150: The Truth is On Hiatus

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. 150 for March 4th, 2016. I am Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I can't believe we've done this 150 times. I know. It's amazing. We actually stuck with something for long enough to get 150 of them done. Wow. Pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. And I think it's time to break some big news, too.

Okay. Speaking of the goals that we managed, we're about to launch something that we may not manage. Well, we're going to manage it. We've got a new show coming up. We're calling it Up to Speed, which is a Monday through Thursday, 15-minute maximum tech talk show.

For pop culture news, yesterday's news today. I like to think of it as the things you need to know. Yes. Yes. It'll be pretty much the same format, but this one will be clean, so you can listen to it in the car with your kids and not have to cover their ears. Exactly. Good times.

Good times. So we have talked a lot about social media on this show. Yep. And Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out called Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and by finding that, I found an article in The Guardian, and this was back in early February, but the book just came out yesterday, where he says, I'm thinking it may be good to be off social media altogether.

It was in the title, but it was only a small bit of the article. Yeah. He goes on at great length about a lot of other things. I know you are hit or miss with him. I'm actually pretty much a big fan and generally tend to agree with his viewpoint. In fact, he could very well just be on this podcast with us.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Especially he's on my side regarding Uber, so, and a lot of other things. There was one really interesting bit in this article that really struck me because this is something I've, this is a very similar conversation in tone that I've heard from many of my friends that work in the creative fields, be it musicians or journalists or writers or whatever.

Um, and he's, he's, he was asked about leaving Facebook in 2013 and how it was working out for him. And he said, uh, well, this part, definitely a hundred percent. I think we both agree with, uh, free doesn't lead to anything but more free working for free. Isn't leveraged to do a load of talks for loads of money.

Now they just basically just even want you to now do your talks for free. So what am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video. That's crap. And that's insane. I love that. And, uh, the other little bit that he said is, um, the way the world has changed now is we used to say, I used to celebrate when I finished writing a book because that meant I was done.

Now that just means that's the start of your work. And I, I know so many creative people that feel the same way. You, you work really hard to make your product, but your product is worthless. And that's when you just have to start spending all your time pimping and promoting it and doing a gazillion other things, usually for free in the hopes of people finding out or doing something with your product that you've already worked really, really hard on.

Well, you have to become your own PR team now. Yeah. Which is sad. Yeah. Back in the old days, you know, it was the same thing with music. That's, that's why the publishers were there. Yeah, exactly. And now they're not, and you have to do it. Or actually they are still there and you're still paying them, but they just don't do a good enough job and they expect you to do most of the work too.

Well, yeah, because the PR team is usually just the social media marketing team now, which is interns from, you know, the local college. So are too busy doing their own Snapchats than sending your tweets. And speaking of social media, Scientific American has a really interesting article about how social media may alleviate or exacerbate your emotional states, particularly your negative ones, which is not too surprising to me or to you.

And we've talked about it a gazillion times. I love the title, Green with Facebook Envy, Red with Twitter Rage. They specifically did find out that depending on, well, it all comes down to how you use it, of course. You put some mindfulness into it and come at it with a good attitude and things change.

But kind of our default human settings, Twitter tends to piss us off and make us get angry and get in insane fights. I know Jason does that many times. And Facebook tends to make you envious of all your friends. I would make the caveat that I think it's more Instagram now than Facebook because all people do on Instagram is post pictures of awesome things that they are doing.

Yeah, you post your better self, you know. Exactly, yeah. So, yeah, social media, not good for us. Well, if you're participating and not just going to consume, that's the way that it actually does help you, you know, get less depressed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, there's ways to use social media in which it can be somewhat beneficial. I think that's something that I somewhat do because I use it to keep in touch with people that I probably, if there weren't social media, would have dropped out of my life by now because of whatever reason, differing interests, geographic location, changes in life.

At least I'm able to stay in touch with them, and I think that's great. And your likeness can be used to advertise to them so they can get more stuff. Yes, that too. Hopefully, they would just go to Grumpy Old Geeks and click on our links. There's found another article this week in TechCrunch called After the Gold Rush, where they're saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling, the startup economy is over.

Yeah. Hasn't that been that way for a while? I think so. I mean, you know, we've certainly been hearing stories about how the money is going down. We're still seeing stupid business plans and ridiculous apps popping up more on that later. Go to product. All you got to do is go to product hunt, man.

Or we go to product hunt, yeah. Just scratch your head and just go, what? Yeah. Yeah. Which we've been doing for the three years we've been doing this podcast. But apparently, yeah, things are – what they're saying is the markets have basically been solidified. We've got winners in every field.

Even in new fields, at best, you're going to have a top three that survive. Everybody else is not going to get funded or make it past, you know, the early, early stages. But he did bring up some interesting things. There are some fields that haven't been disrupted yet, healthcare, et cetera, et cetera.

But in general, if you're just trying to set up another stupid social network or anything like that or make another dumbass app, you're not going to get funded. Hello. Hello. I think they're funded by their T-shirt sales now, aren't they? That's about it. Okay. They're still kicking, but – Well, you know, it costs more money probably to shut down the company than it does to just keep it running at the level that it's at.

Yeah, even a corpse twitches its leg after you shoot it in the head, so. That is maybe a title. I was talking last week about the one thing I bought from an ad, my slide belt. Yes. It came after a little prodding on Twitter. And after we were talking about the belt technology, I found a tweet from Jay Lester who said he got his mission belt for the holidays and loves it.

But then I went and I'm like, I got a slide belt. But I won't know until April if it's coming or not or if it's any good or not. And they jumped on it and sent it the next day. Yeah. Well, there you go. Being angry on Twitter got you your belt faster. I'm telling you, man. That's how they do customer service since Twitter now does customer service.

Yes. Well, because Twitter is customer service now. Yeah, pretty much. Let me segue into that, actually. That's perfect. I wanted to do some follow-up. I talked last week about something that I was totally shocked that exists, the California Shopping Cart Retrieval Corporation. So basically, if you live here and probably in other major cities as well, shopping carts just appear magically and darken your doorstep for ages.

And they're usually pretty gross because and you don't want to touch them yourself. So there is a there's a company to fit that niche. Now, it's been a week. Still there. Shopping cart is still there. No contact from anyone. So I live in the area that they service.

I'm in their little map. And the shopping cart is from one of the companies that they work for. So there is no reason that they should not have come and picked up this cart by now. Which leads me to wonder, if you have an app, as Jason did point out, they actually have an app or a web form.

What is the effing point if it's completely useless? I'm going to have to call them now. Which you should have done in the first place. Which I should have done in the first place. And I kind of feel this way about all of these things. What is the point in having this stuff if it's fucking useless?

Because you don't even know if they're still in business. This could be, you know, a Cobb website that's been around for a while. How is the the app? I'd never use the app because I just use the web form. Oh. So anyways, I'm going to have to call them to find out. And they just made me start to get angry. So maybe I should be on Twitter for all this.

It's we keep doing this. We have these things. There's no customer service anymore. There's no point in having these forms. We finally came to a chip system with our credit cards. And now everything takes five times longer. And you have to hear that annoying sound. And half the time it's broken, it doesn't work.

We've gotten to the point where we can't even have people at McDonald's, employees at McDonald's use a real cash register. We've had to create pictures of little burgers for people to push. And they still can't fucking manage it. Progress is useless. Well, as far as the web form thing goes, let's go back to that for a second.

Because that's kind of how we made our career. So I wouldn't be too down on that. I would be down on the fact that they didn't. What? He responded. Well, we responded until they didn't pay us to keep maintaining the site anymore. And then the Perl script broke. And then it just goes off into the ether.

And then they go out of business because they can't get contacted by their customers anymore. That's the life cycle of that. Well, they have many social medias, but Twitter is not one of them. So I cannot rant at them at the only available customer service outlet there is in the world anymore. Well, that website looks pretty old, though.

