151: There IS a Spoon

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 March 11th, 2016. For some reason I thought it was, I was going to say 1916. I'm like, oh man, the coffee needs to kick in. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How are you, Jason? I could use some more caffeine. Yeah, I'm feeling a little bit sluggish myself this morning. I think that a whole week of doing 15-minute shows is getting to my brain.

Yeah, yeah. Babe, we have successfully finished four episodes of a new show without a hiccup. Mostly. Mostly. In case you don't know what we're talking about, Jason and I started up a quick 15-minute podcast Monday through Thursday every morning called Up to Speed.

It is called Up to Speed and you can find out more about it. You can either go to grumpyoldgeeks.com and find the links there or you can go to utspod.com and it'll take you right to the category page on grumpyoldgeeks.com. There you go. Wow. UTS pod. Interesting. I know. It definitely sounds like urinary tract something.

Yeah. For your urinary tract in the morning, give us a listen. We've talked a lot about how social media basically makes people horrible and makes us depressed and has very adverse effects on the vast majority of people. It makes us feel jealous of other people's lives because we're seeing their best-case scenarios.

It makes us feel like we're not measuring up and all we do is end up getting really pissed off and annoyed. That sums up what we've talked about so far, yes. Apparently not for everyone. Amazing. You have found something positive to start the show with. I know. And it's about social media. Who'd have guessed? According to the London School of Economics, which published a paper last month, there is a demographic in which Instagram and Tumblr are doing very good things for people.

These are people who suffer from chronic illnesses, basically pain that really can't be diagnosed and or seen by average people. You look at them, they're not bleeding from the head. They're not outwardly sick, but they're constantly in pain. And apparently sharing on Instagram and Tumblr with other people is extremely good for them.

Yes. And the spoon theory is one of these things. And I was reading up on it today. And it's a pretty interesting community they've got going on over there. And, you know, as someone who deals with people with chronic pain all the time and depression and things like that that you can't see, this is a really cool community.

Yeah, it's a whole, they're calling themselves kind of spoonies. And the spoon theory is something about basically dropping spoons. And each one represents a limited store of energy because these people get very tired, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, things I don't understand. But very cool. And it's making a lot of people very happy. So yay, social media for once.

For once. Yeah, there you go. But then speaking of social media, yes, I found something on Medium, my favorite. It's called The End of News as We Know It, How Facebook Swallowed Journalism. And this is a very long read, well, at 20 minutes.

It's not really, you know, the Encyclopedia Britannica. Well, the fact that we call that a very long read is part of the issue with the death of journalism. True, true that, true that. It's a really good rundown of what's happened recently and, you know, how social media has kind of whittled away at journalism and how Facebook is kind of stepping in with the Instant Articles thing that you're talking about and all the other swallowing of the news organizations.

So if you want a really good rundown, kind of a primer course to get up to speed on everything we talk about, I definitely recommend checking this out. Yeah, it's a good read and it's about the blurring line between platforms and publishers and it's, yeah, this tells you a lot about what's going on right now.

And it's kind of bleak and there's not much hope in it. So there goes the happy, happy Joy Joy show. Hey, man. If you throw up a softball like something happy on social media, then I'm just going to take the next one and knock it out of the park. Well, okay. Now our show will be back to normal. In the news.

Earlier this week, it was announced that People, that basically raiding other people app that everybody was talking about a couple months ago, has finally launched, which we brought to you on Up to Speed. Yes, in our inaugural episode, episode one. Yeah, well, yes, it is out. I've downloaded it.

I've signed up for it. The one thing I haven't done is connected my address book because I don't trust these people. I think that that could be a problem. I think all of a sudden, if you connected your address book, my name would be in there, even though I have not signed up.

That's what I'm saying because, and also, I don't want them to take all of the email addresses that I have in my address book, which is, you know, there's some A-listers in there. And these people start to get emails from me to sign up for this, you know. Like me. A little janky-ass app. Yeah, so if you don't know what People is, again, it's basically an app that was intended to be able to rate other people, which, of course, sounds absolutely horrible.

And the internet was up in arms about it. It had finally launched. What we found out so far is it's opt-in only, meaning you cannot be rated if you have not signed up unless they're doing janky things like Jason has talked about, which they most likely will. This sounds like an absolutely horrible, horrible thing.

I'm never going to be on it. Jason himself took the plunge and found out that there is a single switch. So we already know they're probably planning on pivoting into a dating app at some point. Well, here's the thing. So since I didn't connect my actual address book, I'm like, well, I wonder how I can see anybody.

Well, there's a nearby tab. So I can see people in my neighborhood. Actually, it goes, this is a pretty wide swath of Los Angeles right now. Well, they can't dial it down that far because there's not that many people on it, right? Exactly. So in the nearby, there's like 20 people here.

So I click on somebody's name and then there's different ratings. There's professional rating, personal rating, and dating rating. So that's the three vectors that they're actually rating you on. So they're basically launching to try to be all things to all people in the most horrible way known to man.

Right. So I can follow this person. I can recommend him. I can like him. Now, the thing is, there are no women on here at this point. What? None whatsoever. Wait, the two founders who happen to be women aren't on there themselves?

Yeah, Los Angeles on people is a total sausage fest. Okay. Well, yeah. I have not, and I, when you get a rating in, you can choose to not allow it on there. Well, that's interesting. And in the future, you'll be able to pay to have negative ones removed.

Ah. Yes. And that's the Yelp extortion model. So they've taken a lot from Yelp, actually. Man, I hate Web 2.0. This is beyond Web 2.0. This is the app economy because you can't do this on the web. That's true. Anyway. Yeah. I'm, I've tried it.

I'm not going to go whole hog on it because, like I said, I really don't want to piss off my friends and then get a bad recommendation. Yeah. Because that's exactly what would happen. Yeah. I don't like this. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck, people. Actually, since we're, we're on the topic, I'm just going to uninstall it right now.

Good call. Now, I, I, I don't like Uber. Really? Never heard of that. We've established that a little bit. And I don't care much for Lyft either. Oh, well, you know, I don't care much for Lyft. I know you don't. But, uh, just to, you know, to keep up with it, just because we have to, I, I am going to report that according to, uh, figures, uh, provided by the company to recode, uh, Lyft is apparently gaining momentum and starting to, uh, kick Uber's ass over in New York city.

