.

Good. Good. Yeah. I've heard a lot of good feedback about that. I want to, I definitely want to check that out. It looked incredibly boring from the trailers and I didn't hear anything about it at the time when it actually came out. Uh, but I'm glad I watched it. It was smart. Um, and very, very well done. Okay. And it is about spies.

I take it. Uh, yes. And a bridge. Okay, cool. Yeah. Hence the title. Cause I mean, I like slow spy movies. Tinker Taylor soldier spy was one of my favorite movies from a couple of years ago. And that was a slow movie. Oh, I think you'll really like bridges spies. Then you should definitely check it out. Okay. And the big shock to me, uh, my favorite movie that I've watched, uh, from, from both my plane rides and sitting around in Toronto, the man from uncle.

You're kidding me. It was fucking great. Really? I really, really enjoyed it. And that, that wasn't just the Jack Daniels talking. It was a great period piece. The costuming was fantastic. The set pieces were fantastic. Uh, you know, they were perfectly cast.

I don't think Henry Cavill or Arnie Hammer can act at all, but they were great for their roles. Okay. It was unbelievably good. The chicks are hot. It's everything that you want. Think a total update for a 60 spy movie. All right. It was great. Loved it. I will check it out.

Fantastic too. There you go. Yeah. Okay. Hmm. Interesting. I want you to check it out. Maybe I'm crazy. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I really, it was the best movie I watched, uh, recently. Okay. Well, I will have a followup on that. I'm going to get bridge of spies too. So I saw some video of George Lucas criticizing the latest star Wars installments.

Didn't just criticize the latest star Wars installment. He inserted his foot so far up his own ass and in his mouth. Uh, it was unbelievable. Like calling Disney white slave traders. I know. What the hell was that? What an idiot. Yeah. If they're so horrible, why did you sell them your company?

Well, you know, he would have invested in white slave traders back in the day. Apparently if they gave him $5 billion. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's, it's, it's worth watching. The link will be in the show notes, but it's, yeah, it's just, oh my God. Like, like, like, like, like retraction already.

Like people didn't already hate him enough for episode one, two, and three. Yeah. It's just, uh, I also, I also saw that there was some petition going around that was, uh, trying to get, uh, Lucas on board to direct one of the new star star Wars movies. And I'm like, no, he's done. No, no.

Thank you very much for originally creating all of this. Uh, now please go away. Yeah. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Uh, I just saw this article and it just made me laugh. I, it's in media candy because Leonardo DiCaprio has a new movie out. Uh, Leonardo DiCaprio only dates women who are 20 to 25 years of age.

And, uh, my response to that is why? Because he can. Yeah. That's about it. So there you go. Um, and, uh, related, uh, I don't know how this ended up coming up within 30 seconds of me finding that other article, but it did. So I threw it in the show notes. Uh, there was a recent study that found that attractive female students earn higher grades than unattractive female students do.

But for male students, looks don't seem to matter. You file under obvious. Yes. And unfortunate, but obvious. Unfortunate, but obvious. And the final bit of news that I have, uh, Game of Thrones will be premiering in April, but unfortunately the new book will not be ready before the new Game of Thrones TV season, which we all knew about four years ago.

Yeah. It's not going to work out in time. So we will see what happens. All right. Well, yeah, we'll see how that goes. Now, Dread. Did you see that movie with Carl Urban? No, it wasn't there one with Sylvester Stallone. That was the original Judge Dread.

I saw that one. It was a horrible, stinking pile of crap. Yeah. Every time they try and do Judge Dread, it fails. But Dread was amazingly good. The film. I, I highly recommend going back and watching that. And I definitely recommend watching it because Netflix has ordered a 13 episode mini series.

I can't wait. All right. I can't wait. They've been knocking it out of the park with these things. So I'm, I'm just going to say, check it out. Okay. Now, if I get past my distaste of Stallone's version. Yeah. This will totally get the taste out of your mouth.

Okay. It's really good. Everybody hates the Stallone version. I am the law. So I want to do a little follow-up on making a murderer because you cannot turn on the TV without seeing this thing. It's all across my Facebook feed. I have avoided it so far.

Oh, no. It's, it's ridiculously everywhere. I was so bored. I turned it off at episode seven and a half. I just, I was so bored. And so was my roommate who was watching it with me. She's like, this is boring as hell. I'm like, yep, let's watch something else.

