160: Get your drone off my wall!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, number 164, May 20th, 2016. I am Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Good morning, Brian. Morning. Or afternoon. Well, I'm a little late. I'm in the central time zone. We're only an hour late, but I had to go get a lawnmower because my new landlord yelled at me that the yard looks like shit.

He's like, dude, mow the lawn. Didn't you just move in? Two weeks ago. Okay. Well, two weeks, I guess. It rains here a lot, you know, so the grass grows. Right. The grass grows. We talked about how Facebook was getting sort of in trouble because we found out that it wasn't actually an algorithm at all, but a small group of highly underpaid journalism measures that were picking all the trending topics.

Yep. And Zuckerberg had to go sit down with a bunch of conservatives. That was, that had to be fun. That had to be fun. I, you know, normally in, in normal circumstances, like say this is 20 years ago, I would, uh, well, there wasn't Facebook, but I would be, oh, okay.

Fair enough. But, uh, the conservative party has somewhat fallen apart and, uh, there's a bunch of nutbags and crazy ass right wing people these days. And, you know, your, your, your Glenn Beck's and your Rush Limbaugh's, we look upon them fondly as almost somewhat sane compared to what we're normally getting these days.

So, um, no doubt about that. Yeah. So there's an article in Salon that basically says, uh, Facebook doesn't have a bias against the, the right. It has a bias against propaganda and lies. Yeah. You know, when put that way, when you put it that way, it kind of makes a lot more sense.

I mean, if you think about it, it's like, are they supposed to put in trending topics, say like three years ago, Barack Obama is a Muslim. Yeah. Or yeah. I mean, you know, they're not going to give fair time to the birther argument either, you know? Yeah, exactly. I mean, they put a lot of stupid crap in trending topics.

I'll give you that, but it tends to be more entertainment, stupid crap. Uh, they, they have stayed away from the more ridiculous, idiotic, stupid stories from the right. And I'm fine with that. They've also stayed away from a lot of the idiotic, stupid stories on the left. So I'm happy with that. Okay.

And here's, here's the, the main point of the whole argument. They can do whatever the hell they want to do, because guess what? They're a private company. They're a private company and it's a free service. Well, actually they're a public company, but they can still, they're a company. They're not, they're not bound by any rules of, you know, judiciary conduct.

They can do whatever the hell they want. As long as it increases shareholder value. Yes. Yeah. And another company that can do that is Apple, um, which also apparently includes, uh, reaching into your music collection, deleting all your collection. We talked about that story as well. There's a followup. Apple, uh, parachuted in engineers to the guy's house.

They didn't actually do that, but, uh, they actually sent engineers to the guy's house to kind of do a, uh, forensic analysis of what exactly happened. And they found out that it is apparently a bug and it shouldn't have happened. Bullshit. Um, and yeah, so apparently they're going to fix it and they're releasing a patch.

So this will never happen again. That's already came out this week. It's, it's the new version. Yep. There you go. So I also downloaded it and I'm just never, you know, I I'm putting in my library. I'm never signing up for Apple music until I hear a hundred percent for sure that if you have a very large library, like I do, it's not going to break anything.

And I fell out to hell with Apple music. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a, you've got, you've got two different things going on here. You've got Apple music and you've got iTunes match. So those are two distinctly separate topics. Um, except for the fact that they're not entirely separate.

If you try to sign up with Apple music, yeah, they're kind of, the whole, the whole thing is the whole, yeah, the whole thing is kind of a mess, but I got a notification from them this week that, Oh, your iTunes match account will, you know, uh, not renew on June 20th because you have decided not to set auto renew.

But if you'd like to keep all your music in one place, I'm like, here's what I'm going to do between now and June 20th, I'm going to download everything again and have another backup of it on two separate hard drives. And when I'm looking for a tune, I will just drag it into iTunes. Yeah.