I wonder why that's happening. They don't really say. It's hard to tell. Uh, who knows? I know that. Well, I would hope the people that wrote the article would know. Damn it. Well, no, they go, this is a whole, you know, it's not really journalism. It's recode. So Lyft is spending a lot more money in New York city.

They're trying to burst in there a lot better. And for, and they, you know, they're, they're both doing the whole fair cut thing, you know, which is basically running their business into the ground to try to undercut their competitors. And the funny thing is most people who drive for Uber also drive for Lyft. So I've noticed that more and more, particularly here in LA, I mean, in Santa Monica, when I see them driving by, there's always the Uber sticker and then there's the stupid pink mustache.

Yeah. They all, they all do both. It's insane. Well, you know, it, it, for the drivers, they just hedge their bets on who they can get a call from, call from sooner. Yeah. So for them, it's just, cause it's just routing for them. They, who cares who's doing what, you know? Yeah. So there's really not any difference at all between the two.

Okie doke. Same drivers, same people, whatever. Well, I've never been tried to be forcibly dragged out of an Uber on a, on the freeway. That's the difference so far. Well, that, that guy could be driving for both as well. Ah, true that. Who knows? Maybe since he got kicked out of Lyft, now he's with Uber. I don't think Lyft kicked him out cause they still haven't written me back.

Okay. Anyways, uh, there's been nothing new with the FBI and Apple story thus far, at least nothing breaking or major. But one of the points that I was making when this first broke out was that our phones are much more than just our phones these days. They're everything. And, uh, Ahmed Amir, the associate professor of computer engineering at Santa Clara University wrote a really good op-ed over on Recode.

Our link is in the show notes about how our phones are basically complete and utter extensions of our brains at this point. And we absolutely positively must have widespread strong encryption because these things are our journals. And if you break this, that means we basically have no right to keep a written secret.

Yeah. That's, that pretty much sums it up. I really love this article and I highly suggest everybody read it, especially if you're on the fence about this whole idea and you think that the government maybe should be able to get into that phone. Yep. And it's also where we keep our dickies. Yes, that too. Um, Instagram is, uh, just massive in the fashion world.

And I really had no idea about this until I read this article from, uh, Digiday, which I'd never heard of. But, uh, most fashion brands, especially all the ones that are web savvy, uh, do all their decision-making based on big data coming from Instagram. They're checking out trends.

They're, they're, you know, beta testing stuff on Instagram to see what's going to resonate. And they basically almost make every single business decision based on what's going on on Instagram. Well, think about it. It's one of the world's largest free focus groups. Exactly. So they're very smart about that.

It's pretty interesting. Yeah. With fashion, it makes a whole lot of sense because it's, you know, all visual. Yeah. So there's a, there's some smart web 2.0 companies that are doing very well with that. Now let's talk. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we start there. Um, when we, we talked a couple of weeks ago about Instagram and you pointed out that they are going super heavy into advertising.

Yes. And I didn't notice it. Yeah. Since we've had that conversation, every third post is an ad. Yeah. They've gotten even more insane actually. Yeah. When I first pointed it out to you. So I'm glad that you're finally, well, I'm sorry that you're finally seeing it now because it kind of breaks, it breaks the, it's not fun anymore for me.

I used to enjoy flipping through Instagram and seeing what my friends were posting, but yeah, it's every other, every other post now is an ad for me. Yeah. Well, I'm not that far. It's every third, but it's. Maybe you'll catch up. Yeah. They just, they're A-B testing. Who, who gets pissed off more?

The people that have it every other ad or every third ad? Yeah. Yeah. I'm even calling them ads or posts. It's how bad it is. Yeah. It's pretty bad. Um, music startups is probably the dumbest thing that you could have ever possibly done or try to get into now, especially at this point, we've talked about how startups are having real big troubles and struggling anyways.

And we know the music industry is having really big troubles and struggling. And yet people seem to continue to think that somehow they're going to come up with an idea that nobody's come up with before and save the music industry. This is not true. We're fools. Poor fools. The music startup meltdown is even worse than anywhere before.

Uh, there's an article on QPoint that was written by Courtney Harding, which runs through all the, this is some big data on music, on music startups and how they're all failing. None of them are getting money. Even the big players are losing money. Rhapsody is losing over $3 million a month, according to a report in music business worldwide.

Uh, Spotify continues to raise money, but, uh, has not gone public. Deezer planned to go public and has canceled that plan because they're not doing much of anything drip FM has shut down a band page bought out by YouTube, but now nobody knows what the hell's going on with that. And it's just kind of gone away.

We know title has been basically losing executives left, right, and center. And these are the people that are actually doing well. If you are smaller and trying to do something, you are not getting any funding whatsoever. Um, it was a great article, but the thing that I really love about this is, is they're pointing out kind of the, the fatal flaw in the thinking behind people who are starting these things up startup founders overestimate just how much music matters to the average person.

These are people that are in the music industry or love music, love, love, love. And that's a small group of people. And even I, who is a, I'm a massive music lover. All these apps are based on social sharing of what you're listening to or who you're thinking about. I have no interest in doing that.

No, most of my friends have crappy taste in music. I don't care what they're listening to. Yes. I don't give a crap about your playlist. Yeah. I don't care. I have my own. So this, this is a total fatal flaw in all these programs. All we want to do is be able to find the music that we want to listen to. That's it done.

And, and you know, with the rise of podcasts, there aren't people listening. People just don't listen to music anymore. They listen to people like us now. Sad, but true. I mean, you know, good for us, I suppose. I was actually being completely facetious because nobody listens to us, but. Still, if they did, they wouldn't keep doing these music startups.

Yeah, no, it's, it's really when nobody wants your product, there's nothing you can do to save it. No, sad thing. Especially not if you're going to be trying to make any money. There's no revenue streams there. It's just not there. Sorry, everyone. And especially for bands for even forget the companies that are trying to do it.

