147: Jesus Take the Wheel

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 February 12th, 2016. This is episode 147 and I am Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Aloha, Jason. Aloha, Brian. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. I'm a little lobster red and I'm sipping down some coconut rum. Life is good.

All right. I expect the slurring to kick in pretty soon. Oh, yeah. We'll see. Maybe more from Sunstroke. Maybe by security. No, things are good, man. It's been a much welcome break, even though I've been working every single night.

I like being offset time by time this much, too. It's two hours earlier here than it is there. Sun's still up here. I might even take a dip after we finish. Okay. And take a dip. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the last 24 hours for me has been quite exciting, I must say.

I've noticed there's been a flurry of posts that I saw last evening, and obviously we're recording much later than usual because you were not available, so. Okay. Did you just drop your coconut rum? Well, you know, I'm doing the trying to fit everything into a hotel room. That was the power plug falling out of the socket.

Okay. So, yeah. Yesterday, I was, you know, doing my job. Did a couple podcasts, and then I got a message or an email from Tim Ferriss. He's like, hey, you're on my comp list for my first live podcast.

Nice. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I'm like, oh, and it's got a plus one, and Brian's in Hawaii. So I ended up going by myself. Couldn't find anybody who would drop everything that they were doing with, you know, 30 minutes notice in L.A., which obviously never happens.

Yes. Well, you can't get anywhere in 30 minutes in L.A., so that's part of the problem. Well, we'll talk about that in one second. So I'm just like, okay, cool. You know, put on my fancy clothes, slicked my hair back, and tried to open my Uber app. You lost me at fancy clothes.

Hey, man, I've got these crazy vintage Japanese jeans now. I got nice. I lost a lot of weight. So. Okay. I'm down 30 pounds, so I got to get nice clothes. All right. On with the Uber. So the Uber app is broken on my phone. Okay.

And we'll get to software apps and gadgets, and I'll explain why the Uber app was broken, and you're going to laugh your ass off. Must be that new logo. No, it was not the new logo, even though the poop shoot is where I got it stuck because the app was done. So I'm like, okay, well, the Uber app doesn't work. Let's try Lyft.

And, you know, when you. That's the mustache one, right? Yeah, that is the X mustache one. Okay. So. They're getting serious. Yes. Oh, they're very serious now. Very serious. They've gone from pink to purple. Yes, it's royal now. Okay. So, and when you sign up for Lyft as a new customer, you get a $15 credit, and I'm like, okay, and then I'm like, let's look and see how much it's going to cost to get to Hollywood.

And I'm like, $32 minus the 15, and it's like, so it's like, you know, 16 bucks. I'm like, Jesus, I'm in. I'm in. And Jesus will come into this story very shortly. But I signed up, got my first Lyft ride, and it was a very nice dude from the south side of Chicago.

Just moved to LA. Five-star ride. Perfect. Talked food. Get the, it was, it was amazing. So I'm like, okay, great. I'll get my Lyft home. Because I was on my way to the Tim Ferriss experience, and I'm like, okay, I should show up in style, which is, you know, somebody's Corolla.

Actually, the Honda Accord was the one that picked me up on the way home. Okay. So the Tim Ferriss experience was him doing a live show at the Troubadour. I had the VIP treatment, got to go hanging with Tim and a bunch of DJs that you would know, but I have no idea who they were.

Okay. Troubadour, I thought it was actually pretty impressive that he was able to sell that out for a podcast. In a day. Nice. It was standing room only at the back. It was, it was packed. It was insane. But I finally, I finally got to go upstairs at the Troubadour, which I've never done. And it is a shithole.

Well, yeah, of course. It's, the Troubadour actually has one of the worst green rooms in the world. Oh, it's terrible. I mean, that couch has been there since 1973. Yeah, yeah. I think Janis Joplin, like, puked on it. Yeah, I didn't want to sit on it because I might get, like, picked up for something later and then the DNA would prove that I was a serial killer.

No. And the sad part is Tim had a bucket of Stella up there and I'm like, I'm taking a Stella. And he's like, well, take as many as you want, dude. They're here for drinking. There were only like six of us up there. Right. And so when I was done with the Stella, I went to the bar downstairs and I'm like, can I get a Stella?

And they're like, we don't serve Stella. I'm like, damn it. I got to go back to the green room. But the security guys wouldn't let me back up. Anyway, show was fantastic from what I saw. There will be pictures on my personal blog coming tomorrow. But anyway, here's the, here's the story where the story begins.

Okay. We spent about 10 minutes just leading up to where the story begins. Hey man, you got to paint the picture. You have to paint the, you have to go to the mind palace. Okay. I, I, I pull up the lift app. Okay. Guy's coming. He's like 30 feet away.

I'm like, okay, great. I get in. His name's Alexander. Like, perfect. Get in the cars. It's a, you know, a white Corolla in there or a cord or whatever, you know, some kind of cheap ass car. And he's playing, I shit you not, which took me about 10 seconds to figure out Jesus ballads.

Okay. It's, it's, it's not Jesus rock. It is not Christian rock. They are Jesus ballads. Like you would hear on like a 700 club interstitial. Gotcha. So do they follow kind of the general rules that most transportation, since we can't say taxi companies anymore, uh, do, but all taxi companies did, which is if you ask them to turn off the music or turn down the music, they will do so.

He did not. Oh, interesting. Yes. So first order of business, hang a right, go up Doheny to sunset. Okay. This is going to be really boring. This is an episode of SNL. It is because when we got to sunset Boulevard, he was in the right turn lane.

And I'm like, I live to the left. Yeah. Go to the left. So when the light turns green, he proceeds to cut across three lanes of traffic to the honks of the obviously annoyed Los Angelinos almost getting us killed for the first time.

Okay. So let me interject here because your story, I already know is going to go totally pear shape pretty soon. And I just related to what you just said. I have was forced, well, not forced, but I had friends who wanted to take Uber a couple times recently. In fact, to and from the Superbowl party, I was in an Uber and I tried Uber to the airport for the first time when leaving for Hawaii.