So maybe you should hit them up on MySpace. Copyright 2016. Oh, well. And we'll be right back. But now, a word from our sponsors. In the news.

You know, there is an app for everything. I've heard such things. Yes. And this would, I had to put this first in the list because Waze. We've joked about Waze before. Yes, we have. And this is the best one.

Israeli soldiers who relied on Waze blundered into a deadly firefight with Palestinians. Oopsies. This is kind of a little bit misleading headline from the Washington Post, though. Because they didn't use it the way it was supposed to be used.

There wasn't a little, like, you know, war symbol telling them stuff was coming up. There's a switch in Waze that they could have turned on that said, avoid dangerous areas. And they had it turned off. And you'd think if you were. That would only work if somebody had reported it being a dangerous area.

There's two sides to that coin. Yes. Also, though, they kind of didn't follow the directions the way Waze told them to go. So it's kind of, I don't know about this, but I had to put it in here because it was just, it's a great headline.

Come on. It is a good headline. And I was immediately thinking, well, thank God they weren't actually using it to try to get to the battle. Because they would have been way late because they would have had to cross so many streets, one-way streets, and, like, no stoplight corners with busy traffic. They never would have been there on time. Never. No. So, again, going back to social media, and as we all, well, most of us, maybe Jason, most of us have friends that have children or are in that point and stage in their life.

And we've seen the constant millions upon millions upon millions of photos of their children being very cute to them that we're all inundated with on a consistent basis. Internet law expert Eric Delacroix, I'm not entirely sure who he is, told Leif Figaro newspaper, he's basically hypothesizing that in a couple years, children will be able to sue their parents because they did not authorize their images being posted on social media.

What do you think about that? I think it's a little ridiculous. I think it's a little ridiculous. But there is a strong point to be made that maybe parents should cool it down a little bit and especially not offer up personal information. Photo of child, fine, telling people, putting out a lot of other personal identifiable information or setting up your schedule, which can be easily done.

We've talked about this in security before. You know, if you're going to the park every Thursday at 1 o'clock, maybe don't have the time stamps on it all the time so people can figure out what your normal patterns are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, especially after you post pictures of what you and the kid looks like and then three days ago, you post pictures of the new 820-inch TV you just bought so people just know where to go and when to steal it.

Yeah, yeah. It's a – just be careful, people. Or know what your kid looks like so they can pick him up and, you know, kidnap them. Yes. I think we even talked about that story in the past about people who were putting those stickers on their cars and how that may be a bad idea because somebody can figure out exactly how many kids you have.

Yeah. So, you know, at some point, yeah, we are just getting a little off the deep end. Anyways, it was just an interesting hypothesis and I would love to see that happen. And then when your kid sues you, disown them. Well, obviously, there's going to be no love lost if your kid is suing you.

That's kind of a messed up relationship already. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. So, I think I've finally figured out what Yahoo's business plan is. And what's that? They spent a billion dollars to buy Tumblr then use it as an entire tax write-off. Yeah, that's kind of an interesting story about this one.

Yes. I did not know you could have $750 million in ineffable, quote-unquote, goodwill value. I don't understand what the goodwill value of Tumblr is other than I guess most people can find porn super easy.

Not anymore. That was the other stupid thing they did. They turned off all the porn. Oh, they switched it back on. You cannot stop the porn flow. It was the searching ability. Right. Right. Because you used to be able to search for porn. Well, you know, you just use Google for that. Yeah. No, actually, it's a little harder on Google now.

They've turned it way down too. I sense an opening in the market, people. Go to RedTube or Pornhub or wherever else your boobs are sold. We got an expert here. Yeah, $750 million, which is just going to be a complete write-off.

I, you know, I'm just, I know we reported this at the time. I'm still just gobsmacked by the fact that Tumblr was valued at a billion dollars. Yeah. Well, the thing is, it wasn't, you know. Right. They just paid that much for it. Yeah. I mean, the actual value of it was like $250 million.

Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Way to go, Marissa. Way to go, Marissa. I'm liking this business plan. It's better than anything else you've come up with so far. And speaking of shitty business plans, LinkedIn. They have a business plan? No. No, they don't either.

CEO Jeff Wiener. Is it Wiener or is it Weiner? I don't know. I don't know either. I'm going with Wiener. We talked about how they had massive bad news a couple of weeks back because their valuation just dropped like a rock because no business plan. But so, to perk up his employees, he's passing his $14 million stock grant along.

Yeah. Hey, the stock's not worth anything. You guys want it now? As I've said many times on this show, if anybody is out there that would like me to run their company into the ground and still give me a $14 million stock option for it, I am available. Yeah. Because that seems to be the case for these companies.

These people do really, really bad jobs and are given insane amounts of money. Yeah. That's how it works. Awesome. Yeah. And Jack Dorsey did this recently too after Twitter's stock tanked. He's like, eh, here's $200 million worth of stocks. It's, it's... I mean, I guess it'll keep you around a little bit longer.

I don't know. It's not going to be worth anything. What are you going to do? Self-driving car. Jason's a big fan. We've had another crash that hit the news. What do you think? Oh, a two mile an hour crash. I know. The only thing that I, we can go through the details, but it doesn't really matter.

It's a very slow crash. Once again, that just, I sparked a conversation with me and a couple of friends and I'm basically of the opinion that the only way that self-driving cars are going to work is if it's all or nothing. You cannot have, they're really, human beings are incredibly unpredictable.

I can tell you that just from playing Frogger in my neighborhood with the Priuses and the automated cars, the algorithms will probably eventually get there, but at least to start, they're not good at predicting what crazy people will do. So the only way to have this be a completely safe environment is it's all self-driving cars or none.

Yeah, that's about it. Yep. Because, uh, the next article that you put in the, uh, show notes from slate, the trollable self-driving car, I think somebody, I think the guy who wrote this listens to our show because half of the things he's talking about, we have actually posited that were possibilities. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an interesting wrap up of the whole, uh, the whole area. So if you're, if you're really interested in this, read that article. I liked it, uh, mainly because yeah, again, we've said it all. Yeah. I, the day that I see a self-driving car, I just want to have a handheld stop sign and hold it out my window and see if it just slams on the brakes.

Yeah, that would be fun. There's so many ways to, to troll these things. It'll be great. Yeah. Again. So it's got, it's, if we're going to go this way, it's all or nothing. And that's going to piss off a lot of people who are super car people. It'll even annoy me. I like driving. Well, maybe we just have special roads for self-driving cars or special lanes.

Yes. And as we all know, with our wonderful infrastructure and how long it takes to build anything around here, that'll be no problem. Oh yeah. It took them two weeks to repave my, my little street in front of my house. I can't wait to see if they have to do anything with, uh, just for the cars. Exactly. It'll be a nightmare.

It'll take years and years and years, but, uh, you know, it's all coming people. It is coming. People are putting a lot of money into it. Yep. We'll see. Uh, yeah. In the coolest news I saw all week, and, uh, this is very, very early on in the process, but scientists have discovered how to upload knowledge to your brain, a la the matrix.

See, this is another, uh, I don't. Not quite a very, uh, it's a bit of a misleading headline. Just a little bit. Yeah, but it's still cool. I mean, I love this stuff. It's this, it's great. It's really interesting. So they're doing this thing where they're basically stimulating areas of the brain and in doing so, they kind of, sort of make you learn a little bit faster, but you already have to be learning it.

It's not like, it's not like they're doing a data dump into your head. Exactly. Like a first step, man. Yeah, I know. But still it's like, they're not uploading knowledge. They're stimulating your brain to learn faster. Yeah, cool. I like it. It's better than drinking a bunch of Red Bulls and staying up all night.