The bands shouldn't even bother making music anymore. Well, the bands are fighting to try to get money out of anybody that has it. They're trying to get the money that they've lost. We talked a little bit on Up to Speed about the class action lawsuits. We know that we talked way back about David Lowery from Camper Van Beethoven and a couple other places and how he started the class action lawsuit against Spotify about, I think it was two months ago now, something like that.

And according to, according to Digital Music News, they are preparing class action lawsuits against the remaining big boys, Tidal, Microsoft, Google Play, Rhapsody, and Slacker. So they're trying to get some, the, some money for the damn bands out of these people. The basic content being there are no mechanical royalties anymore because there's no more mechanicals.

So they're trying to claim that every time you load up a stream, it goes into some cash somewhere. So we're going to say that's a mechanical now. So pay us for it. Yeah. It's such a stretch. This whole thing is such a stretch. I mean, I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to tweak the law to say your cash file is a, you know, they're trying to, yes, they're trying to basically say, we don't have this anymore.

So now this is the new, this cash is the new mechanical, which I know technically not true, but good luck trying to redraw the laws from the ground up because that's what really needs to happen, but that'll never happen. But you know, here's the thing, a file is being saved to your computer of the song that is coming from the service.

Judges ain't so tech savvy is all I'm saying. So a good lawyer might be able to convince somebody that that actually is, you know, the mechanical. Well, I mean, or they could just, you know, there's the letter of the law as well. It could just be, well, you know, it is kind of what that used to be.

So fair enough. And you used to be paid for this and now we've taken that away. So you'll be paid for it again. Here you go. Yeah. Oh, here's the interesting thing too, because since these are temporary files, it's almost like trying to sell a, like a self-destructing CD. You can play it once and then it self-destructs.

There's a, there's a case to be made for that's what these temporary files are because they are deleted after they're played. That's very true. It'll be interesting to follow this one. Yeah, I think so too. There is, let's see, we like to talk about how the economy is dead and the middle class is going away.

Yeah, we've never mentioned that before. We've never mentioned that. So I think it's been at least five or six minutes since I've talked about it. There is an article on Slate. It's not the greatest time to be a 30-year-old American, financially speaking. So millennials, you can listen up. Millennials are 30, right? Turning 30 at this point? I don't know.

I mean, I'm Gen X. I'm 44. And I would, I would say that it's not the greatest time to be American, financially speaking. They could have just killed the whole 30-year-old thing. You know, this guy is, this guy is a woman, Jordan Weissman, a guy, and he's turning 30 in one month.

So he's focusing on 30-year-olds. From the Center for American Progress, he has got a graph, which is basically showing not good. Yeah, a graph with not good things. So according to the Center for American Progress, the economy is far more productive than it was three decades ago.

But those gains are not being evenly shared, and people in their 30s are not doing well. Yeah, duh. I mean, that's why we have Occupy. Yes, that is, yes, exactly. We know that this is happening. We know the middle class is going away, and the 30-year-olds are feeling the pinch.

Yeah, and they're too busy sitting in the parks and complaining about it. Get out there and work harder. Come on, let's go. Chop, chop. Yeah, it's about working harder, Jason. I know. Anyways, so we had it a little bit better as baby boomers, apparently, but the graph only shows- We're not baby boomers, we're Gen Xers, man.

Sorry, as Gen Xers. We actually had it better than baby boomers. We apparently had it the best in our 30s. In our 30s, yes. The problem is, if we take this graph out later, as we're all discovering in our 40s, things aren't doing so well for us either, and now we're considered old, especially if we're working in the tech industry.

So, good luck for us. Well, when we were in our 30s, we were right at the big tech boom when it was just starting. That's right before the internet bubble burst and everything went to hell. Yes. But that was a good time for people like us. Yeah, if only we would have pushed through to the not middle class and made a shit ton of money.

Yeah, yeah. We didn't quite break through that. Fortunately, we didn't. So, now we're screwed. And yeah, our legacy is Pets.com and Home Grocer. Yeah, good stuff. I miss Home Grocer. See, they weren't Home Grocer originally. Well, there were two. There was Home Grocer and there was Cosmo.

Yes. I was a Cosmo man. I even named my cat after Cosmo. Didn't Cosmo end up just becoming like a DVD rental thing or was that a different company? It was a different company because Cosmo and – no, no, no. I'm thinking of two different companies because it was Webvan and Home Grocer. Cosmo was separate.

Cosmo was the porn and ice cream at three in the morning delivery service. Ah, I went old school with Pink Dot. Yeah, well, yeah. Pink Dot didn't deliver to me, but Cosmo did. And Home Grocer and Webvan, those are the two that merged. And they took the Home Grocer name and threw that away and kept Webvan, which was a terrible name.

Yeah, that's a horrible name. Yeah. It actually kind of sounds like a dial-up stalker service. Anyways. Speaking of shopping. We will continue to try to present that Amazon isn't taking over the entire world and there's still some other companies out there. Target is apparently getting much better at e-commerce and Walmart is getting worse.

Basically, this is a study The Motley Fool did, and it's entirely down to the fact that Target is spending way more money than Walmart on infrastructure and online ventures. Oh, well, there you go. Yep. Spend more to make more. Exactly. You got to spend it to make it.

So Target is doing that, and Walmart is falling behind. And Walmart's big venture, as we've talked about, is Walmart Pay, which I don't think is going to go anywhere personally. It's like Snapchat Pay. Yeah. Or Snap Cash. Well, everybody's doing their own now. And all they're doing is rebranding the same.

Eh, so stupid. Sometimes I just run out of steam, Jason. I'm just so fed up with all of it. I know. I can't even complain about them anymore. And when I think of e-commerce, I don't think, oh, I should go to Target.com or Walmart.com. I go to Amazon. I go to Amazon, as everybody does. Yeah. When I want something right now, if I need some teepee, I go to Target, you know?

If I want a 8,000-inch TV, I go to Walmart. That's pretty much how it works. I'm not going to buy those online. Too many bookmarks to have. Exactly. Speaking of things like the spoon people from before, CNN had an article about a guy who did a dyslexia simulator.