I just forgot about it. And then now it's everywhere on the news. I will continue to avoid it then. I would recommend not, not even getting into this one. There's a link in our show notes that will take you to a page that has one of the most wonderful videos I've ever seen in my life.

It is pretty damn good. Motley Crue is doing their, I believe, sixth or seventh final tour. This is the final, this is the final final. Oh, this is the final, final tour. They actually made a contract that this is the final, final tour. Okay. We'll see about that. And they were playing in a, I can't remember where they were playing.

It was their New Year's Eve show. I thought it was here in Los Angeles. It could be. I'm not entirely sure. Apparently because, you know, the music sucks. There is a roller coaster on which Tommy Lee's drums go. And he ends up upside down at one point. And unfortunately it seems to have stuck there.

Yeah. And you see like the gaffers running up the rails to try and get to him, to free him. And it was pretty funny, but he seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor about it. Well, I mean, he's Tommy Lee. Of course he's going to have a good sense of humor about it, but it is fucking funny.

And just very Spinal Tap-esque as the Recode people thought, because they also then posted immediately after that video, the Spinal Tap version, which is good times. Good times.

Sometimes I get a little bit depressed about the internet. It just seems to be this huge wasteland of people saying horrible things or things that are completely incorrect or cats.

What do you got against cats? Or dogs. Hey, watch it now. But then every now and then something comes out that is the most genius thing that I've ever seen in my entire life. And everything is wonderful for about 10 or 15 minutes. This is one of those videos. This is the Shut the Fuck Up, Donnie.

The mashup of the Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchek and Donald Trump. Okay. It is genius and won the internet. And I'm not going to ruin it for anyone. Go watch it. Okay. I'll have to check this one out because I'm not a big- How did you miss it? I'm not a big Big Lebowski fan.

So I saw it. I'm like, okay, whatever. You're not a- I'm not that. I mean, I think it's okay. I just, I don't think it's the greatest movie of all time like all these Big Lebowski fans think it is. Rug really ties the room together, Jason. See, I just didn't think that was that funny. Nobody fucks with Jesus, man.

Sometimes you eat the bar. Sometimes the bar eats you. Are you kidding me? Love it! Now, while you think something won the internet, I think something broke the internet. And it's a stupid-ass dog-wearing pants meme.

Well, see, because you are in dog land, I did not see this. Okay. So, yes, this was going around on my Facebook feed from other people who were just posting the picture. What would it look like if a dog wore pants? Would it be on the two hind legs to cover up the junk? Or would it be on all four legs with just a half top?

This is not even a question. We have cartoon evidence going back to 1930. It's the back only. That's how animals wear pants. We have established this. This was the biggest thing since that damn blue dress. What a waste of time. We already know the answer.

Yes. And also, there was somebody who didn't get the memo and actually went out and created the dog pants. They're called muddy mutts. Okay. These pants that cover all four legs, they look stupid. They look ridiculous. I mean, not that I'm saying that only the other version looks good.

What the fuck am I talking about this for? I don't know. Well, that's why it's in. Are you kidding me? Damn it. And these muddy mutts pants leave the paws open. So they're still going to get muddy. It's like, well, we need doggy shoes. You know what? This is like, these are like those old car bras that they had back in the eighties that people on Porsches would wear like on the front of their car.

Remember those? Yeah, bra. Totally remember that. I had one for my bitchin' Camaro. Bitchin' Camaro. Actually, I had a bitchin' Camaro. I just never had a bra. Closing shout outs.

I've got a shout out to Aladdin Sane himself, Mr. Stardust. Happy birthday, David Bowie. How old is he today? No idea. Old. Okay. I have no idea how old he is. I just, you know, you think it was crazy when Lemmy passed, man.

When we lose Bowie, the internet's going to blow up. Yeah, that was sad about Lemmy. Yep. Shout out to Lemmy as well. Well, I've got a shout out to Stephen Hawking because it's his birthday today. How old is he? 74. Damn, you were prepared. I was prepared. Look at you. Well, I listened to K-Rock on the way in and they told me.

And they didn't mention Bowie? Well, K-Rock doesn't play alternative music anymore. No, they don't. And it was in the entertainment beat. So I don't even know why Stephen Hawking would be in there. Yeah, it's not really very entertaining in a pop culture sort of way. No, it's not. No. Okay. So we're out.

Yes. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo and you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schillmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFungus. 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 Apple Music. 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 Stuchanski. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy.

And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 142. The dude abides, man. The dude abides. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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