That's true. I found one since you love VR so much that, uh, right up your alley. Um, uh, PC mag has an article about, uh, the Samsung VR powered roller coasters, which is you, you slap on a, you know, a Samsung VR headset and go on a rollercoaster ride.

And you, you see an alternate world when you're on the rollercoaster ride. Isn't the fun of being on the rollercoaster, the rollercoaster? Apparently not. You need more than just the rollercoaster. Again, this is the world we're creating for ourselves. Nothing is ever enough. We have to gamify real world experiences that we've already been paying money for to go do because they are fun and exciting.

The problem that I have with there's actually, there's a couple of problems besides the fact that yes, the, you know, the excitement in the visceral nature of getting dropped hundreds of feet and going, you know, with like a bat out of hell thinking you're going to die. That's it's just not enough for the kids anymore.

Apparently. Um, when, when I ride rollercoasters, there are definitely, there's spots on that rollercoaster where you don't want to be looking someplace else because when you jerk around the corner, your neck goes crazy. And imagine how much more torque it's going to have with a VR headset on.

No, I didn't even think about that. Look at you, Jason, looking out for the public health. The first time I went on a rollercoaster with a corkscrew, uh, my girlfriend was next to me and she's like, look straight ahead right now. And I'm like, I look straight ahead because I was like, I was, I was starting to look straight ahead, but then we went into the corkscrew and tweaked my neck and it hurt for the rest of the day.

So if I had a VR headset on, it might've all just broken my neck. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is, this is a bit ridiculous. Now, what I do see this used for is a lot of the rides, especially the, at Disneyland, the new rides that they're building are kind of basically just movement boxes.

You get the, it's not a full rollercoaster. You're sitting in a thing and it rocks back and forth and simulates heavy duty movement. This is a much cheaper and probably more immersive way than just, uh, you know, throwing up a screen that we all look at while our, while our seat shakes a little bit. I can see that. But for a real rollercoaster, this is stupid.

So what my, uh, my dad and I found when we were at Disney world, like 20 years ago, they had a big ball that moved in every direction and it went up and down. It, you know, it was, it was a fully move movement capable in like immersive environment.

And you got to build your own rollercoaster out of VR parts, you know, you know, just little, it was a little 3d models. And then you put it together, gave them 10 bucks. They strapped you in and you could just go crazy in that thing. We had, you know, loop to loops, flying everywhere, doing all that stuff. And it felt like a real rollercoaster and I didn't have to wear the goggles.

So it felt a little bit more immersive, I think, than it would with the goggles on. Right. And that was 20 years ago. So we're going backwards. Well, again, like, like I said last week, it took Facebook eight years to put up a dislike. Yeah. So, you know, running along at the speed of sound.

Um, we talked last week about big data and, and police and, uh, profiling and all that sort of thing. So, yeah, and we saw the pros and the cons and I'm glad to report that the, uh, the, um, the police community has managed to, uh, use our taxpayer money really, really well and do something very useful with, with big data.

I'm being ironic here. They found Banksy. So this is what our big use of big data is for. Nope, nope, nope. Don't, didn't go after any terrorists. Uh, let's, uh, use geographic location pins and an algorithm to, uh, sort out the real identity of Banksy. Well, fortunately for you, this, uh, research was done in London.

So none of your tax dollars were used on this. Oh, well, they're tax, they're tax dollars. It's their tax dollars. And, uh, we'll see. I mean, because it says, you know, better just love headlines. Did academics unmask Banksy is the title of the article. Did they, or did they not?

Well, they, yeah, they've, they've narrowed it down to somebody of interest that has actually been kind of fingered to be Banksy before. Um, I love this though, because they were, uh, they used all these different points and this sophisticated algorithm to try to figure out based on his artworks that have appeared, but what time and things like that to a couple of different residential addresses and a pub.

Um, for me, you know, Finn McCool's, there you go. You're going to find me. It's Brian Schulmeister. Uh, the other thing that kills me is they probably could have just looked at, uh, looked at his four square. Oh, and in how to know your festival is dead news.

The Obamas are going to South by Southwest. I saw this. Um, why? Cause they're, they got nothing else to do. That's not crowded enough because it's not already difficult enough to get into any of the good barbecue places. Exactly. Yeah. And I'm thinking, man, that's just going to be, I'm glad he's not running for reelection.

Yeah. Because, well, he's already going to be in Texas, so he's going to lose Texas anyway. Who cares? But yeah, it's like South by Southwest is just, I don't know what kind of beast it is now. I've only gone once and I'm, I'm, I got no reason to go again. It used to be about music and then we just, then we threw film into it and then we threw technology into it.

And now it's just, it's just, I don't know what the hell it is. There's no focus to it anymore. It just is. Yeah. It's just kind of this big beast. Yep. I don't see myself ever attending it again. And I don't think a lot of people are going to be attending this one now, just, or at least not even getting to where they need to go because we know from living in LA when Obama comes to town, you just don't leave the house.

Yeah. You can't go anywhere. You're done. I don't want to talk about Apple and the FBI and everything that's going on in too much because nothing is really, nothing of note has occurred since we talked about it last week and we'll kind of wait for the big things to hit.

Uh, but if you want to read an article about why it's so important, uh, we have a link in the show notes, uh, it's because it's unprecedented because telecom companies and actually most tech companies have been cooperating with the government, uh, basically since they started to exist. And this is the first time somebody is going, Hey, hold on a second.

Yep. We're not going to do this. So that's, that's why it's very, very, very, very, very important. And a good wrap up. I don't know if there's any beats that you saw in there, Jason, but I was just going to leave it at that. Yeah. For now, there's really nothing to talk about except McAfee. Oh yes.

Well, good old McAfee's back in the news. I love this guy. Um, this is one of those things that I saw, uh, at like kind of late at night when I was getting ready to go to bed. So I was like, Oh wow. Let me tag this. Uh, McAfee was on some sort of talk show and he revealed how to hack an iPhone on national television.

And apparently it only takes about 30 minutes. Wow. Well, there you go. How come the government hasn't been able to figure that out because I had just read the headline and it was the first story. And then when I woke up the next morning, uh, no, uh, everybody was immediately debunking his, his way to do it.

And apparently it does not work. See, yeah, there's some interesting things about this. He came back with a reply that was very long. I haven't been able to find it again. It was going back to the Reddit people who were saying that he wasn't, uh, didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. Yeah. And he's like that way he's well, I mean, he's, he created McAfee, you know, I mean the antivirus, he knows something about computers.

He's not an idiot. Yeah. Um, but he, he was backing up his state, his claim saying that he had to use language for the public. That's why it was so simplified and simplistic. I don't know if he can do it or not. I think the best way to do it would be to do it. Do it, do it.

Yes. If you could do it, go up, make a YouTube video, 30 minutes long, getting into a phone. Yeah. Done. It's what we do. So yeah, shut up, put up or shut up. Well, yeah, it's seriously at this point, put up or shut up and just get out of the race too.

You're kind of making a fool out of yourself at this point. I like the guy. I think he's a kook, but he's just running for president thing is really, I mean, is he doing anything? It's not like he's campaigning. He's just doing like, he's doing crazy interviews with Russia today. How's that going to help? I know he's got, but he does have a campaign manager.

I've talked to him, you know? Right. It's just, I mean, it's silly at this point, just wasted money. Yeah, I agree. So, uh, Walt Mossberg, who is a pretty good tech, tech, uh, tech journalist. Uh, he writes a lot for recode and the verge and other places. Uh, he just, he must listen to the show too, because he wrote a very long and interesting article this week called the cloud loophole, which is exactly what I was talking about last week when I said it isn't just the phone.

It's also the iCloud and a million other things. And while the phones themselves have incredible security on them, iCloud does not. Mm-hmm. So there you go. That's the loophole, which is if you back up your phone to iCloud, it is not secure. Yeah, I don't do that.