I think that's a good way to go. I mean, uh, you know what, what this has really done is just push me to streaming, which sucks because I don't really want streaming. And I've, I've got my Apple library, uh, that I'm not connecting to them online in any way, shape or form now, which has kind of the exclusive weird ass shit that I found over the years, the bootlegs, the random CD singles that are not available on any catalog anywhere.

But for the majority of time, I just go and listen to streaming now, which I'm not happy about, but it is what it is. You, you screwed the pooch so poorly that I'm now doing this and I'm not going to use you for it, Apple. So yeah. And the streaming side of things, a friend of the show, Jeff Donaldson, who gave me that Amazon echo, which I brought with me to, uh, the lovely town of Downers Grove.

I want to hear some more about that actually, because I noticed that Google's now come out with their competing version. And yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit, but the, uh, the echo so far, I love it. Um, cause now it plays Pandora and it's got the right voice recognition in it where I can say, uh, echo play Pandora and name a playlist that I've already pre-created and it will go through and it'll find the playlist and play it.

And it lets me in, in the other upside is, and this is the point that I was, I was trying to remember was when I had that, you know, thousand dollars Spotify system in my, or $1,500 Spotify, not Spotify, uh, Sonos system. Sonos, yeah. Uh, it would not play the, uh, high quality streams from Pandora.

So I actually went paid for a year subscription of Pandora with no ads with high quality audio and I couldn't use it on my Sonos works. It works great on the echo and the speaker on the echo is top notch. So every morning I w I wake up, I walk downstairs and I say, echo news, and it will give me the brief of the news while I feed the dog and have my eggs and get my coffee and everything done.

And then I'm up to speed on the news. And then I, but, but is that an algorithm or is that another small group of journalists in a basement? You get to pick your sources on the, on the Alexa app. You can pick all the different sources that you want your news from. I need to go call it because sometimes you hear the same story about eight or nine times.

Right. Um, I would just select, uh, the AP feed and be done with it. Um, that's good, but you know, the discovery news is good too. So they've got some fun science news. Uh, and it's interesting cause they were talking about a story on bullshit the other day and I'm like, did that, did my echo just say bullshit to me while I'm making my, making my breakfast?

I'm sure there's a child filter on there. Uh, I don't think so with that. Well, yeah, but you pick the source so that you can go with that. Anyway, the echo so far has been really fun and I mocked the shit out of the echo when it first came out with the first ad where the guy says echo, or I'm sorry, he was using the Alexa version.

I changed mine to echo because you know, I know some people named Alexa. So if they ever come over, it would be very difficult to have a conversation. Um, it said, uh, how many teaspoons in a tablespoon? And like everybody I know just yelled at the screen and said three, but the other day I was trying to do some weird calculation on, uh, cups to metric, you know, like cups to leaders.

And I actually ended up using the echo for that exact same purpose. And I felt like a schmuck, but it was funny. I laughed at it. It was good. Yeah. I haven't made the transition to, uh, to talking to devices yet. If I need to find that stuff out, I still, uh, Google it. Yeah. But I was in the middle of cooking.

That's the funny, you know, I'm like, Oh man, how many liters to, you know, just trying to figure that out. It was funny, but so far I liked the echo. I haven't, I even even tapped into a lot of, we've got another story about the echo coming up later in the show, but so far it's, you know, it's a nice little device and it lets me just talk to it.

You know, I'll pause it, change the volume, like from the other room or change playlists without having to do anything. So I just have a ton going back to streaming. I have a ton of Pandora playlists. I can't use it with Spotify because you can only use it with a paid account and I don't want to pay for Spotify anymore because I barely use it.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, what was I trying to circle back to after this incredibly long? Sorry. Tangent. It's okay. Uh, yeah. The Apple story came off business insider and I just wanted to do a quick web design mention since this is kind of what we started our podcast doing. What the fuck is up with the trend of using the hamburger mobile nav on all versions of your site now?