I didn't have really bad experiences other than the airport one was very early in the morning and she wouldn't shut up. And I like my, my drivers to be like my, my haircutting people don't talk. Yeah. Let's do this silently. We don't need to talk, uh, but, uh, she could not drive.

Uh, this was, she was riding the gas and riding the brake. And then, uh, the guy that took us to and to the Superbowl party and the other guy that took us back from the Superbowl party, same thing, could not drive, um, veered across multiple lanes or drove the wrong direction.

If your job is to drive, how about you fucking drive? Yeah. Like none of these people who now drive for these services know how to drive. Okay. Go ahead. Those are my experiences recently. Yes. You go crazy. Oh, well, I'm actually pulling up the text messages that I was sending my friend who is down in New Orleans.

Um, yeah, I said, it's like a drunken Bangalore cabbie with one eye. Right. So this is the new service that is better. Uh huh. Yes. And so, you know, we, we're going the right way and I'm like, you can take cold water.

You can take the 405. Okay. So two streets that you can get to the other street that needs to get me home. Yes. We get to, he goes right past cold water, gets to the 405. Do they not have GPS? Do they not have a ways? Do they not have anything? They're using ways. Okay. Ways sucks.

Uh, beyond belief, because here's what happened. We get to the sunset. This is sunset Boulevard in the 405, the 405, the biggest freeway in the country, right? He can't figure out where to go. Yes. They've redone it with new construction, but there are giant signs.

It says 405 North. That's where he's following the instructions on his screen. No, he's not the wrong thing. No, he's not. He stopped following that and started asking me and, and I'm, I'm, I'm texting with my friend saying, this is the worst driver I've ever had. And then he's like, uh, which way should we go?

And I'm like North. No, here's what I said. I'm like, probably the exit you just passed just jovially. And then he slams the brakes on cuts over three lanes and cuts off a bunch of people and gets down the exit. Okay. This is an exit to a residential section underneath the 405.

And I'm just like, okay. And I, I'm just like, I'm pulling out Google maps because obviously whatever you're using sucks or you don't know how to use it. And I started pulling up Google maps and then he's whipping around the neighborhoods. Like, you know, whatever it get in front.

We finally find the 405 North. We get on there. Right. 40 miles an hour is how fast he's driving on the 405. That's actually fast or the 405, but I'm assuming that you could actually go faster. You could go up. You could at this time of night, this is a bad 1030, you know, on a Thursday night on the 405, you can go about 190 miles an hour because that's what everybody else is doing.

Genuinely, when the times that I'm on the 405, you can go about five miles an hour. So that's, Hey man, that's fast. That's actually, that's a pretty good clip. Anyway, we're in the right lane. And the way this works is when you come over the hill, this is the one, this is the most trafficked interchange in the country.

The 101 405 interchange is the most trafficked interchange in the country. And it's poorly designed and it's a nightmare. So we're in the right lane. And I say, you need to get over two lanes to the left. Right. So as we're coming down the hill, then he starts to go about 80 miles an hour.

All right. Cause he apparently wanted to save gas going up the hill. We're coming down the hill and he starts to get off the 405 Adventure Boulevard, but he can't because there are cars already there. We're in the median going towards a sign that says, you know, right or left, you know, and you know, you know, those buckets that they have like in speed where they ran into the buckets and all the water came out.

Yeah. We're going at those at about 80 miles an hour. And I'm, and I, and I, and this is the part where everything went pear-shaped. I screamed, Jesus fucking Christ. Are you trying to kill us? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. At that point, he slams on the brakes and tells me to get out of his car.

Okay. In, in the middle of the 405. On the 405. That's awesome. Um, because I, I, I took the Lord's name in vain. I don't think he's going to be working in Los Angeles for very long. Um, well, we're going to get to that real quick anyway. So he, he gets out of the car and starts to come around to my side of the car to physically get me out of the car.

Now he has, he pulled over. No, we are on the shoulder on the 405. We are right in front of the sign in the buckets. Oh boy. Yeah. With cars going on either side, going to the one-on-one or going to Ventura Boulevard. If you're ever in Sherman Oaks, you can see this, like, just go look anyway.

Like I said, I'm sorry. This is a very traffic specific thing in, in Los Angeles, but it's insanely dangerous. There's no way I'm getting out of that car. And, but he was coming around to like physically get me out of the car. And I'm like, like Jesus would like Jesus would.

Yes. Because if Jesus could walk on traffic, then we might have a story, but Jesus could, Jesus could walk on water and make me some wine, which I'd need a lot of wine to get out of that car at that point. And I'm like, if you make me get out of this car, it's a felony, which I completely made up on the spot.

But that got him back in the car. Right. He came back around and then he peeled out, like floored it and went down the Ventura side of it and went to the mobile station there, like came into the mobile station. And at that point, I'm like, I'm getting out of your car.

And then I, by the time we got on the entrance ramp to go down, I started videotaping it because I'm like, you know what, whatever's going to happen now. I just want to make sure everybody knows that this is not my fault. I'm calm. I'm totally calm. I just wanted to go home because my dog had to be. Did you periscope this? I did not periscope it because I would like a copy of it.

Oh my God. I should have. Yeah. Jesus chatted it or whatever. So in the funny part is I'm like, I'm like, why are you kicking me out of your car? And the first thing he is, he does is he pulls up his phone. So we've got video on both sides of him holding up his phone and me holding up my phone.

I'm sure. But, and I posted this to Facebook. I'm going to put it on YouTube and the, and the grumpy old geeks, uh, site. So you can see the video and I apologize for the chins because, you know, at this point, I'm not really looking at my angles.

There are a lot of chins in this video, but that's true. Yeah, it was, it was, it was really not, not flattering at all. And, uh, and, and by the way, when you do lose a bunch of weight, you do get extra chins, which they don't tell you about in the, in the brochure. So long story short, too late.