Obviously. Do you? No, I back up locally. Yes, I do it mainly because it just, it was so buggy when it first came out. Yeah. The, uh, the time it took to upload your data was horrendous. All of it was just a mess.

So I just stuck with backing up locally and the other stuff was like, eh, I guess I, I, it is more secure and I do have secure backups on what you can do. Um, uh, the only thing I use, uh, iCloud for is actually, I have my photos put onto that so I can see them on my iPad as well as my, on my phone.

Uh, but I don't have, uh, uh, uh, what did we call them? Dickies? Yes. No dickies. I don't have it. Yeah. If, if somebody really wants to hack it and see a million pictures of my nieces and nephews have at it. Well, you know, they just might. Well, again, it's a bunch of pictures of nieces and nephews and, uh, you know, random beers in Berlin.

So, uh, there's nothing I particularly care about, uh, in there. And I, it doesn't matter. I do do the secure option as well, obviously, but, uh, there are things, you know, I'm never going to back up my entire phone. That's just stupid. In related security news, uh, Facebook executive Diego, and I'm never going to get this frame right.

Zodan. That's Z-O-D-A-N. Uh, was in Brazil and arrested by Brazilian police, uh, because he had WhatsApp in encryption mode on his phone, which has been banned from the country. Okay. Huh? Yeah.

So you can't have any encryption in Brazil. Apparently not. Brazilian authorities have requested that WhatsApp hand over user messages in multiple criminal investigations over the past few months. Again, this is why the Apple thing is so important. And, uh, yeah, he actually got arrested. Now I remember when I was, uh, when we were younger, like I would say, you know, we had just started out in our careers and we were traveling often.

I remember there being like notices. Like if you are running windows 64, you cannot go to this country or this country or this country with that software because it was considered illegal. Oh yeah. No, there was, there was, there was a export laws about that. You could not do that. Yeah.

Which is, uh, you don't really see those messages anymore, but apparently you should check into this stuff when you're traveling because if you use WhatsApp, you could get arrested. Well, remember this is, this guy's from Facebook. He's a Facebook executive. They own WhatsApp. Yes. So it's not just because he was using it.

Um, cause I'm sure this is one of the guys behind the kerfuffle. I haven't, I haven't followed this story very much. It's funny that they put a picture of him from LinkedIn up. Yeah, that was funny. That's what LinkedIn is useful for now. Yeah. You get your corporate CEO photos for your, for your articles.

Um, Snapchat is back in the news for yet, for a hack again. Uh, now we all remember Snapchat was famous for its disappearing messages, except for when they got hacked the first time and gazillions of dickies and, and naked selfies of teenagers ended up on the interwebs. Uh, they got hacked again, uh, this time employee data.

Nice job, Snapchat. Yeah. So yeah, there you go. So was this, this is a phishing attack though. Yes. This is a phishing attack. Someone had, someone had Snapchat got phished and let in a hacker. Yes. And then, uh, basically almost every single employee's a social security number and payroll information is out.

You see, that's the, it's another problem with this stuff. People are the weakest link. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Uh, yeah. So what are you going to do? Uh, maybe. Yeah. I, I, again, how is the mind boggles?

It's just like, uh, maybe you should store sensitive employee information on things that aren't part of your internal network. I don't know. You gotta, you gotta, they have to be accessible by like HR and you know. Yeah. Yeah. And if you fish somebody in HR, there you go. And people in HR generally aren't the most tech savvy.

I don't know if this came out of HR, but it's, you know, if I was a social engineer, that would be one of the most likely places to start. Oh, definitely. And tech, you know, it tends, people in HR tend to not be the most tech savvy. So it's, it's a kind of a soft and easy target. Yeah.

And you know how you find out who's in HR? LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Yes. Uh, Microsoft has announced that they're releasing a new tool called Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, which is a big, long name. But the interesting thing about this is this is the first, at least from Microsoft's end, a bit of software that's going to come out that can actually try to fix things post breach instead of you're just screwed and have to wipe everything and start from scratch.

Uh, this will theoretically help you patch up something after it's happened. Now, does this go into ransomware? Uh, does not say anything yet. So we'll see. I mean, I use Windows 10. So when I get it, I will find out. Okay. Uh, so I will try, I will try and send you some ransomware and, uh, hijack your computer and see if it works.

How about let's not do that? Speaking of ransomware, hackers are holding German, a German hospital, uh, hostage right now, at least their data because second hospital in two weeks. That's in noose. Um, so what, uh, it's the same, same stuff.

Ransomware. Yeah. Yeah. Ransomware is a big deal. It's, it's a big problem right now. It's so easy to get on. It's just like any mal, if you can get any malware on a system, ransomware is it encrypts the, encrypts the drive, sends the key off to the hacker. Boom. Bob's your uncle. Well, and I've noticed there's been an uptick, especially in a, in pop-up windows and things like that, that, that basically tell you you've been ransomware, even though you haven't, and you really just need to quit out of your browser.

So that's actually catching a lot of people too, who are paying people just for making a pop-up window. And well, remember, we also found that there's a JavaScript attack that you can, you can use now to, you know, load ransomware. So it might actually be ransomware that's trying to get installed.

True. Very true. And, uh, speaking of cyber attacks, the IRS lied to us. What? Yeah. I'm sorry. Hold on. I got to sit down. Yeah. Um, it's basically 700,000 households.

Datas have their datas. The day, all the datas are belong to someone. Oh my God. How did we do this for 150 episodes? I don't know. And the fact that you are running the security segment now, and I can't even like talk about a, talk about a hack. You added two stories to security, which is traditionally your segment.

And you can't get through either one of them. I know 700,000 households might have had their data stolen, but, uh, in August, in August, they said it was only 334,000. So it's a, it's big. It is. Are they reach, are they reaching out and contacting these people and letting them know?

I'd hope I haven't gotten anything. Me either, but I don't know if they're actually telling people. So that would be nice because if my IRS data got out, I would like to know that because I would like to start changing a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, uh, cyber war, cyber war, cyber war, uh, slate has put up a cyber war cheat sheet.

So you can, uh, get yourself up to speed on what's going on. The key players from the different countries. I love that McAfee is on there. Of course he is. Uh, big debates that are going on. The, the, the, basically if you know nothing about what is probably going to be happening more and more every single day, this is a good cheat sheet to bring you up to speed.

I like to have civil liberties in there though. So that's good. Yes. Yes, that is. Well, you know, that's very important. So, uh, go read that, go check that out. And then the thing that terrified me the most this last week, uh, 23 and me, we've talked about them. I've been very intrigued by them.

Uh, I love the idea of being able to pay a hundred bucks and get a full on DNA test for myself and see everything that's going on. And then I read this article and realized that their business plan is not providing that service for you, but creating the Google of DNA for humanity. They want to keep all the datas and, uh, there's no privacy whatsoever and do not ever in any way hand over your genetic information to this company.

We've kind of, we've hinted at that before that that might be, you know. Yes. We did say this could be a potential danger of a service such as this. And now we know it is. It actually is. Yeah. Um, cause I, I, after our last discussion, which I can't even remember how long ago it was, it was right when they got, you know, their, their ass handed to him and they couldn't work anymore.

Um, we said that, you know, this was a possibility because they were already kind of doing it. You know, they, if they, if they can sequence your genome and then tell you who you're related to, that means that they've got all of the different data for all of those people, you know, and all of, and you put that all together and then you get to Gattaca.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what happened. So, um, I, again, I'm so beyond intrigued about the idea of, of getting one, getting a kit and, and finding out my exact DNA structure and all that. Uh, I don't think I'm ever going to do it anytime soon.

I will do it when I get to the point where I can do the entire test at home and process it with a software that is locked and not connected to the internet. Then I'll do it. Well, you need an air gap genome. On an air gap genome sequencing computer that I'll be able to pick up for 50 bucks at fries. And, or I have it delivered by drone.