Wait, CSN actually had, like, some real news? CNN Health. Was this right after the Kanye stories you were reading? Could be. Could be. I get my Kanye from TMZ, man. Oh, that's right. Sorry. My bad. Yeah. No, it's an interesting thing if you've talked to people who have dyslexia or partial dyslexia, like I do, and it's very hard to read, which is why half the time I read audiobooks, so suck it.

This is a pretty good way to kind of see what people have to go through. Listen to audiobooks. Yeah. Yeah. Kiss my ass. Anyway, go check it out. I looked at it. This is insane. But the crazy thing is I have zero problem reading this.

None. Like, it didn't even take me a second. I just ran through the whole thing. I urge everybody to go look at it because it is pretty crazy. I mean, the letters are jumping all over the place. Everything is juxtaposed. It's, but I just, no problem. Zero. I may have a crazy brain.

And this, but this did remind me of memes that were going around just a little while ago where it was, everything would be kind of like this, not jumping around because it's animated, but they were static images, but things would be spelled incorrectly or letters would be ordered around. There'd be numbers instead of letters, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it was like, how fast can you, your brain take to lock in to read this?

Never had problems with any of those either. So it's kind of insane, but it did remind me of it. So I Googled it really quickly and I put a link in the show notes from live science, live science.com, which is about why your brain is able to basically go ahead and, and understand juxtaposed letterings and things like that and get the meaning from a sentence pretty quickly.

It's pretty cool. Yeah. Very. And I feel bad for dyslexics because that's insane. Yeah. It kind of sucks. It really does. It, uh, it's not fun. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors.

Security. I was staring at the, uh, at the dyslexia thing, uh, a little bit longer while we took a little break and my brain started to really hurt, which is kind of fun. Um, and now I want to talk about something that made my brain hurt even more.

Nice segue. Yeah. The FBI has confirmed that there are now new rules for accessing Americans, uh, NSA spying data, but, uh, what those rules are classified, uh, when the rules go into effect classified.

Okay. This is the world we live in. Anything else classified? Basically everything about it's classified except for the fact that they've confirmed that there are new rules. Okay. That's all we're allowed to know. And so there you go. Good times.

You could, you could, uh, file a freedom of information act, uh, request to figure out when it is, but guess what? Yeah. It takes years. It takes years and gets you on a list that I'm, well, actually we're probably on it. Let's be honest. Um, the, the great thing about this whole FOIA debacle that's been going on, I've read a couple articles about journalists who've taken like six, seven years to get FOIA requests filled.

Yeah. Well, when Obama came to office, he's like, this is going to be the best transparent parent, no administration ever. We're going to do all this stuff. We're going to sign all these bills and we're going to make it happen. Yep. Turns out behind the scenes, they've been fighting against their own, their own policies, which is very, very frightening.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's just seems to happen all the time. Doesn't it? I mean, everybody goes into the white house going, we're going to clean this up and we're going to be more, no, we're not. As soon as you get in. I know. I mean, if, if, if a business did this, it would be the height of hypocrisy and probably grounds for fraud, you know?

Probably. But you know, they do that too. Yeah. So this is a, uh, vice article. It's called, it took a FOIA lawsuit to uncover how the Obama administration killed FOIA reform, which is ironic. Yes. It happens. Brain hurting more. Yeah.

In unironic news though, this is just a great little thing from Snowden who's back in the news. He was at the virtually at the blueprint for democracy conference. And he quotes, the FBI says Apple has the exclusive technical means to unlock the phone. Respectfully, that's bullshit.

Snowden said over a video link from Moscow, following with the global technological consensus is against the FBI. Well, McAfee says he can do it in 30 minutes. Yes. Yes, he can. And he finally sat down with Ars Technica, which was really interesting. He said Ars Technica has probably trashed me more than any other publication.

And I don't fault you for it because I'm not speaking to you guys. You guys don't need to be educated. I'm talking to the masses of America and trying to get them to understand the massive cliff we're all teetering on. With a laugh, he added, if I look like an idiot, that's because I'm talking to idiots. So cut me some slack.

Way to go, presidential candidate McAfee. I do like this guy. He speaks his mind. Oh, my God. What am I saying? Yeah, I'm torn on him. One minute I like him. The other minute I think he's an idiot. Well, he's insane.

Oh, he's totally insane. Yeah. But he's like lovable insane. And somebody who's totally insane would never have any chance of possibly winning a nomination from a political party to run for president. Yeah. That would never happen.

Oh, anyways. Idiocracy. Yes, we have a somewhat hack of the week. North Korean hackers have compromised South Korean government official smartphones accessing text, phone calls, and contacts. They used a phishing attack over text message to trick South Korean government employees into downloading a smartphone virus.

It's good to know that it's not just our administration that has stupid people in it. Well, this is government, you know. It doesn't matter what government. You're still talking about government. Yes. So you get a random text message with a link and you click on it. Well, yeah, that's smart. Want a cyber baby?

I'm going to start sending South Korean government employees that Kenyan message and then just put in my bank account information. Maybe I'll get some cash. Okay. I found a really great article on the Daily Beast that goes back into old school versions of spy stuff.

Numbers stations. Back, this was on, this was featured on the Americans, the great TV show that's about to start up again, which is pretty awesome. But it's that whole shortwave radio thing where you find the right thing and, and, you know, the Russians are broadcasting just in code 7, 6, 4, 7, 3.

And they basically had decoder pads so you could pass around messages. It's really cool as crap. And in the story itself, they have a couple different links where you can hear some of the real ones. It's really cool. I love this stuff. It's super freaky. It's really cool that they have the original messages. Yeah, it's totally awesome.

I love old school spy tech like this. This is the way it should have stayed this way. Damn it. We shouldn't have invented computers. One time pads for everybody. Look how quickly we're becoming Luddites. I know. Faster and faster. Yeah. So I really liked this article, but what I discovered as I was reading this article is the Daily Beast is doing some trickery and tomfoolery.

Shocking. If you keep scrolling down, it takes you right into another article. So there's another page view. Oh, almost everybody's doing this nowadays. Oh, I guess I don't scroll down enough. Oh, and a third article. Oh, wait. It keeps going. We've, I've actually talked about this site on the show before for doing just this.