Yeah. I get out. The guy actually tries to check me with his car when I'm taking a picture of his VIN number because he doesn't have, guess what? He doesn't have a license plate. Oh, no license plates. No license plate. That's how Jesus rolled too. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so no license plate. I take a picture of his VIN number.

He tried, he starts to hit me. And it's at that point where I start to get pissed because like, I'm like, you try to hit me with your car. That's assault with a deadly weapon. Screw you. And that's when, that's when I lost it again. And I'm just like, well, as he's driving away, I'm like dying of fucking fire.

I call, I call Lyft half an hour on the phone, standing on the corner. My dog's got to pee, which is actually is really endeared me to them because they're like, Oh, I had a Rottweiler too. Let's, let's get you home. Oh, look how easily they gain your trust back.

I know. And, uh, but I'm still waiting on a call back from the safety department. Cause I'm like, I, I escalated this to a manager and I'm like, they're like, what would you like from us? Would you like, you know, extra credit or what? No, I want a refund. I don't want this motherfucker to get a single cent from me.

You know what they're doing right now? Hmm. Making a safety department. That could be it. I'm like, I want to talk to a manager. I want to get this done. She's like, Oh, well, there's no managers on the floor. They'll be back at nine tomorrow. And I literally spent 45 minutes on the phone with this poor girl.

She was a sweetheart. She was like, is now is Doheny an Avenue, a road or a boulevard? I'm just like, okay, you're not from LA. It's just the Google bot in front of you. Yeah. And I told her, I'm like, you guys obviously have big data. So you can see everywhere that we went on this trip.

And she's like, yes, we do. I'm like, okay, well then stop asking me for the roads. But yeah. So at this point I got a $15 credit last night, which gave me a free ride home from Sherman Oaks. Right. The girl who I got a ride home from listened to my, my horror story.

And she's like, Oh my God, that's terrible. And I'm like, look, you get a five-star right now because you got me to where I was going. Okay. The first lift guy, perfect. But yeah, this video is going out there because it has to be out there because I mean, and it's not going to go viral because it's not really that interesting, but I just want people to know that I'm not a crazy person.

Good luck with that. I know this video might not be the one, but since I do say go tie in a fucking fire at the end of it, but. Well, I, you know, I'm sorry that happened to you, but obviously I'm not surprised if anybody's been listening to my, my rantings about these services for every single episode we've done ever.

This is my second, my second lift ride after the first one was so perfect. And the third one was perfect. Right. I don't. Yes. The thing is, it comes down to the individual, right? And a lot of these drivers aren't really vetted that well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's, it's not the end all be all of, of saving humanity.

I need to go back and look because the, the first driver and the third driver, I can't, I can't get to the second driver because they, they took it off my record because they're like, oh, well, we'll make sure that you're never paired with this driver again. I'm like, no, you don't understand me. I do not want this driver on the roads in Los Angeles, period.

That sounded insane. Um, and yeah. And he's screaming at me in Spanish too. I'm just like, okay, well, that doesn't really help. I'm like, if you want to, if you want to insult me, at least insult me so I can have a, you know, a clever retort. Oh, I think trying to run you over probably took care of all that.

Yeah. But you saw that right in the video. Yeah. That was bullshit. That's, that's, that's assault with a deadly weapon. It is. So. Well, yeah. Glad I got that off my chest. Well done. Well, I, I'm sure you're happy to know that Uber, although you were taking Lyft, not Uber, uh, is paying out 28.5 million for the misleading safe ride fee that they've been charging.

Oh, you know what? There's a safe ride fee in my Lyft account too. Well, Uber has been sued over it. And apparently, uh, all of us are going to get about 82 cents back. That's it? Yeah. That's what it works out to. You gotta be kidding me. The most interesting thing I saw about, uh, there's this article, uh, in our show notes over at the verge, um, is the rates that you pay at every single city.

San Francisco, it's about a buck 35 per trip. Philadelphia, 125 LA, 165. Hasn't been very safe in LA. Gotta say. So I want my 82 cents. I want my 82 cents back. This is really what it's come down to. Uh, actually I'm reading down at the very bottom of the article because I didn't make it all the way through.

Um, Uber is probably going to settle the case like Lyft recently did in a similar class action. Interesting. What, what did now? Hmm. Hmm. I'm going to pull up my, my ride with Alexander. I have a trust and service fee and my, my trust and service fee was $1.65.

There you go. Yeah. It's just, they changed the name. Hmm. Yes. It's a trust and service fee. It's basically like, we just want more money fee. That's it. It's just like, we need, we need, we need more cash fee. Yeah. I'm just going back to cabs. Um, if you can get one, good luck.

Cause they're going out of business hand over fist. I know. I know. Yeah. I'm going to post this guy's picture in our show notes because if you ever see this guy run, because I can guarantee his name's not Alexander. Okay. We're getting way too LA specific. Not a lot of people listen to our podcast in LA. I know.

But Hey man, sometimes we gotta, we gotta take it back, take it back, take it back to the roots. No, right. Now I, I feel that I should say this is not Brian's story. This is my story and it comes from slate. I saw it and I was like, Oh, that could have been me.

It, well, you know why? Because you're on vacation. So I had to step up for you. It's true. It's a story called, I was a super bowl concession worker. I sold beer and hot dogs for less than $13 an hour. And the beer costs $13. Yes. It's awesome. It's a long article, but it's a great article.

And it just, I, you know, it just kind of end caps everything that we've said for the past almost three years now about how shit kind of sucks. But in the, you know, at least this guy broke out and got a really good article on slate. You know, it's amazing.

It's somebody that, uh, I read through the whole article and I'm not even going to talk specifics. It's, it is a great article and it really does illustrate some of the main problems that are going on, especially if you're unskilled and untrained and you're working basically low level minimum wage jobs. Uh, what the hell was this guy doing, uh, trying to get this job and trying to get all these jobs?

He's a great writer. See, here's the thing. Nobody pays for writing. Nobody pays for writing, but also he could have been looking for this story. He could have been taking these jobs, looking for this story. So there is that, that possibility is like, you know, you never believe anything you read on the internet.