Oh yeah. But then the drone will probably just like brush against me and take some of my skin cells and run back and put it into the big old computer machine. Now, if you start seeing God, I'm turning into you. If you start seeing 23 and me kiosks at like Finn, it bars. So they just take, if they, if there's a 23 and me dishwashing machine where they can just take your, your, your dirty glass, get the DNA off of it.

Like they do in all the spy movies, run it through the sequencer, compare it to your credit card statement. They're done. There you go. Yeah. But you know, after you put in your chip card and do all that, that whole process will take 45 minutes for you to pay your tab. By that time they can have the whole thing sequenced and give it back to you.

I, we should really just screw this podcasting thing and just start writing, you know, near, near term sci-fi. Yeah, we probably should. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors.

Comment of the week. Because it's our 150th episode, this is kind of a, a, uh, fan appreciation episode. We've got so much feedback this week. Thank you so much guys. Yeah. We really love the fact that you guys are getting into this and, uh, writing us and talking to us.

So let's get into it because there's a lot. Uh, first off, a massive thank you to our newest Patreon supporters, uh, Marco and Paul. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. You're helping us keep the lights on while we're trying to figure out if the little tiny stream of advertising dollars are going to add up to anything.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And this first one comes from iTunes worthwhile and relevant. And this is from blah blue. Great name. It is a great name. These guys are a great source for tech news with a nonsense filter to give anyone from hardcore nerds to civilians, useful, entertaining information that's relevant to the world we live in today.

They've made plenty of predictions on the tech game and ways our society is heading due to all these new mediums that they've called pretty accurately. Not to mention in an ocean of useless, low quality podcasts, this is one that's produced well and worth your time. If you, if you've alive in this real world today, okay, that was an interesting end to it, but, uh, strong, strong beginning, strong beginning kind of, kind of lost at the end there, but thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you. Blah blue. Uh, we also got another five-star rating over on iTunes from Ed Lippart. Uh, this is must subscribe, must listen podcast. Brian and Jason are absolutely great and a pleasure to listen to their tech insight helps to cut through the clutter and give you the true meat of the issue at hand.

The chapters do a good job of splitting the subject matter into logical chunks of relevant contact content. And then in all caps, do not pass this one up. Woo. Thank you, Ed. Yes. Thank you. And Fizzhog on Twitter says, uh, keeping me or keeping my me company on the long road.

Well, to be fair, it was a accompanied by a photo of him driving and our little, uh, logo on the, um, you know, the little radio player thing in his car. So he was tweeting while driving. So let's, we'll give him a pass on the grammar. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully, maybe he was using the voice recognition on his, on his telephone.

One would hope. Yes. But it was a cool picture. I actually liked that one a whole lot. Yeah. The only time I'd seen that before is when I took a picture of my own car. So it was nice to see that. Uh, we got, uh, from X from last witness, last X witness on Twitter, uh, just wanted to say Papa Piconia and I from Grime Life PC cast are avid.

I think it's just PCast. PCast? Grime Life, Grime Life podcast. Oh, I get it. I'm not up to date with Twitter, Twitter things. Uh, there are avid, uh, GOG podcast listeners. Keep up the great info. Hashtag podcast. Thank you very much, guys. Hashtag thanks. And Sam Harrelson, uh, passed along, uh, a note to a couple of his friends said mostly from the affinity network of GOG podcast, the incomparable and the incomparable and sword and laser podcast.

Uh, yeah, he was asked, uh, where he was getting his recommendations for books to read. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Because, uh, the incomparable and sword and laser, those are, uh, it's good company to be in. I think so too. Definitely. Uh, so as we mentioned, uh, the, the, uh, audio medium grumpy old geeks podcast launched a visual social network, uh, Instagram account.

Uh, but thank you to everybody that's following us there now. We've been getting quite a few and we even got some comments, um, from Pagan Gabriels. One more place for you guys to keep track of conversation. Yay. I agree because it's yet another thing we have to load up and go through and check, but you know, it's fun. Uh, now that, now that Instagram actually has multiple accounts, it actually has been kind of easy.

Actually, it's a much easier now. So thank you Instagram for allowing that. So I didn't have to, basically what I used to have is, you know, one account on my, on my iPad and one account on my phone, but now it's a piece of cake to do this. So thank you. Uh, Jose M Figueroa. My thoughts that Facebook emojis were made by fourth grade kids.

Agreed. Agreed. They look ridiculous. Uh, Grime Life podcast hit us up there as well. Always kicking off my weekend mornings with you guys. Great show with great info and outlooks. Thank you. And, uh, Blitzkrieg, Craig, Blitzkrieg. Well, that's cool. If my name were Craig, I would do that. Yeah. Uh, love your show, Brian and Jason, long time listener.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everybody on Instagram. And Alan writes in on grumpy old geeks.com. Thought you would like to see that you're not the only one abused by Lyft. And this is a video on ABC news. I'm not going to pull it up now because it's going to ruin everything with autoplay. Yes. But, uh, yes, it's, uh, some video of Lyft, uh, just being dicks again.

Yeah. You know, since it's not, you just can't blame Lyft. You got to blame the driver. So. Yes. Yes, you do. Uh, and you can still blame Lyft because it's fun. Yeah. You know, my preferred target is Uber. You know, I kind of ignore the Lyft stories and focus on the Uber ones. Um, friend of the show, Patrick wrote, uh, he was having some issues again with, uh, with his, uh, the RSS feed and resubscribing and whatever.

So I was going to say something here. And then I realized that that would be stupid because if he's not getting the new episodes or anybody else is not getting the new episodes, they would not hear this. But, uh, the follow-up being that it, uh, is working for him again now. So welcome back, Patrick. Woo-hoo. All right. So. Yes.

Rico writes, hello, gents. Great article on the app store scene. And it's a link to the app store economy on, uh, about the bankruptcy of the app store economy on the verge. We'll have that linked up in the show notes. Keep up the good work. Yeah. Uh, you know, this article goes right along with what we were saying at the top of the show, which, yeah.

So apparently there's not much of a market for building apps anymore and you're not going to make any money. Good luck with that. Yeah. And, uh, Adam wrote in, I'm a big fan of your show and I trust your opinion. So when you talked about turning off ad blockers to support sites, I did just that on Sunday.

I had a big interview for my podcast, someone I was excited to have on in the middle of my Skype call. I get a ton of beeping and a pop-up saying that my IP address was hacked and I should call time Warner right away. Also not to turn off my wifi or computer. So I stopped my big time interview because I really thought I was being hacked.

I got on the phone with them and gave them access to my computer. They went through a whole scare session at the end, told me that I could either bring all my devices to the Apple store for a week for $800 or they could do it for $400 in 90 minutes. I started yelling at the guy that time Warner should pay. They effed up. He sounded confused. I realized he wasn't from time Warner cable.

I hung up and unplugged everything. Life lock was no help. They said, if something happens, they are insured, but I don't want anything to happen. Apple support was great. They fixed me right up. Is Mackeeper worth it? Love the show, but I'm blocking ads now. You know, what's funny that happened to a friend of mine last week to exactly the same thing.

Right. I want to know what site, because I, this is all. Yeah. I want to know what site too. Cause when you used to hear these stories, I would automatically just go, well, maybe you should stop surfing all those weird ass porn sites. Yeah. That's the way it used to be. That's the way it used to be.

Now it's becoming more regular, but this is, this was straight up fishing. You know, never, ever give somebody access to your computer unless you're a thousand percent sure. Google those phone numbers before you call them, see who they're connected to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, glad to hear it's all working.

I understand blocking ads, but we've, we've done the arguments a million times to have the ad blocker on, keep it on. But for sites that, you know, are getting money and are legit from you, turn it off for those sites. That's built into the ad blocking software. Just do that.