Yeah, that should not be shown. Millennials only look on phones, so we don't want to confuse them if they get on a real computer. Here's the deal with that. I think it comes down to responsive design and they don't want to have to design multiple nav layouts. It's not that difficult. For the money that they're probably not getting paid, it might be.

That is true. You know, nobody gets paid for good web design anymore. So like, ah, screw it. We'll just use the hamburger everywhere. And if you don't know what we're talking about, those, those little nav things with the three lines that are supposed to be, you know, oh, this means a menu underneath. It used to say the word, you know, navigation or menu or something like that.

And then to be a dropdown. But now that's the three lines that have been colloquially termed the hamburger. Yes. So, and I want to just throw this in because I was plugging my iPhone into charge right before the show started. And when you plug it in, it does that little vibration.

And every time it just gets tainted love stuck in my head because it's the same beat from tainted love. So I put that video in the show notes. So hopefully you guys can all get an earworm out of it today. It's a completely different tenor. But it's a vibration. So it's all in your head.

No. Yeah. Yeah. Trust me. Try it. In the news. Brian, do you remember Theranos? That's the company that did like blood testing and all that stuff and basically screwed the pooch completely and sent incorrect or wrong results.

And, you know, they were worth gazillions of tons of money and shouldn't be. Yeah. That's the same company. That's it. They've just voided all of their results from 2014 and 2015. So nothing they did was actually valid.

Welcome to the new world. I've screamed a gazillion times over say things really changed probably the last five, ten years, maybe even. I've just been screaming about how if you're a total fuck up, you will be worth tons of money. And if you do a good job, you're going to get fired. Yeah.

And this just proves it. So. Yeah. And we've got a it's funny, we've got a book that we're reviewing on that other show that I do coming up this week. I think it's called If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? Yeah. Well, there's a funny enough, there's an article about this later in the show as well.

All right. So, yeah. So, yeah. Be an idiot. Totally screw up. Be worth gazillions of dollars and probably get a golden parachute. Awesome. That's that's what we're teaching the kids nowadays. So this next one, Jason Bryant, friend of the show and a fellow podcaster, he has a very nice wrestling podcast.

He sent me this one. He's like, normally I don't get my news from MSN, but here you go. Tesla cancels 4,200 Model 3 reservations on concerns about speculators. Interesting. So so people kind of approached the Tesla Model 3 reservation system the same way they do concert tickets.

Exactly. We got scalpers out there. So you could. Yeah, they were they were hoping to put those Model 3s up on eBay. But. Yeah. Nope. Tesla said no go. I'm glad that Tesla should do that. I don't know the exact algorithm that one uses to determine this or not.

I'd hate to be the getting the call if you were actually a real person. I mean, do they go and do interviews? I mean, they've got to do some kind of Q&A on this. Well, here's the deal. You're allowed that you're allowed to purchase two of them. You could put in reservations for two, right? But, you know, all that stuff's tied back to financial data with the name so they could easily figure it out with the credit cards and however they want to do it.

It just seems like a lot of work since there are at current 373,000 customers have placed reservations. Right. So 4,200 out of all that isn't a whole big deal, but that's still 4.2 million dollars. Well, I'm, you know, I'm happy that they did this.

This is a, this is a, an immediate rebuttal to the previous comment about if you do a shitty work, you get rewarded. Tesla actually does a good job here. Seems to be, I, you know, it'll be interesting to see these things on the road. I, uh, I mean, it's going to be $35,000, which isn't a whole lot of money compared to most cars nowadays.

I mean, shit, the one that I just bought was 29,000. Yeah. 35 is not bad. I mean, I, I can get a, uh, you know, pre-certified BMW X3 for around that. So. Hmm. Okay. Car guy. Well, you know, I'm looking for a new one. I thought you loved your, I thought you loved your mini.