But what I like is that, that slate has a section called the grind, you know, and it's all about these types of stories. So I'm going to go back and look at these because I think it's a pretty cool section. Why do you think I've, we've had so many of those stories for me in the past few episodes? Okay. Well, you know, generally I don't go in for that type of thing because I figure you're, I've got it covered.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I just felt like I had to really kind of, you know, step up for you because you're dealing with chickens in Kauai. There's a lot of chickens on this island. Yeah. So when you're talking about how horrible it is, you're in fucking Kauai. So shut the hell up. That's true.

And I just wanted to end up our very long intro with a stupid hackathon.com. Okay. I got one more, but let's, let's, let's. Oh, that's right. Okay. Stupid shit. No one needs and terrible ideas. Hackathon. Wow. This last one took place on February 6th. I urge everyone to go look at the show notes. This is the greatest thing I've seen.

This is the greatest thing ever. The 2016 projects included Soylent Dick, which is a dick made out of Soylent that ejaculates Soylent. And that's how I, I'd seen that, but I didn't know it came from this. And then you posted it. I'm like, oh my God, this is so good. And I particularly also enjoyed the non ad block Chrome extension that blocks every all web content that isn't an ad.

Yes. This is good stuff. There's so much in here that's good. This is great. Great. The three cheese printer. Oh, good stuff. Yeah. No, you have to go check these out because they are genius. And the best thing about it is like somebody will run across this and try to actually start up a company that does these things.

Oh, you know it. It's just a matter of time. It is. So National Geographic came out with a, an article about what we talked about last week. The, the bald eagles that are taking down drones. Oh, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they, they agreed with us.

You know, the Dutch national police are the ones that are training bald eagles to do this. And you and I both agreed that this is a danger for the birds. It's animal cruelty. It is. It really is. Because you're, you're basically saying, go, go get that, you know, big thing with these flying blades on it.

Spinning blades. That will take off your wing. It's like, no, no, no, no. Um, so National Geographic came out on our side. So I feel somewhat vindicated for some opinion we've ever had on this show. Oh, good. Yeah. Yes. And we'll be right back.

But now a word from our sponsors. In the news. So this week we're actually not going to cover the Zenefit story. The, uh, you know, the basically outsourced HR who got busted for selling unlicensed insurance or basically insurance from unlicensed brokers because, you know, it's a regulated industry.

Hmm. CEO quit. It's been covered in the news this week, but you know, we had to, we can only pick so many unregulated, uh, bad actors and we're going to skip that one. But in very good news, Google display ads are supposed to, or they're not supposed to, they are going 100% HTML5, which basically is the death knell for flash.

Yeah. That's it. The last thing that flash is still being used for, except for people that are miraculously still getting paid to develop sites in flash. All four of them. Yeah. There can't be people that are still building in flash. So good. Bye bye flash. Thank God.

So it's starting, uh, June 30th in 2016 display ads built in flash can no longer be uploaded into AdWords. And, uh, starting January 2nd, 2017 display ads in the flash format can no longer run on the Google display network or through double click. So, all right.

So one more year. Yeah. That's going to be it. That's we'll, we'll no longer see anything flash on the web. Yeah. Honestly, that's it. Yep. Awesome. Except for the people that still have flash and you can put a one by one pixel flash hack, you know, payload and take it, but uninstall flash people.

Pierre, just get rid of it. You don't need it anymore. Right now. You're really only getting ads anyways. Get rid of it. Uh, other things that Google is killing Picasso in case anybody still happens to be on that. I didn't know that. That's cool. Okay. Yep. They're getting rid of it. They want everybody to move over to Google photos. And no.

Yeah. Hmm. I was really, you know, as, as Yahoo is crumbling, I'm really hoping they're going to sell off Flickr to somebody who gives a shit about it. Good luck with that. I really would like to go back to Flickr. Yeah. Probably not going to happen. Okay. Uh, Apple is reportedly releasing new iPhones and an iPad air three on March 18th.

That makes sense because I just bought an iPad air two. Okay. Um, well, you know, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, my iPad air one. So, and why would they, no, they see the iPhone thing doesn't make sense because they always release iPads in the fall. Yeah. But this isn't going to be a new, this isn't the, going to be the iPhone seven.

This is going to be like a, an iPhone five S E, which is going to be like a cheap version. Yes. Sucks, sucks extremely. It's basically going to be some sort of like Frankensteinian cheap five with some of the features of the six. Okay. So they're, they're going back to the small form factor is what I guess so.

I mean, who knows who the hell knows what they're doing anymore. I just, as long as the stock stays fine, I don't care. Well, the stock doesn't, the stock sucks. Well, everybody's stock sucks right now. So that's fair enough. Okay. Uh, speaking of sucking Twitter, the big news from Twitter this week that, uh, everybody's probably already heard is they're going to an algorithmic timeline, but it is.

They're going to have a Facebook timeline. Yes. And I tried it today just to make sure that I was up to speed for the show. Okay. It's terrible. It's utterly terrible. I see. I don't know if this is opt in or not because for weeks now I've been getting, uh, what, here's what happened when you were gone at the top of my feed.

Oh, that's not good. Maybe you were a test case. Maybe they're doing that. Uh, you know, maybe the experiments on you, they rolled it out on me first. Well, yeah, jokes on you, Twitter. I never used Twitter. Uh, yeah, well that, yeah. So who cares about what you say on Twitter? Um, no, I tried it today and it's just like, you look at the, how long ago the tweet was made and it's like, okay, five minutes, six hours, 26 hours, three minutes.

It's just like all over the place. And it's like, what, you know, what algorithm are they using for retweets or likes and how many views it's had or what, what is it? You know, we don't know what the algorithm is, but I can tell you right now that it sucks. I just want timeliness. I want Twitter for timeliness because that's what I use it for.