Yeah. Only, only turn it on for sites that you know are reputable. Yes. That's, that's really the key. You just don't turn it off willy nilly. Um, and yeah, if they're legit and you want to support them, if they're legit and you don't want to support them, leave it on. Yeah. Leave it on.

Although you'll find more and more sites will not let you in anymore because they're getting more sophisticated. Oh, they're getting very sophisticated now. Yes. So yeah. Thank you everybody that's written in, in the entire 150 episode run of this show. Yeah. What happened to beach mama? We lost her.

I think we did. You know? Oh, well, that's sad. She was our, for the, for new listeners, she was our first commenter. She was our first commenter and we did lose her. I think if you're still out there, write it in, let us know. You can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast on Instagram at grumpy old geeks 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 friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you love the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out and only take a minute or two. Go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes.

And it'll take you right there. I finally got through exile. The new ex-heroes by Peter Clines. It's pretty damn good.

I enjoyed it. Yeah. I thought it was fun. It's, you know, it's the same as the other books. It was better than the last one for sure. Yeah. The last one was a bit of a bummer. I think we talked about that on the show, but this one picked it right back up. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I, I thought I was getting, you know, kind of burnt out on the whole zombie things, but he makes it fun.

You know, this is a fun zombie book. It really is. It's a really enjoyable series. If you, if anybody out there hasn't read it yet, I urge you to go back and do it from the beginning because it's fun. Um, I read the three body problem. Did you finish that as well? Yeah.

I finished it the week before. That's right. You were waiting on me for, to, to, to read it. Um, I liked it. Uh, what are your, I actually, the really interesting thing is I went and listened to the still entitled with Adam Savage spoiler cast on it as soon as I finished it.

And I actually enjoyed the book more in retrospect, hearing their thoughts on it, because there are a lot of things that I didn't, I either didn't pick up on or just didn't, I didn't find it that interesting until they talked about it. See, they, they picked up on a couple of things that I thought were definitely interesting that I caught the first time through, but I mean, this was a whole big book of meh for me.

The setups were way too long. I understood what he was doing with it, but I just, it, I don't know. I just didn't really like it that much. Right. Okay. So I'm going to, a little bit of a spoiler here in terms of, I'm going to kind of give what the overall point of the book is, uh, which the overall premise I find fascinating and it made the book good for me, decent for me, at least.

Um, it was, it was the little stories that I had issues with, which again, listening to the spoiler cast kind of helped out with, but the point being what if first contact, uh, it wasn't to us, you know, North American Westerners, what if it went to an entirely different culture, in this case, the Chinese and how that would change things because they, how they come at things from such a different premise than we do.

That is effing fascinating. And, uh, I love that aspect of the book. Um, but again, I had issues with how we got there and some of the characters and some, some of the weirdness of, of the, how the whole contact took place didn't really resonate well for me.

Um, but it is intriguing that, you know, he wrote this book, not for the premise that I love it for, because he wasn't writing it for, for Westerners. He was writing it for his audience, for his culture. And that is amazing. Yeah, no, I mean, if I was Chinese, I'd probably be going, woo, I can't wait for the other two books, but, um, yeah. And the thing about it is I thought it ended perfectly. I don't think he needed two more books, but I guess he just wants to get paid, but, um, yeah, you don't put that much work into creating a world. And if it's successful,

you just leave it at that. I agree. This could wrap up in and of itself. Um, as one book, I am intrigued enough to continue to read it because I like the alien culture and I want to see what ends up happening. I'll definitely give the second book a shot. I'm not entirely sold on the whole thing as a premise, cause it's going to be three books. Uh, and also they're making a, well, the Chinese are making a movie, so that should be kind of interesting.

Yeah. And I honestly think I enjoyed the spoiler cast more than I did reading the book. It was a, they did a, they did a good, good wrap up on it. They did a really good job of making the things in the story that I found silly or not that interesting, interesting in retrospect. So if you are going to tackle and read this book, I highly recommend their spoiler cast on it when you're done. Yes. And we're going to put two links in the show notes. We're not going to talk about them here because they're kind of spoilery for the book, but there will be in the, in the show

notes. If you want to go search them out. Yes. They are very interesting considering the book. Software apps and gadgets. We discussed the here active listening. Um, it's a software slash earbuds, uh, a while back when that was first announced, uh, that was going to, it's promising to change the way, uh, you interact with your environment and you hear things and it's going to change your world and all that sort of

stuff. Um, it seemed a bit silly. Uh, it was a bit far out at the time. Can you tell me a little bit more about what it's supposed to do? Because I, I don't get it. Well, yeah, it's, it's unclear until you get one. Let me, I can read from their website. You're rediscovering sound. You're personalizing live audio. You can control live sound around you. This is, this is their pitch.

Okay. That's really about all they say about it. So thanks to friend of the show, Karen. Um, she managed to get me a pair. Okay. To give a shot to. So I have been, uh, wearing these things around, uh, for the show because honestly about 10 minutes did it for me, but I'm doing my due diligence. So I've suffered for you people. And I've, I've taken these things out and tried them out in multiple different environments. I rode my bike with them. I was walking around with them. I've done them

around the house. I've run through everything that you can possibly do with these things. Um, it's interesting. Now explain it. What, what, what is the actual experience? You all it's earbuds. You put in your earbuds, you download the app and then the app will control your earbuds. So what you could basically do is apply a number of filters to the sound coming in around you. Okay. That's it.

That's it. You can turn things up. You can turn things down on the turning up. It is important to note. And they obviously have talked to many lawyers and probably had some issues with this because it says in lawyer ease, basically everywhere in their packaging, this is not a hearing aid. Okay. Yeah. Because if you are a hearing aid, then you have to go through it's, it's a medical thing. And then you're, it's a different thing. So this is not a hearing aid, uh, but it basically volume functions as one. So you can crank up the volume around you. You can crank it back down.

Uh, you can EQ volume around you. So basically you can crank up certain frequencies, crank down certain frequencies, and then they have a whole bunch of preset, uh, preset filters, uh, that basically if, if you've done any music recording or audio engineering, you know, it adds sizzle, you can add, uh, eight track sounds. So it sounds really whatever there's a different room settings. So you add echo and things like that. And you can add flange and all these different audio effects to the audio

coming into your ears. That sounds maddening. That is all this does. And it is interesting for about five minutes. And then you realize why would I ever want to do any of this? I have a question. Can you record the audio that they're hearing? No. See now that would be the killer app for it because I could use that as a snooping device. Then you could, yes, but, uh, no, there's no recording as of yet. Um, the other thing that is absolutely ridiculous, uh, you cannot send music

into these things. They do not function as you cannot, there is no way to turn these into normal headphones. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, which when you're dropping these things are, I think that you're going to go for 199 bucks. Um, if you're dropping that much for a pretty nice set of in-ear headphones, uh, you should be able to just go ahead and use them to listen to your music as well as do whatever this app is supposed to do. Uh, or even be able to, you know, run your music through the filters. This seems to be a no brainer. And the idea that that's not built in is ridiculous

to me. Um, yeah, so their big marketing program right now is Coachella is coming up and that is, you know, as we have all discussed, it's not really a good, uh, festival anymore. It's now just a bunch of hipsters running around in the desert. So they're running, you know, the ability to win some of these to run around in Coachella and experience music in a completely different way than you've ever experienced it before, which basically just means making it sound worse or strange.

Yeah, exactly. I don't understand the appeal of this device. It is interesting. And there is something here that maybe if they continue to develop, it could really go somewhere, but walking around and just being able to put a flange filter or an echo filter so I can hear the car horn go. It's, it's fun for two minutes, but I don't understand what the point or the target

audience or what I'm supposed to do with this on an ongoing basis. And for 200 bucks and for pretty decent wireless buds, I'll definitely give them that, but not even to be able to use them as, as headphones. I, I I'm confused, Jason. Yeah. I've come away just confused from, from this.