If you look in the right sidebar, you can see that there's a progress bar in the article you're at and a little red thing that tells you when you're going to the next one. And so they can claim that, you know, basically they're just doing the lazy load and you're, you're, you're, you can see it.

That's their version of disclosure. But yes. Interesting. Eh, not really, but no, it's just UX. It's just trickery to try to get advertising dollars. Ah, and a ZD net has a really good article on why the connected car is one of the generation's biggest security risks.

Well, you think, I think, I think, uh, this, this guy listens to our show. This would be a Connor Forrest and he lays out a lot of different, uh, ideas and a lot of different, uh, security experts who are talking about the different ways that you are at risk. And, you know, I don't care about the personal data risk to my connected car because there's not a whole lot going to be in there unless they can go from your entertainment center to your smartphone, hack your phone, get your financials out.

Possibility. Possibility. I worry about crashing and dying. Yeah. There's something I care about. There's something to be said about being able to hack a massively, uh, uh, heavy and moving fast item. Uh-huh. That's not good. No, it's really, it's really not that good. No.

So they're, they're trying to work on it, but he's saying that, you know, everybody's talking about it, but nobody's doing anything about it, which we've known. That's why Congress is stepping in to make auto manufacturers get off their ass and do something about it. But as we know, government security, how's that going for you?

Yeah. Not so good. But, uh, but some, you know, this is one of those cases where the government is, can be helpful because they ain't doing it. So we got to force them to. I found a really good article on a naked security, which is the Sophos blog is how one man could have broken into any Facebook account.

Now that it's a misleading title because the article is actually about how people should secure their staging environments and not their live environments. So this guy figured out how he could Bruce for brute force, the reset codes on passwords to get your password reset.

Oh, and there was a total of just the way they did the math on it. There's 1 million reset codes. Okay. Yeah. Can't brute force facebook.com. Nope. But, uh, you know, you could, uh, do it on beta.facebook.com and do it just fine.

So he went and just found the staging servers and said, Hey, uh, let me try it here. And he's like, okay, well this works because they take out the rate limiters because they're it's a testing server. So people who have testing servers up who leave them open to the world, uh, which is a little insane to begin with.

Why is Facebook, you know, why do they have their, their, uh, staging and beta servers open to the world? That makes no sense. I don't know. And they still are. I just went to beta.facebook.com. There you go. Okay. Good times. Uh, and, uh, it has come out that the Pentagon has been deploying military drones over the U S shocking.

I know. 20 flights so far. Uh, they don't say what they've done. Of course not. Shocking. Oh yeah. Uh, so there you go. Um, oh boy, that's not good. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Military drones for non-military purposes over the continental United States. All right. Well, all you guys living out in the woods with your guns, start shooting at them. I guess you're going to be able to take down those drones. Yeah. Right. Maybe. No, wait, maybe Amazon hired them to, to do some deliveries.

Yeah. But this is the new thing that's going to fix the problem with the prime delivery service since they can't get that to working anymore. Yeah. Because right now you, on Sundays, you see the postal guys driving by, you know, because they, they've co-opted the United States post office to deliver your, your vitamins on a Sunday.

I guess you can get dog food by drone that did we have to pay for the military with now. So yeah. This is craziness. Yeah. This, I hate this segment. It just bums me out. Except it's yours now. So enjoy. I know.

Comment of the week. We got a couple of comments sent into grumpy old geeks.com this week. Uh, the first one's from John C just a quick comment on the sexting story. They are actually covering their asses for child porn issues. That's why it states under the age of 18. Yeah.

That makes sense. I get that. This is for the sexting in California schools. Yes. Yes. That we did last week. Yes. Okay. Patrick writes in, Hey, just started listening to this podcast. Pretty interesting. Thought you two might find it interesting as well. Um, yeah, we do. It's our podcast. I think you might say find this interesting as well.

Listening to the future of grind podcast, science, technology, business, politics, futurism. Uh, this is with Tim Cannon of grand house wetware and biohacking and transhumanism. Looks pretty good. I'm definitely going to check it out. Yeah, I am too. And this is actually friend of the show.

Patrick has written in a few times. So what he actually meant in that first sentence was he's just started listening to that podcast. Oh, got it. Look at me doing the dyslexia translation. I appreciate it. No problem, man. No, that does look really, really cool. I'm definitely going to check that one out.

So awesome. Uh, we got another comment from Brian and this isn't me, but it might as well have been because it's going to pick on Jason a little bit here. Uh, instead of buying a crappy out of date TV, why not just turn the wireless wired off on, on an IOT TV? There was a lot of offs and ons in there.

Basically just turn the damn thing off, Jason. Um, because you do know that people can turn on your webcam without you knowing it. You can turn on your cell phone without you knowing it in the microphone. So if you have a TV, they can still turn that on too. Yeah. But that's only if it's, if the wireless is connected, what if you just take that off completely and then it's air gapped basically.

Yeah. We don't know anything about people hacking air gapped computers to get information out of them. We've never talked about that before. That's a, that's, you know, that would be science fiction. If somebody could actually hack an air gapped computer or maybe come into your house while you're not there and turn on the wireless and then spy on you.

Thanks, Brian. You've just made Jason put his tinfoil hat back on now. And finish the finishes. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, what's wrong with Norton? There's not much else out there that is better. Uh, Norton's fine. I told you about the laptop I bought that came with Norton pre-installed and it blue screened on launch. As soon as I deleted Norton, then it worked again.

That's why. Yeah. I, but I mean, to be completely fair, I've had that with almost all of the different antivirus softwares out there. There's something about them that just ends up tweaking your computer in a not good way. I've gotten to the point where I almost just want to use the built-in stuff for Microsoft on, on my PC because at least they theoretically aren't breaking their own OS.

Yeah. And you also have other crapware that comes with new PCs. So, I mean, if you start with a regular basic install, install Norton and turn off like the scan every three seconds mode, uh, which takes up all the processor, then you might have something usable.