Yeah. And I don't care if I don't see a bunch of tweets, but they do because it's about advertising. So, and you know, the whole thing, it's like, oh, we're not going to do this. Oh, well, guess what? Here it is. Here it is. We did it anyways. Yeah. What are you going to do about it? And just like we know from Facebook, it's going to be like, it's going to be opt-in only and it's going to be.

At first. Yes. And then, yeah. And then it's going to be. And then welcome your new Twitter overlords. Yes. And then you have to go find the button that says go back to most recent and then that will get unchecked every time you log back in. And then it won't even be on the mobile app anymore.

And that, yeah. Yeah. That's the way it works. That is how it goes because they need to feed the beast. Mm-hmm. Oh, God. For old people, I found this one in the technology review, a new anti-aging strategy, clearing out old cells increases lifespan of mice, mice, not mice, mice by 25%.

That's why I drink. Well, I'm cleaning out the old cells. The old brain cells. This is from the MIT technology review. And it's, it's, it's interesting. I don't know if it's going to stand up to scrutiny, but we'll see.

Well, how, how exactly are they cleaning out old cells? That's the interesting thing. I mean, are we doing like a, the Keith Richards theoretical, hooking ourselves up to new blood and having it pumped in every week? I, is that what they're doing? Are they sucking cells out? What's, what's the deal here? It's just new drugs that can kill senescent cells in lab animals.

Okay. Awesome. I mean, isn't that the, the, the rivest, rivestoral or whatever the hell it's called supposed to do, except that's, that's in wine, except you need doses of it that would equal about 8,000 wine bottles, which I'm up for the challenge, people. Yeah. It's resveratrol and yes, it's, it's, it's like, you know, how saccharin had to have the cause, causes cancer in lab rats.

Yeah. Like back in the eighties. Yeah. And it says like, oh, if a human had to do it, they would have to eat 10 pounds of saccharin a day to cause cancer. Uh, no, not, this is not resveratrol. It's talking about killing or flushing cells out that no longer divide.

Right. I do believe that's it, but I'm not a scientist and I don't play one on the internet, but, uh, lifespan gains have been achieved in dozens of ways in mice by changing the diet, feeding drugs and blah, blah, blah. Uh, we know lots and lots of ways to do this. This is a new way. That's what they say.

So feel free to read the article. If you give a shit, I just know that we're all going to die anyway. So I just thought it was fun. Speak for yourself. I'm not the one that's, uh, that has, uh, lift drivers trying to run me over. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Uh, in the, uh, normally I'm pretty fond of a motherboard over on vice, uh, because, uh, we usually, uh, they usually do some really good articles and this one is a good article.

It's just, uh, this one's the, the title doesn't exactly match what he actually talks about in the story award for the week. The title is Spotify spam war could change how we listen to music. There is absolutely nothing in the article about changing how you listen to music. Okay. It's entirely about how, uh, how artists are and, um, and other people are starting to try to game Spotify system and how Spotify is battling against it.

It's kind of the retread of what happened with YouTube when they put in their, their content matching systems and all that sort of stuff. And certainly for the payouts, like we talked, I mean, episodes upon episodes ago, probably over a year ago, we talked about, uh, the band, the name is escaping me who made an album called sleep.

Yes. Yes. Those guys were awesome tracks. And they urged all their fans to put that on every night when they went to bed. It's, it goes, uh, if you'd like that, go read this article because it goes through a whole bunch of different artists that are trying to game Spotify in different ways. Amen. And how Spotify is fighting against them. The system is there.

Exactly. Make advantage of the system to be tweaked. Oh, yes. So speaking of the system now, there's a, we, I got a, uh, uh, email from a friend that was talking about a class action. Yep. Let me try that again. I love it. So a class action lawsuit against PayPal.

It's called Zepeda versus PayPal. Okay. Um, this website summarized blah, blah, blah. Basically if they shut down your website, if here's the, uh, here's the legalese. If you had an active PayPal account between April 19th, 20 or 2006 and November 5th, 2015, and had a hold or reserve placed on your account and, or the account was closed or suspended by PayPal.

You are a claims class member. You're right. I saw this like two weeks ago and I, I was very disappointed because that's never happened to my account. So I'm not going to check for 85 cents. I know. I love getting those checks. I sent this to our friend, a friend of the show, Dr. Teeter, because I know his account was suspended for a while, but, uh, I, unfortunately, actually for me, fortunately, they've never suspended or closed my account.

But I mean, I, I, I know people that have had thousands, tens of thousands of dollars stuck in PayPal for, you know, over a year. And so hopefully this'll, you know, bring them to heal, but it's, that was 10 years ago. So it's like day late and a dollar short, the damage has been done.

Yeah. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Uh, there's an article. Don't use PayPal. That's what you're going to do. I, I try not to, I get really annoyed when people say, I'll just PayPal you the money. And I'm like, no, how about you just write me a check because I don't want the fees taken out. Thank you very much. But then you have to buy a stamp.

I will take 25 cents off the check. Jesus people. Moving on. All right. So an article in Recode called Elephant Meat Room. Here's what LinkedIn CEO said to employees after stock dropped 40%. I'm surprised that LinkedIn is public.

I'm surprised LinkedIn still exists. I'm surprised anybody cares. Uh, but this is CEO, Jeff Weiner. Weiner. Uh, talking to his employees about the 40% drop in stock. I just find it very funny. And I think that Marissa Myers probably wants to take a look at this. Oh, well, you know, there's just saying she's going to be, she's going to be on the market soon.

So, and maybe Mr. Weiner will be too. So, uh, yeah, well, there's no reason for either Yahoo or LinkedIn to exist anymore. Oh no. Yeah. I actually, no, no, actually there isn't. Um, as long as, uh, Yahoo gets rid of flicker and puts it back in the wild.

You keep home. You keep holding onto that flicker dream. I know. I just love flicker. It was, it, I was there at the beginning. I'm looking forward to it. You should rebuild it. No. Call it fucker. Okay. I saw this one today.