I do, but you know, there are some changes occurring in my life later this year and something a little safer and sturdier without the go-kart handling, which is a lot of fun. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Go then get a Volvo. Oh no. We'll talk about Volvos in a second. But what I do want to talk about is, uh, this article on tech crunch about AI learns and recreates Nobel winning physics experiment.

Okay. So these guys threw an AI onto basically, I mean, I'm still like, my head is trying to get wrapped around this. The experiment was about the creation of a Bose Einstein, uh, condensate, which is a hyper cold gas in a process, which, uh, like a couple of physicists, one in one, the Nobel prize for in 2001.

Um, it involves using directed radiation to slow a group of atoms nearly to a standstill producing all manner of interesting effects. Well, the AI decided that it was going to try a bunch of different things and turned out it did it better than the humans. Well, that's not surprising.

Yeah. So, and if you look at these guys, they look like they're like in an eighties, you know, uh, electric band in the photo in front of their, uh, you know, their lasers and their experiment. It's kind of like a real genius moment, but with nerds, if they had the flower pot things on their heads, they'd be Devo.

They would be very, they would not be men. They would be Devo. Yeah. So you have to go look at the picture and the link will be in the show notes, but this is, you know, we'll talk about AI a little bit more later, but this is kind of scary that these guys are actually doing this in the lab. Cause what if the AI decides to do some, you know, something with nobody's around that causes the lab to, I don't know, explode.

That's a, I got a big article about that later as well. So yeah. Um, Amazon is, uh, we've talked a little bit about the Amazon basics for like cabling and things like that and how they're way cheaper than Apple's iPhone cables and stuff like that. And they're just as good. I'm looking around my, my room right now.

I've got an Amazon basics, a camera bag. I have seven, uh, hard drive cases. And if you go down into my kitchen, my entire dishware set is Amazon basics now. Yeah. I've got, uh, I've got quite a lot of Amazon basics sitting around for electronics at the moment. I haven't quite gotten anywhere else.

And, you know, to a certain degree, we're creating this hell for ourselves about the world basically being Amazon eyes, but they're rolling out everything now. They're basically said, you know what to hell with every other, every other business and every other retailer in the world. Amazon basics is moving into basically private labeling.

Groceries, uh, kids stuff, diapers. I mean, everything. See, the thing is, I mean, you know, idiocracy is coming. So they, they thought it was Walmart, you know, but, um, or Mike judge thought it was Walmart. So there's a great Walmart in, in idiocracy, but it turns out it's just going to be Amazon.

Amazon. Yeah. So they've got a label called happy belly, which is for their food and mama bear, which is for all the kids stuff. And they're going to undercut the hell out of everyone. They're using the, you know, Uber and Lyft model and, uh, basically drive everybody else out of business. And, uh, the whole world will be Amazon.

There you go. That's how it's going to work. There you go. We're done. So, uh, now getting back to, uh, getting back to Volvo, uh, Google veterans head off on their own to work on self-driving trucks. No joy. This is, this is interesting because, um, former employees of Google, Apple, Tesla, cruise automation, and others 40 in total have formed a new San Francisco based company called auto auto.

I get it. I get it. It's a play on auto using the German name auto. Oh, T T O not a U T O. Yes. So what they want to do though, is they don't want to make their own trucks, right? They want to make kits that can be installed in trucks. And every time I think about this, I go back to that Simpsons episode where Homer figured it out.

Look, I've seen enough myth busters when Grant would always do the automation systems in the trucks and they never worked right. Now I'm just saying. Yeah. But, uh, the guys behind this are, uh, the lead for Google maps and, uh, Google maps always works great.

It works pretty well. Uh, pretty well is not enough when it's a 40 ton truck. That's a lot more, it's a lot heavier than 40 tons, but, and, uh, Anthony Lewandowski, uh, of the Google self-driving car team, plus people from Apple, Tesla and this other place.