But for the most part, I just stay away from it. Well, this is, I mean, that's my recommendation. If anybody's getting a new PC, uh, wipe it as soon as it comes, reinstall the operating system. Just do that because you're going to, it'll save you so much trouble later on. And then air cap it. Yes. Just like Jason.

Laura writes in, I think you guys would dig these David Bowie posters and these is a link to some David Bowie posters. But since we're an audio medium, uh, we have the links in the show notes. Yeah. Pretty cool. It's David Bowie in a bunch of different, uh, it's an illustration of David Bowie as say, you know, Spock, uh, the Joker, uh, a bunch of other random people.

It's pretty cool. These are look, these look nice. Awesome. Yeah. Very neat. Thank you for sending that in. And thank you everybody who wrote in. 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 any friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out and only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes. It'll take you right there. At the library.

Since we're doing this daily, uh, 15 minute up to speed podcast. Now I found my ability to actually sit down and read is diminished greatly. So I didn't finish anything this week. Um, technically I did because I hadn't entirely finished exile by a Peter Klein's last week when we talked about it.

I did finally finish it. I think I had two chapters left. Loved it. Great book. Can't wait for the next one. Yep. Fantastic. Yep. And yeah, I actually, I read more now than I have before, but it's all tech news and getting ready for the shows. Yeah. I did start a print book, which, you know, I, I, I do exactly sometimes read them like twice a year and apparently the struggle is real.

Yes, it is. Uh, it's called ego is the enemy by Ryan holiday. This book doesn't come out till June 1st, which it's probably going to take me that long to get through it. But, uh, so far so good. It's the followup to his previous book, which was the obstacle is the way. And they're both about philosophy, like mainly stoic philosophy and, uh, how you, how they can make your life better by embracing the stoics.

Okay. Stoicism. Good stuff. It's a, it's a, you know, spellbinder. Right. And, uh, this story seemed appropriate for the, at the library section. Uh, there's a New York artist called Michael Mandenberg who wanted to basically make people think about online printing, online print, online reading, et cetera, in a different way by making it physical.

So what he's done is he's uploaded the entire contents of Wikipedia, uh, absorbing carefully it's creative commons license terms to a print on demand website called lulu.com. And he's also obviously done a physical installation, which isn't the entire thing printed, but meant to symbolize that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Uh, in case you were curious, it took over 24 days for him to upload the entire site into lulu.com. I'm sure the web devs at Lulu love that. I'm sure they're thrilled because nobody's actually going to pay this out. And he's just using all their storage stuff. Uh, if you actually did want to go print this from lulu.com, it would be, uh, 7,473 volumes totaling more than 5 million pages, uh, without a discount for bulk purchase.

The price of a set would be more than $600,000. Yep. Yeah. I'm sure Lulu loves them. Really? I mean, it's neat, but it's like, well, to be fair, I didn't, I'd never heard of lulu.com until now. Oh, they've been around forever. I've printed tons of books through them. Well, I had not.

So at least they're getting a little, uh, name recognition. Okay. Yeah. There's this site called cafe press that did that too. Oh yeah. I do remember cafe press. Yes. But they did more than just Brooks. They was like, does Lulu does coffee mugs and all that sort of crap? Oh, and you, and like t-shirts where the decal will come off as soon as you wash it.

Wash it's basically a rag. Yeah. Yeah. They do, uh, they do a couple of things, but it's mostly books. Okay. Yeah. Nice little site. Good job, Lulu. Sorry about the, uh, all the uploads and all your data, but, uh, Hey, we're mentioning you and a link in the show notes. Software apps and gadgets.

Uh, in the new segment, I had mentioned that, uh, music startups are dead. Uh, somebody didn't get the memo. Who didn't get the memo? Uh, there's a company called Orpheum. Uh, they are stating that the music parentheses are in parentheses. Evolution is here.

See what they did there. I see what they did there. Yeah. They probably spent their wad on that one. Um, very clever. Uh, it's a SoundCloud replacement type thing where they're basically going after unsigned artists, but also hoping to get real artists and saying that they have better payout rates than Spotify or Apple music or SoundCloud, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we all know that none of this stuff works and everything kind of sucks. So good luck with this guys. Yeah. Seriously. Did they not get the memo about SoundCloud, Spotify, and Apple music? There's a reason SoundCloud is starting to fail and trying to pivot and Spotify and Apple music have basically wrapped up that market.

So yeah, I don't know what you're going to be doing here, but, uh, you know, Hey, revolt. Here's the deal. I'm looking at their, their artists payout percentage chart right now. Orpheum will pay 80%. SoundCloud pays 10 to 20 Spotify, 23 and Apple music, 24.5.

If those guys can't make a living paying, you know, the rates that they're paying, how are you going to spend 80% to the artist and keep your head above board? That just makes no sense. Well, like I said, they spent their money on their catchy task phrase, not their business plan. Okay. Uh, did you know that, uh, you know, cause we just talked about smart TVs and they have apps on them.

Did you know Microsoft had Skype on TV? I did not. Yes, it did. And now it doesn't. So I'm telling you about something you didn't know about that is already gone. So that's fine. I would never have used it anyways. My TV is for one way, uh, consumption.

See, that's the thing. Everybody else thought so too. That's why it didn't take off. Nobody wants to use Skype on their TV and they said, ah, no, look, we've moved to an entire generation that doesn't even watch TV on their TV. They do that on their phones. Yep. It's only us old people that have these big screens.

Indeed. And I actually just bought two Mac minis for my studio. They're pretty cool because the one thing that I don't know if you've noticed this on, on Macs, but even though you only have one, a long time ago, there used to be two sound inputs or two sound ports, one for input, one for output.

Yes, I do remember that Steve jobs and their minification of all of the components for the laptops a long time ago took out the input. And so when I got these Mac minis, much to my surprise, there's a sound input port. And I'm like, Whoa, they brought it back.

They brought it back or in the minis it may, they may have just not taken it out yet, but for, um, and this, this rolls right into Skype because I got these two Mac minis to run Skype and my sound studio and run them headless. So no TV. Right. Two extra or an extra port and Skype.

It's like, it all ties together. It's all coming together. The future. I tried to tie that one together. Yeah, man. Woo. Wow. You got to keep that in though. And in low tech news, I did my first pasta yesterday.