It is, it's, it's beautiful. Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge. This is the pirate bay of science papers. And she's had multiple takedown notices. Uh, so many, she's in Russia. So she, she does not give a fuck.

She does not give a fuck. Zero fucks given in Russia. Fucks give you. Uh, so anyway, so she's like, I don't understand why people are pissed off when, when you have universities putting up their entire curriculum for free. Here's what, here's what gets me about this because I go back to Aaron Schwartz who killed himself over the, what exactly this, he was trying to do the same thing.

And you know, these people that are going after this and she's like, why would I spend $32 on a paper when I have to get hundreds of papers to find the relevant information? And I can't look at them before I get the information out. And she's just like, screw you. I got them. I'm giving them out. Um, you know, I don't, I don't, I, I hate to say this, but information wants to be free.

Oh gosh. That is, that is my teenage hacker angst coming out. But with that cue the ad on our podcast. Exactly. Oh my God. And please go to Patreon and give us money because we want to be free. I don't fucking want to be free.

Speak for yourself. Hey dude, this isn't information. This is entertainment. Oh, that's true. We actually have zero information in this show. Yes. The information is very low. Yeah. Nothing in this show was created by us. Oh man. And Google has passed a huge milestone for getting their self-driving cars on the road.

Oh joy. No, the, well, here's, here's what it is. Didn't I last week just convince you about how this is a really bad idea. Now you've come around again to it. Now you want, well, after your Lyft experience, I don't blame you. Yeah. After my Lyft experience, I'm like, get these drivers out of here.

I do not want Jesus in my self-driving cars. So this is a give and take because it's the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the NHTCA. They came back saying that, you know what? Having steering wheels and brakes in the cars that are self-driving is actually detrimental to the performance of the car because it's going to act because the humans are the bottleneck.

Here's the problem with it. There always has to be an escape hatch. They're not a law-making body. Yeah. Right. So they can make recommendations. Yes. But here's the deal. I think that they're right. And just take control away and put it to the computers.

You know what? I love our self-driving overlords. I said it before. You changed my mind the other day, but after getting thrown out by a Jesus freak on the 405, no Google car is ever going to throw me out on the 405.

And if it does, then it's the end of times anyway. So what are you going to do? Jesus, take the wheel. Security? Ha!

Now, a Twitter account named Penis released 20,000 FBI employee names, titles, phone numbers, emails, and country when the Super Bowl was going on. I wish we didn't already have a title for the episode because I'd love the title to be a Twitter handle named Penis.

Well, the handle is actually .gov's, but his name is Penis. It's like the modern streetcar named Desire. Skip to the end. It's just like, forget it, Penis. That's all it is. So, yeah, the data was leaked and everybody's saying, ah, it's not that big of a deal.

Whatever. It's a big deal. It could be, could be not. Probably is. I'm going with is. I'm sticking with is. And at the same time, remember when we talked about the head of the FBI or actually CIA?

CIA. Yeah, CIA. He got hacked by the teenager, right? Yes. Well, yeah, now we know it's a teenager because they caught him. Awesome. Derp. I mean, I guess it's a good thing he got caught. I mean, I always see the schadenfreude in this, and I think it's a good thing that these idiots get hacked because hopefully they will learn from their mistakes, but it's also good that we catch the people that did it.

Yeah, but then they're just going to go work for the CIA. We've seen the movies. We've seen the movies. I like the way that that works. Je ne sais quoi. Okay, so if I'm making illegal hamburgers on the street and McDonald's catches me, then I have to go work for McDonald's for the rest of my life.

That's perfect. Works for me. Anyway, yeah, it's a teenager and well, it's an alleged teenager. The British version of the FBI is not releasing any info because they say he's 15 to 16. There are differences on the age at this point because the reporting is spotty, but it looks like they got him.

Okay. Well, again, all right, he had his fun and now he got caught and hopefully he'll explain why and how it happened and we can close up some security holes so then the next teenager can find the other ones. I know, but I like it. He's Crackers with Attitude, CWA.

Nice. That still could have been Penis though. That's much better. Penis with Attitude is much better. PWA. Oh, we're just running through good titles today, aren't we? Remember the whole FAA mandatory national drone registration? That began in December 2015.

Yeah. The one that we said that nobody would ever register with? Well, I think we... Well, 325,000 people actually did. Yeah, we... And I would have been one of those if I were a drone operator, but I'm not. Oh, man. But yeah, we have an estimated 1.6 million consumer drones that sold last year.

So 325,000 is much smaller, I believe. Oh, that's a small penis drone. I mean, I'm not great with math, but... Yeah, no. So yeah, people are not using it. But I mean, I am impressed that we even got that many, so... I'm not impressed.

I'm saddened. I don't think people shouldn't have to register their flying toys. People shouldn't have to register their things that we, at the top of the show, decided could kill animals. Why would we have to register them, Jason? Well, no... Fine. I'm going to buy one and go around and kill eagles, just to prove your point.

Go for it. No, we agreed that people shouldn't train eagles to go after drones. Of course, these need to be registered. They're moving vehicles, whether you're in them or not. They are dangerous. They have gigantic rotary fans that spin fast enough to kill you.

They need to be registered. Do you have to register your model airplane? Because people have been killed by those. No, you don't. There's 1.6 million of them being flown around all the time, and they don't have cameras on them. Well, I guarantee that there are a hell of a lot more model airplanes. Well, you can't weaponify them, and you can't put guns on them, as we've also seen.

Oh, don't even... Well, put a gun on a model airplane, you're not going to be... Please, Jason, that's ridiculous. That's nothing compared to the control that you have on a drone. You have so missed the point on that one, dude. Have you seen these model airplanes? They have 747 replicas that are 18 feet wide.

You can put a fucking sidewinder on it. Of those out there, it has not hit anywhere near the popularity the drones have. Oh, Brian. Okay, I'm being silly. 1.6 million versus maybe five 18-foot planes.

Okay, okay. You go believe that. Have you tried to fly a model plane? Much easier than flying a drone. I've flown drones and model planes. Model planes are much easier to fly than a drone. All right, moving on. Jason's wrong. The FAA plan to prevent a modern-day fan man from crashing the Super Bowl.