Now, one thing that they did do extremely well though, the packaging is kick-ass. Uh, I've taken a couple shots, which I'll, we'll throw up and on the show notes for this episode and, or you can just go to their site as well. Cause they've taken much better photos, obviously, cause they want to make it look cool as hell, but it comes with a little, like, it's like an eyeglass holder, except a lot smaller, uh, to store them in. And it also charges them. And so it's super kind of cool. It's, you can charge the charger through USB if needed. Uh, but otherwise you can just, if it's got a full charge,

you can just take this little case with you and it's just, it's nicely designed and they put a lot of thought into this and it's kind of beautiful, but the actual product itself, I'm just, I don't get it. Maybe I'm just, it's not the market for me. Maybe it's because, uh, you know, I came up with audio engineering. I've, I've used all these filters on music. I've used these filters for a point rather than just, I'm walking around and now I want to hear the world around me with this filter. I don't

understand that. Okay. So here is pointless. Yeah, I think so. Um, you know, they can take this and make something out of it. I'm sure a step one would obviously be make these actual headphones that work in other, with other apps, but, uh, who knows? They may take it somewhere. They're smart people. We'll see what they, I just don't get this, you know, we'll see after Coachella, maybe a bunch of millennials will be running around happy to have, uh, you know, put fuzz filters on their personal

environments. Okay. Anyways. So I found a few other things online because as we were talking about at the beginning of the show, what is the point in so many of these apps, these spaces are filled. We are solving, we're solving problems that don't exist. Uh, I found a few more, um, joyable. This one, I just, I almost spit my tea out when I saw it. Yeah. Joyable is an online social anxiety program

based on CBT, whatever the hell that is. Um, so this app, uh, will help you overcome social anxiety judgment-free, uh, by basically saying, good job. You talked to two people today. Yeah. In 12 weeks, you could attend social events, connect. This is a little scroller. Feel confident.

Now I will fully admit, I do not suffer from social anxiety and I understand that it's a real problem, but much like the app I talked about last week, go see someone in person. Yep. I suffered from social anxiety for years. And I'm going to tell you right now, an app ain't going to fix it. Yeah. That's, that's kind of my thought on that. Um, another one overnight. Now this app, same day stays from local

hosts. So basically if you're sitting on your couch and go, huh, Hmm, I, I have, I have, I have a couch here that's empty tonight and I'd like to make $10. Well, this is the app for you. You can have a complete stranger come over and sleep on your couch. That's yeah. That's about it. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we need this, right? This is going to be useful in spontaneity. We trust what's the difference from

Airbnb. You can still get an Airbnb same day or you can go to a hotel same day, you know? Yeah, I, I agree. So it's just another one. And then it's got, wait, it comes from crash pad ink. Oh boy. And then, uh, I was, I felt like I was on a roll. Uh, so I found another one. Uh, this is breather, which is coming to LA soon. 2016 is going to be epic LA because breather is launching. Now this,

this app lets you find a space, a beautiful space. So if you have a beautiful space, you can put it up there and you can book any length of time from a short 30 minute recharge to an entire day of productivity, uh, just to go sit in someone's space. Yep. That's about it. There you go. So there, they're little, uh, I love these, these sites are, are genius to me because I just, I love how they try to push their idiot product. So there's a little photo of a woman working without distraction.

There's, there's a stock photo of, uh, one person talking to another person because they're having a meeting with clients and colleagues. Last one is the best one is if you are looking for a good place to do yoga, you can book one through this app, relax, recharge and unwind. Oh, there's even more.

Oh, you can host an event. You can study with classmates. Wait, don't you have a fucking dorm room? Capture beautiful photos, host an event because you know, and trash it. Yeah. I didn't they have the orgy issue with Airbnb? Yes, they did. Okay. Okay. Oh, capture beautiful photos. So you can go to the space and take pictures of the space. Yeah. I wonder if they, you know, that means you're signing off the rights to any imagery on your own personal space. If you put your space up there. Oh yeah. Got to read the writers. Actually, they probably didn't even think about that.

Hopefully they're listening. It's your legal team on that.

Media candy. So did you watch the X-Files? Cause I've been waiting two weeks for this now. Yes, I did. And interesting. When did Mulder learn Kung Fu? I didn't even think about that. But, uh, if you announced that you're going to do a special limited edition series of six episodes, that is going to deal with the overarching story.

Finish it! Yes. I can't believe they did this to us again. They did two movies that didn't even touch on it. Barely. And then this whole thing starts with, we're going to solve the whole thing. And then they basically tell you what the story is. And they basically say, all this crazy crap is happening.

It's real. It's not just in Mulder's head. And then it's a cliffhanger. That's right. What the fuck? I was, this is almost Battlestar Galactica final episode level of anger when they cut that.

I mean, obviously they're going to bring it back. They can't not. And obviously they've set it up with new characters to continue. And I, it was really good to see Claire from six feet under again. Awesome. Oh, that's who that was. I was trying to picture like place her. Oh yeah. It's Claire from six feet under. We haven't seen her basically since then. So, and she was great. I very funny. Uh, and it's obviously all a big setup to the X-Files is coming back full time, but that's not what this was supposed to be. And if they don't bring it

back, that's it. I'm done with X-Files. Well, yes, you are done with X-Files by definition. If they don't bring it back, you're done with X-Files. Yes. By the very definition, I will be done, but it was so frustrating to me. I mean, I, I wasn't that pissed off. Cause I'm like, oh, maybe we'll get some more, you know? Yeah. And we bust. I mean, there's no way we can't now because it got decent ratings. So, and people are, people were into it. Yeah. But I would expect Scully and Mulder to be back for one or two episodes and then the new team hands

takes over. Exactly what they're going to do. And of course they're not really going to solve any of the big overarching issues because if you do that, then you don't have a show to continue on. Yeah. I mean, this, I, the whole six, you know, episode run was fine with me. And for the one with the, you know, the alien guy. Oh, I love that one. Yeah. That, that was worth it right there because that was one of the single best episodes of the entire series. Yeah. I thought, so, you know, here's what it is. Well, here's what I would really like to

have happen. And I hope Chris Carter is listening. All right. Continue the show. Have Mulder and Scully back. Don't really answer the thing. Have, have Claire from Six Feet Under take over and continue it and make lots of really quirky episodes and some vaguely touch on the larger arc involving the alien slash not aliens, but write something online. Just write a story, a little wrap up. If we were to have wrapped it up, this is the story. And so those of us who feel the need to actually have that kind of

closure can read it and the rest of us can continue on with the story that will never be answered. Just do that. Just do that for me. That's all I'm asking for. It doesn't even have to be long. A paragraph. Tell me what happens. Maybe he can just put it in a tweet. Yeah. Tweet it. Mulder dies. End of story. I don't care. Whatever.

Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Again, happy it's back. Frustrated with the lack of, of continuing or finishing up that major arc that we've all been trying to wait for, but that's never going to happen. Anyways, I watched, uh, on PBS is airing the human face of big data. This is actually a couple years old at this point, but I don't, I never saw it when it first came out. Uh, it's a really great hour long look into big data, the consequences and, uh, your buddy Joey Ito's on it a ton.

Oh, really? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Fantastic. Worth watching. It's running on PBS pretty regularly at the moment. So you can catch it. Uh, there's a book as well. Um, it was worth watching, especially if you're kind of fuzzy on big data, what it means and how it's currently being used. Uh, they also go into the future of big data and why it could be very bad or very good.