Okay. I got a pasta maker for Christmas and I finally pulled it out three months later. Three months. Well, two and 10 days, something like that. What did you make? I made spaghetti. Oh, lovely. Basically angel hair. And I just, I'm just proud of myself because this is the first time I'm 44 and I'm the first time I've ever made pasta.

And I got to say, it's pretty cool. You would actually enjoy it if you don't know how to do it already. I don't. That'd be interesting. I mean, you can get a $30 pasta maker on Amazon and they had different accessories to make, you know, different types of pastas. Mine comes with fettuccine and angel hair. So it's, but it's fun.

It's quick and it tastes way better than the regular pasta you get at the store. Highly recommend trying it. And it's fun. Okay. I will not. And we'll be right back. But now a word from our sponsors.

Media candy. I finally got around to watching Jessica Jones on Netflix. What'd you think? I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I really liked it. And I actually, by the time it was over with, I liked it more than Daredevil, which was saying a lot because I really liked Daredevil.

Weird because I ended up watching Daredevil second and I ended up liking it a bit more than Jessica Jones. Maybe it's just the order that you watch them in. I could. Yeah. I could. Or the, you know, the freshness or recency. Right. But if I go back and watch Daredevil again, which I just might because the new season starts on March 18th, I might check it out again.

But I thought this was really good. And mainly the main character, Jessica Jones, amazing, strong female superhero. Yep. Drunk, likes to wear combat boots, pretty much like most of my ex-girlfriends. But the show was stolen by the villain, just like in Daredevil.

David Tennant was one of the scariest bad guys I've ever seen. He was great. No, I really, really enjoyed Jessica Jones. I can't wait for the second season. She was a badass in it. So absolutely fantastic. Yeah. Highly recommend that. And there was another show that I watched on Amazon long ago called Bosch.

It's kind of, you know, a LA cop crime drama thing. Right. Again, with, you know, the drunk anti-hero. Yeah. It's kind of a theme. Bosch season two is coming out very soon. Let me pull up the date on that. I had it written down and I lost it because I'm a twat.

No, it's coming out. It's coming out in the next week or so. So if you are a fan of Bosch, check it out. It'll show up on your prime subscription very, very soon. Yeah. I'm not so sure. I'm not sold on Amazon as a TV producer yet. The man in the high castle disappointed. So I don't know.

We'll see. Yeah. Actually, it looks like Bosch is out now. Oh, there you go. You can start watching it. There it is. It came out today. How's that for timeliness? It's out now. Out now. It was the season one I thought was really good. Ah, yes. Okay. No, not sold on Amazon.

We'll see. Shows I am sold on. Game of Thrones season six. Red band trailer has dropped and it will be premiering April 24th. I cannot wait. The trailer is awesome. There wasn't a whole lot of red in that band. Well, you know, whatever. Yeah. It's tits and swords.

There's going to be tons in the show itself. You don't need it in the trailer. Okay. So I watched the trailer. I liked it. You know, I just, I'm just going to wait for, I don't, I'm not going to watch any more spoilers because I liked my sadness porn, you know, fresh. I don't, I'm not going to do a spoiler thing either, but if you were interested in that link in our show notes from wired, they do basically a scene by scene breakdown of the entire trailer with some commentary.

So if you want it all spoiled for you, there it is. All right. Olympic events will be airing in 8k and VR this year. Woohoo. I, I didn't know there was an 8k. I didn't know either. Apparently there isn't.

It's only in Japan. So that's the only place. That means at least there is, it's, it just doesn't exist in the U S that doesn't mean that there isn't an 8k. And you know, we do not need 8k. 7,680 by 4,320 pixels with 22.2 channel surround sound.

Yeah. It's a little insane. Yeah, it is insane. Yeah. And it's going to be in VR too. So you people that like to strap your phones to your head and pretend that you're in some virtual space, have fun with that. Rock on. Yeah. Good times. Uh, it was international women's day this week. Um, and lush, one of my favorite bands ever and Mickey Bereni, long time, massive crush of mine, uh, on my list and any second at any time, uh, did an interview with ID, which is now hosted by vice apparently who knew, uh, talking about how to be a woman in a band.

Now she is absolutely fantastic. And we discussed this a bit on up to speed because that's a clean show. I couldn't say any of her quotes because she cusses like a sailor, which I also love. But welcome to grumpy old geeks, but welcome to grumpy old geeks. So I do want to read one of these things. Uh, they asked her, what advice would you give young women forming bands today?

And she said, as with any band, you have to look after each other because sometimes it's you against the world and it's tough out there for girls. My daughter is 14 and she has a 14 year old daughter that just ruined everything for me. Um, and had to move schools last year. She was being relentlessly bullied by a competitive little shit who was protected by his privilege and didn't like that a mere girl was his match in every way.

So he made her life a misery and she was beset by constant taunts from boys that women belong in the kitchen and girls are rubbish at everything. And you have to be prepared for that kind of intolerance and hostility and find a way to not let it crush you or ruin your enjoyment. On the plus side, creativity is liberating, cathartic, and immensely rewarding.

But fame is bullocks. It's all about the music. Go Mickey. I do believe it's bollocks, not bullocks, but we'll go with it. Oh, whatever. I'm American. Yeah. We got some flack on Twitter this week for your, uh, for my Italian pronunciation. Well, you should have stepped in Mr.

DeFillippo. I thought it was pretty funny. So I just left it in. That's fine. Figaro. Yeah. Figaro. You talk for an hour straight and pronounce everything correctly. Oh, no. Yeah. You don't do. Yeah. We don't do it. Neither of us. My other favorite band in the world, one of them anyways, Underworld has just released a new single called I Exhale, and there's a link in the show notes to the video.

It's a great track. And the upcoming album has a wonderful title that I just, I can't get over it. Barbara, Barbara, we face a shining future. Okay. What's it for? What's that referencing? I actually don't have any idea. Oh, okay. I thought it was. I just love the title. I'm sure it references something specific.