This is an article over on Slate, of course. It's actually really kind of interesting and also depressing. They talked specifically about what the FAA was doing around the Super Bowl at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara to ensure that somebody didn't actually, you know, take one of their unregistered drones and fly it into the middle of the Super Bowl with a weaponified system that has guns on it and start shooting people.

Where's the eagles? They actually do mention eagles in the article. Maybe your drone will be shot down. Maybe an eagle will swoop up and grab it and they link to the story that we link to. Brian is going to kick me out of the podcast on the 405, I think, at this point. Jesus, take the podcast.

Comment of the Week. Thank you to our new Patreon supporter, Cloinka. Cloinka. Cloinka? That's a great name. So thank you very much. Very appreciated. If you want to support the show, patreon.com slash GOG. All right.

And Cloinka also wrote to us on Patreon. He says, hi from Australia. Enjoy listening to the podcast on my Android phone. And the nonsensical techno banter gives me at least 8,000 steps on my Fitbit. So that's worth at least $5 a month.

Keep it up, guys. Viagra helps. So that all of us over 40s geeks can feel part of Web 3.0. I like the book reviews, too. You got two. You two got me and my girlfriend hooked on audiobooks. Eric Cloinka. As long as you don't say that you're reading a book like Jason does.

Fuck off. I have stopped saying that. I say I listen to a book. Yes, I'm very happy about that. It took me and about 20 other people online shaming you. Yeah, and here's the deal. I only do it to placate you. So move on. Okay. From grumpyoldgeeks.com, Brian G. wrote in.

I thought of you guys when I read this on AP News because you've talked before about gentrification in the Bay Area. This is pretty damn shameful if you ask me. But you guys are much closer to this than I. So is the landlord getting squeezed as well or just being an opportunistic douchebag? I would like to hear your take on this article.

And the article is Nuns Who Help Homeless Face Eviction in Costly San Francisco. Continue the article, Jason. Yes, but continue on. Sunstroke. Also, thanks for all your great work in declaring shenanigans against all the blue raspberry Kool-Aid doled out by these hyper-caffeinated little shits in the tech industry.

That was a tough sentence to make it through. Somebody's got to say it. You guys do it really well. So thanks for establishing this refreshing bullshit free zone. And I hate fucking blue raspberry. Thank you very much, man. And may I point out stupidhackathon.com. Bullfit tree zone, I think, is also a good title that we could have had.

I think it could be a good name for the show, actually. Yes. So anyway, yes. No, this is about the landlord. It's not about anything else. He's an opportunistic fuck. Yeah, I mean, if you own the land, regardless of where you are, at worst case scenario, your property taxes are going up, but your other expenses aren't really going up.

So this is the landlord wanting to get these people out and be able to charge higher rent. Yeah, the property taxes are not in proportion to the rents that they can charge. So they are basically slumlords and being douchebags. Agreed.

Jeff Deason wrote, with the change to the new podcast network, you've mentioned that there will be ads during the show. I listened through Overcast on an iPhone 6 Plus and have not heard any for the last couple of new shows, 145 and 146. But I do hear the short sting that announces there is going to be an ad.

But then straight back to the show. Is this a feature of Overcast or have you not actually inserted any ads yet? I've only recently found the show and like the mix of topical stories, updates, books, etc. You know what that is? That's a failing of our damn podcast network because those ads have been placed.

It's weird that they're not playing on Overcast, though. Well, they play on my Overcast. So that's why I'm saying the version of the show that you get every time that somebody downloads a show, those ads are dynamically inserted based on the algorithm of who's willing to pay for it at that time.

And if you get one early enough, if you I mean, if you're like, you know, an early adopter and you get it right away, you can probably get it without an ad. Ad free. So here's the deal, people. If you want the show ad free, get off your ass and download it immediately. Yep.

But yes. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We always post right away when it's when it's live. Yes. Actually, faster on Patreon. So if you're a Patreon supporter, you'll find out faster. But yes, I use Overcast. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Thanks. Yes. Thank you very much. I use Overcast. I love it.

And but no, it does not have an ad skip feature. Oh, OK. Well, good to know. I've never used Overcast. All right. You can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG. If you want to find me in about an hour, I'm going to be drinking Mai Tais at a bar. We have a website at grumpy old geeks dot 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 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 only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpy old geeks dot com slash iTunes and it'll take you right there. Media Candy.

So what I've always kind of called our Canadian sister podcast, Geeks and Beaks, those guys have called it quits. Why? Who knows? They were actually even making a decent amount of money. They were on the radio network in Canada as well as doing pretty decently on Patreon.

But they both had full time other gigs that they were both broadcast professionals, unlike us. That's that's how they definitely differed from us. They're professionals. So I think that their full time gigs were just they weren't able to put the time into doing the show anymore. I'm a bit bummed because they usually kind of recorded over the weekend and they'd put out their shows on Wednesday.

So they always kind of did the same general topics that we did about, you know, half a week later. And it was always great to kind of hear their take on it. So I will miss them and we will certainly be tagging them this week and hopefully bring some of their listeners that hadn't heard of us over to the fold because we talk about the same shit.

Okay. We will we will feast upon their carcass. Yes, we will feast upon your carcass now. But thank you so much for doing it the entire time you guys did it. I really did enjoy the show. Okay. Oh, that's a that's a bummer. I hate when I hate when people give up the ghost. Yeah, I hate it when good shows go down.

And speaking of good shows going down, let's talk about Top Gear. Fuck that show. They had to hire they had to hire six people to replace three. Yeah. Now we have we have a huge field of people that will be on and they say Top Gear's dream team.

I'm like, no, that's not the dream team. The dream team was the guys you fired. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to be watching any of this. I will wait patiently for the still untitled Amazon show. Yeah, Matt LeBlanc is the only person I've ever heard of in this lineup. So I'm not even going to read it.