So it, uh, has both the, uh, Sturm and Drang and the hopeful optimism that sometimes lacks in this podcast. Okay. I will definitely give that a watch. Yeah. Now I've also been watching, uh, basically live the, uh, all the final episodes of Mythbusters as we it's this Sunday is the final, final episode.

Oh, thanks for the heads up. I got to watch that. Yeah, no problem. Uh, this Sunday is the final, final episode. It will be sad to see Mythbusters go, uh, particularly because of the shows that, uh, that the science channel is now pimping as replacements because, because they're losing their, their best running show. Uh, one of them is what on earth? The other one is NASA, the unexplained files. I, I, I watched these two for you. So you don't have to. Thank you.

They are both steaming piles of horse shit. Uh, they are basically reboots of in search of, uh, except even dumber and without Leonard Nimoy and without Leonard Nimoy. It's, it's, it's, it's scary, scary, scary over talk about what if this were this? And then they have canned scientists saying, but it's not, that's the entire show. Okay. It is. What if this potato came from Mesopotamia

and carried an evil gene that's going to kill us all? It doesn't, I don't, it's like this. It's like this saved you a click Twitter guy. The science channel is systematically removing science. Oh man. You're the science channel. Why do you have, why are you making? Oh, I know why you're making them.

They're fucking cheap, but can't make some science. It's, it's in your name. You should be duty bound, but look at the history channel. Look at discovery. The history channel would rebrand themselves as the Hitler channel if they could. Yeah. I mean, that's all that's on there. Yeah. I mean, the science channel is once Mythbusters is over, that's it. I will never be on that channel again. I don't know what's wrong with you people. Wait, don't they run how it's made like all day long though?

Yeah. They run how it's made all day long. See, I can watch that. I can just leave that on. They can just have a how it's made channel and just do that. And I would watch that. It is pretty interesting. I do like that, but yeah, the new shows that they're making are just these canned pieces of crap that are absolutely ridiculous and not worth your time. Anyways, uh, dark tower.

We've been knowing it's coming. Uh, Matthew McConaughey, uh, was the big rumor that made me really, really, really sad. It's now actually official. Uh, the other bit of interesting news that came out is Idris Elba will be playing the, uh, the gunslinger. Okay. Which interesting casting and he's good and I like him. So I think he's great. I, yeah, uh, I'm sad because I was really kind of hoping that he would, uh, take over Bond, James Bond. I thought he would have been

fantastic at that. And him signing onto this basically tells us that that's not going to happen. Um, Matthew McConaughey though is still going to be such a sticking point for me. I don't know if I'm going to make it through this. If the, when they, when they put it out, we'll see. Yeah. Well, you know, you take the good with the bad.

Yeah, that's true. I just didn't see the, you know, I didn't see the man in black settling down, starting his fire and whipping out his bongos. Just did not picture that. So. Yeah. It's a strange world, but in good news, um, you know, they're doing American gods, Neil Gaiman's, uh, books from way back. They're doing a series on stars, I believe.

Yes. Uh, yes. Stars, which is good. Um, Ian McShane is going to be playing Mr. Wednesday, which is amazing. That's very good casting. Yes. Cock sucker. I'm pretty sure he won't be saying that. No, cause that was woo. Yeah. And, uh, Terry Pratchett's, uh, Facebook page posted something.

I just wanted to make people aware of if you were a big Terry Pratchett or Discworld fan. Uh, they are collecting fan tributes to create a video celebrating what Terry means or meant to his readers. If you'd like to be included, simply film a short clip of yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically go check out Terry Pratchett's, uh, website or his Facebook page or just, uh, penguinrandomhouseco.uk cause they've got that up everywhere. So if you're interested in that and you're a big fan and you want to send in the tribute, by all means do so.

Well, you have to do it by March 18th. You have to do it by March 18th. So hurry up. Two weeks. Yeah. You got two weeks. Um, I stumbled across an article called the five best goth rock bands of all time. Uh, this is over 11 months old, but the reason I find it funny is this is the Miami new times. Okay.

A lot of goths in Miami. Listen, man, you are goth at Disneyland. So you got no room to talk. That's true. Uh, yeah. And it's also, I, I like this article because I've seen a slew of these recently because everybody does listicles, but this is the one that I agree with most because the top five bands they list are probably my favorite. So they're five of my favorite bands of all time.

Yeah, no, that was a great list. And I, what I really like is at the end of it, it's like without this band, you wouldn't have blah, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. Yeah. So we got Bauhaus in here. We got the cure. We got Susie. We got joy division and I bought the swans. Yeah. So all five of these are absolutely fantastic bands. If you have any interest in this style of music and haven't delved into it too far. And like Jason said, there's also the three after that for most of them are pretty good. They did list without Bauhaus.

There'd be no Christian death. Christian death is effing horrible. Don't even waste any time listening to that, but sisters of mercy and she wants revenge. Awesome. Oh, I love sisters of mercy. Yeah, me too. Um, and speaking of on the fence of, uh, you know, the ghostbusters trailer is out.

What do you think? Uh, I love the throwbacks with the music and I, they better do that throughout the entire movie. Uh, all the original theme music is, is in there, um, in bits and pieces, which was fantastic. Uh, uh, Melissa McCarthy is killing it in my opinion, in this trailer. She is awesome.

I am unsure about the other three characters. Yeah. I don't know this. It's hard to tell from a trailer, but I don't know. Yeah. That's really kind of what it comes down to. It's like, ah, it's intrigued me enough that I'm definitely when, when further trailers are put out, I'm going to be watching them to see if I'm into it. Um, and I, the whole, it all being chicks thing, that's, that doesn't bother me at all. I actually think that's quite funny. Uh, even though, you know,

in the, we can't have nice things files, uh, people freaked out and there's a lot of misogyny being posted everywhere about this trailer. Uh, they're all very funny actresses. We'll see what happens. Yeah. It comes down to the plot. Is the plot any good? That's, that's going to be the issue. Yeah. I mean, you've got a powerhouse team here. So it's like, yeah, it wasn't written well, but you can't really tell from this trailer. Yeah. I, you know, it's, it's at least going to be worth a trip to Sweden. I agree with that a hundred percent, at least going to be worth that. Um,

I'm hoping that some of the forthcoming trailers will inspire me more to actually get out to a theater to go see it, but I'm not holding my breath. Yeah. After seeing star Wars in the theater, I like, I kind of rekindled my desire to get back there more. So, you know, that's exactly what I was thinking too. It was like, I so enjoyed seeing star Wars in a theater and I've, I've avoided theaters for so long. I was like, I really want some good movies to go see in theaters again. And now the theaters have like upped their game and you can, the gourmet food, of course it's $175, but hey,

you know, yeah, I can do without the food. The beer's fine, but the reserve seats is the best. Yeah. It's pretty nice. My closing shout out this week is to everybody listening for the last 150 episodes. It's been, uh, I just want to say thank you. And we wouldn't be even doing this if you didn't tune in and send us fun stuff every week and you know, make fun of us a lot. So thank you very much. And we look,

look forward to keep doing a bunch more and don't forget to check out up to speed starting on Monday. We'll have links to that in the show notes and on just the sidebar, grumpy old geeks.com and where you can subscribe. Yes. Yes. And, uh, I'd also like to thank everybody for listening. Jason's a little bit wrong on that.

We still would be doing this if nobody was listening, unfortunately. Uh, we're, we're kind of addicted. We're kind of idiots that way. So, uh, and a second shout out to Karen for hooking me up with the, uh, with the headphones so I could give those a review. Um, and that's really about it. Yeah. We're looking forward to doing the new thing, the quick 15 minute one. So that'll be fun. And, uh, we hope you all join us there too. Woo. Thank you for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo and you can check me out at jpd.me and I'm Brian Schulmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

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 grumpy old geeks.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 Sachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy. And he's also on soundcloud at grumpy old geeks.com slash Andy show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks.com slash 150.

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