I mean, okay. Should we turn on the Google bot and do a pause here? No, I think people can Google it if they care. Uh, and one other thing I ran into this week, this has given me the most pleasure and joy I think I've experienced probably all this year so far. Uh, there is a rant called the truth about popular music on the tube of the U.

I cannot explain how much I enjoy this. I probably have listened to it now 15 times. It's by some guy, Paul Joseph Watson. And again, just kind of not wanting to ruin it. I didn't look into him too much. Apparently this is just what he does. He's like a grumpy old geeks on YouTube and all he does is rant about stuff.

But, uh, after my own heart, yeah, this is about, uh, his rant about the music industry, brainwashing us into liking terrible songs. My, I, I just can't stop playing it. I love it so much. As soon as we're done with this, I'm going to go back and watch the whole thing. So I only got like a little bit into it, but it's hilarious.

This guy is genius. I, yeah, it's not safe for work. Very much so. So don't, uh, don't play this out loud at your, at your workplace. Uh, but I cannot recommend this enough. If you like me cannot stand what popular music has become, this is very good. It's really good.

And very, very funny. And one other thing I found this week that was kind of doing the rounds a bit, uh, there's, uh, Darth Maul from the prequels was probably one of the most engaging characters who was used the absolute least. And it was very disappointing that they basically killed him off after about 10 minutes of screen time.

But, uh, uh, some, a group of people out there spent three years making this, uh, T7 Pro is the name on the YouTube channel. They put three years and a lot of money and a lot of know-how into making a fan film about Darth Maul called Darth Maul Apprentice. This seven, it's 17 minutes long.

And except for a couple of beats that were just held way too long, could have used a little editing. Uh, this thing is better than all three of the prequels. Okay. So I better hurry up because it'll probably be taken down by Disney any second. Well, they, they start with a whole screen of this is nonprofit, unofficial fan film that is not intended for commercial use, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Please don't take us down. It's awesome. You really do need to watch this. The production values on it are potentially better than George Lucas's last thing. How long did they spend making this? About three years. See that, that's a lot of gambling on something that could be taken down instantly.

I mean, a great, sure. It's a great calling card for you and your, your skills, but man, three years is a lot of, that's a lot of risk. Yeah. It's a, yeah, but I got to give it to him. It was, I watched it all. I was engaged. I was into it and I was really blown away by how good it looked. Okay. It does not feel like a fan film.

This feels like if they would have done like a TV show, like an official star Wars TV show, this could have been it. It's that good. All right. It's that good. You sold me. Moron of the week. Our moron of the week is Jamie guilt. Uh, this is actually a pretty damn sad, sad story.

Uh, this is definitely doing the rounds in my circle of friends who do not like guns. Um, Jamie guilt is a gun rights act advocate who wait for it lives in Florida and operates a Facebook page called Jamie guilt for gun sense in which she basically just posted a lot of liberal baiting pro gun memes.

Uh, apparently the page is now gone and taken down. Uh, but at the time the photo was, uh, her with her very young child in her lap, holding what appears to be a gun. And, uh, the other, uh, I guess a little earlier this week, a woman named Jamie guilt, and there's only one listed in public records as a resident of Florida was hospitalized after telling police that her four-year-old son had shot her in the back while she was driving.

Kids and guns do not mix people. No, they don't. And yeah, I, I, you know, me, I like guns, but this is just completely irresponsibility. Yep. Um, yeah, except she was an advocate for gun sense. Interesting.

Yeah. She must not have practiced what she preached. Yep. Moron.

The web's not dead. Oh, no, it's not. Another great YouTube find this week. Uh, this is a song called I'm billing time by a group called the bar and grill singers, which is, uh, they're all practicing attorneys in Austin, Texas, and they've started up an acapella group and they made their own original song called, uh, I'm billing time.

Now they are lawyers and most of the song can be specific to, to law and what they do, but this will ring true with any contractor ever. And you must listen to it. It's quite awesome. I listened to it. Wasn't this a riff on a house Martin song? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Just redone lyrics and all that sort of stuff, but it's, it's very funny, very clever and sadly true. Uh, okay. I'll give it a listen. I just heard, I heard a little bit of the riff and had to run to do something, but, uh, I'm like, Hey, that's a house Martin. I love the house Martins. It's all about being hit up for free work.

And then every, you know, if you call and ask a million questions and I'm billing every second of this because I'm working. Okay. Um, we've talked about CGP gray a long time ago on this show. I'm a huge fan of him. I have not kept up and I haven't been watching.

It's one of those things that just goes out of the mind and you forget about it. Well, the interesting thing is I've, I listened to his podcast now he's on two podcasts, one called hello internet and one called cortex. And he's probably on some other ones, but those are the two that I listened to and they're very long. So I don't have time to go watch his videos, but I do, I do support him on Patreon because I like his work.

So I got a notice this week that I just gave him a dollar for a new video called the trouble with transporters. Excellent. Which if you've ever gotten, um, let's say, uh, not yourself on unmedicinal substances and had chats with your friends about the, the philosophy behind transporters.

Yes. Then this video will resonate with you. So basically if you've ever been stoned and want to talk about, do you die when you go into the transporter? Where's your soul go? How does this work? This video is for you because he does a really good job with it. Oh, I can't wait to watch that then. Oh yeah. No, dude, you haven't seen it yet.

You're going to love it. It's, it's CGP gray at his greatest. Um, just going through all the different scenarios on how transport, how basically they're murder machines. Awesome. I might have to bust out some of my medical stuff and keeping around here somewhere for this.

All right. Closing shout outs. Well, if you like this show and you want to hear more about us, definitely go check us out at UTS pod.com for up to speed Monday through Thursdays. Yes. And we'll be drinking a lot of cranberry juice and it's only 15 minutes long and we do about 15 stories.

So about a story a minute, give or take a little. So, you know, in your commute, but it's clean. So you can have your kids in the car. It's family friendly and it'll keep you up to date on what you need to know for that day, except a little bit late because we're still on the West coast. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo and you can check me out at jpd.me.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus. 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 to 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.

And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 151. Hey, I've got a great idea for a new music startup. We're going to have people share what they listen to. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action. The lineup reveals coming soon.

Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at bkfsea.com. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place.

Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead. With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at qvc.com.