For Sevens is a DJ slash man about town in Britain. He's huge and very annoying. And I saw some scuttlebutt and articles being posted a while back about how he's getting carsick. Which is not really great if you're going to be hosting a show. Let's hire the guy that gets carsick for a car show.

Yeah. Way to go, BBC. There you go. Man, and I know how much you love House of Cards. I actually totally forgot that I made it through Season 3. I saw the announcement that there was Season 4. And I looked over at my wife and I was like, shit, that means we have to go back and finish Season 3, don't we?

And she looked at me and was like, we did. I was like, oh, well, that was memorable. Yeah. No, they broke up at the end of Season 3. Spoiler alert. A little late. It's a year. Come on. I get carte blanche with that. I don't know if I'm going to watch this. You know what?

I'm enjoying Billions so much more than House of Cards that I'm going to watch. I'm going to stick with that. I'll probably watch this, but it looks like the same shit, different day. When's it going to drop, as the kids don't say? March 4th. Okay.

Yes. Let's see. And speaking of shit, let's talk about the band OK Go. Are they a band or do they make videos? I'm confused. They do. Because I don't know anybody that's ever said, hey, did you hear that OK Go song? No. They go, did you see that OK Go video? Exactly. Because OK Go's music is terrible.

They're not a good band. But they make amazing videos. Yes. Well, good for them. So do a bunch of other people on YouTube. Yeah. Well, not as good as this. This new one, they went to a Russian airline and basically screwed up an airplane for a day or however long. It probably took them months to do this thing.

But this is this zero G video that they did is impressive. I got to give it to them. These guys are really good at making videos. Just don't do it with your music. Because your music is terrible. I agree. Yeah. Oh, but definitely check out the video because it's it's really cool.

No, I did watch it. I just think it's funny that they still think they're a band. I know. But it's actually worth watching just because the stewardesses are very limber. Oh, dear Lord, Jason. What? They are. OK. They're dancers. They're good. All right.

Awesome. Shut up. New Battlestar Galactica movie just for you for saying that. We don't know anything about it. If it doesn't have the cast from the TV show, I'm not interested. Nobody's interested. And it won't because everybody's doing other things. And they finished the story. You can't make a movie about it.

The only good thing about this is that Ronald Moore probably isn't going to be involved. See, I like Ron Moore. Destroyed it. Well, he's the one that fucked up the ending. But he also made most of the show, which made it great. Destroyed it. You're pissed off about two hours out of like 120.

The ending invalidates everything that came before. It kind of did. Thank you. Moron of the week. Kurt Russell is our moron of the week. I have seen The Hateful Eight. And there is a scene in here where he smashes up a guitar.

And it actually was a priceless guitar on loan from a museum. Nobody apparently told him that it was actually not a prop. That is pretty funny. Derp. Derp. This is the total derp moment. But I liked the movie. I thought it was good.

But now that when I go back and watch it again, I will have a much better appreciation for that scene. As a result of the incident, the company will no longer loan guitars to movies under any circumstances. Way to go, Kurt. Awesome. Are you kidding me?

Love it. Science fiction writers are in a fucking lot of trouble now, Jason. Why is that? Because we've discovered the gravitational waves are actually real. And that means we're going to start to learn an awful lot about them. And they've been used by every science fiction author ever to explain how people get from one place to another or random weird things.

Okay. So, yeah. You're going to have to find a new trope to use sci-fi authors. Well, why? Because they're real. That means that they work. We didn't exactly know what they do or how they worked. It was kind of just thrown in there as a catch-all. So now that we've found them, we will start to study them more and learn a hell of a lot more about them.

Oh, my God. Next thing you're going to tell me is you're going to find that the spice works. Spice must flow, Jason. So Einstein was right, is basically the- Einstein was right. That's all we're talking about here. Yes. Thursday's massive gravitational wave news was broken by a sheet of cake, though.

That's the big story here. When this is the second time this woman has done this, she makes cakes for, you know, all the scientists and said, hey, we've got cakes. She makes cakes for all the scientists, Jason. Yes, she does.

All of the scientists. All of the scientists. Anybody with a PhD that wants a fucking cake. Yes. This is the lady. Yes, Erin Lee Ryan. She's a research associate at the University of Maryland. Oh, and all over the world. And she works at Goddard Space Flight Center.

But she likes to tweet that the cakes are ready in the break room with a picture of them. And they generally happen to say what the breakthrough is. You'd think the first time she'd have learned or gotten fired. But no, yeah, no, she did it again.

Again, I like it. It's fine. It's cute. It's funny. I mean, because the story, the story is great because this is the Washington Post and they're just like media outlets were scrambling after the tweet of the cake. Wow, how things have changed.

It's funny because I watched all the president's men on the plane out here. I have not seen that. Oh, really? You should go back and watch it. It's great. Dustin Hoffman and what's his face? What's his nuts? What's his nuts? What's his nuts? What's his cake? What's his cake?

What does that have anything to do with what we're talking about? Well, they worked for the Washington Post. Oh, okay. It was a serious time back then. Oh, that's when people hadn't just break stories about cakes. That, you know what it is? That's when people had non-ironic mustaches. It's because Nixon's pastry chef did not write he was a crook on a cake.

Closing shout outs. I'm just going to have to shout out to Hawaii and Mai Tais. I'm having a fantastic break. If you've never been here, you should come. I've been there and I would like to come again. I was waiting for a snarky retort, but I guess I'm not going to get one.

Way to make it weird, Jason. I know. That's how we roll. That's how we roll here at Grumpy Old Geek. So I'm going to let you get back to your Mai Tais. Oh, thank you. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo and you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schilmester and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

I will see you next week, Jason, where I will be back in my normal studio and unhappy about it. Okay. It sounded like you just popped a beer there. So I'm thinking you're ready to go. I'm thinking you're ready to go. You have time for me to go, guys. Grumpy Old Geeks is a partially 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 and get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash House of Andy.

Andy's also in SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 147. Mahalo, Jesus. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

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