So, but they're testing it out right now on the Volvo VNL seven 80, but they want to, they want it to work with all class eight trucks, which is, which are the largest and heaviest trucks on American roads. And they're only working on highway right now. So they're saying that, yes, you still need a human in the cab to do city driving, loading and unloading.

So, and then I go to think about, uh, lost in space where they're getting ready to go into their hyperdrive and the monkey presses the button. That's it. Yep. Pretty much. Uh, but you know, these trucks could really, uh, get a boost if they go with Google's new patented sticky car hood.

So if you get run over by an automated truck, you get stuck to the hood. Yeah. I saw that. It's an interesting concept. It's like, Oh, I'm sorry. We hit you and now we're not going to let you go. Yeah. Yeah. So what they, what they're proposing is kind of like an eggshell covering to the car.

So it's not always sticky because that would be kind of gross. Yeah. I can't even imagine what that. Yeah. The Midwest in the summer, man, it would just be, it'd just be a mosquito trap, but Hey, maybe that would get rid of the Zika virus if we all just had our cars slurping up mosquitoes everywhere.

Anyway. Yeah. It's an interesting patent. I don't know if it'll ever see the light of day, but you know, they're thinking about things like this, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. I agree. Um, we've talked a lot about the home automation stuff, the, your, your nests and, and, you know, just, uh, wiring up your entire house. And there's a great article on Vox about why robots and smart technology aren't revolutionized revolutionizing your house.

Um, it's too much from their users, too little value in return. I mean, I think I've been screaming about this the whole time. How difficult is it to take care of certain things? Yeah. And putting in these systems that cost a lot more money than just the standard things that we're used to isn't worth it.

And that's why these companies are starting to realize that they're not making the money and Google's looking at their nest investment going, huh, I don't know about this because adding a smart thermostat doesn't add a lot of value to me, especially here in California. Yeah. Well, here, yeah, even, even here, it doesn't because, you know, I can go by a $30 thermometer or whatever it is downstairs and, and I can program it.

I put two double a batter or triple a batteries in the back and then I can program it to do exactly what I want all week long. Yeah. And smart light bulbs are cute for about a week. And after that, who cares? Um, how often are you going to make all your light bulbs go blue to red to green cycling back and forth unless you're throwing raves in your house?

No, I tell you what though, they are nice at night. I will give them that when you can change the hue from blue to an orange. So you don't get the blue light at night. It's kind of nice. My friend has, has hues all over his house and he complains about it all the time because he has to keep reprogramming them, which I'm laughing at. See, again, it's too much.

When they work, when they work, it's nice. Yeah. But they don't work consistently. Yeah. And one of the things that they go through the most is talk about the most is the Rumba because that's probably the most well-known and certainly the most, uh, ubiquitous of these technologies. And it's just people complaining about it's not, it's not, it's not all it's promised to be.

It doesn't just run by itself. There's constant maintenance, constant reprogramming. They break down all the time. They're just not worth it. I had a Rumba and they suck. Yeah. Not literally. No, well, no, they don't. That is half the problem. It's like the little tray to, you know, which is akin to the vacuum bag on it is so small.

It can do like half a room. And if you've got a, like a pet that sheds done, cause I had cats when I had my Rumba and it would get halfway through the kitchen and it would be full. And then it would just move dirt around for the next like two hours. Yeah. It moves dirt around. Just what I wanted. Yeah. Oh yeah.

So, and now that I have a house, you know, it's like, it is easier to just vacuum and get it done. It takes 10 minutes. You're done. It's easier. And I, there's something Zen about vacuuming anyways. There is, there is. I, I, I don't mind it. I don't mind sweeping either, which is also very Zen. I had to buy two brooms this week and I've been sweeping.

Um, and, and in talking about sweeping up things, automatic has swept up the rights to dot blog. Okay. That was one of my worst transitions ever. I was working on it. It was pretty. Yeah. They paid $19 million to buy the rights for the domain dot blog.

Are you insane? That's actually, that's actually not. It's not bad. All right. Nobody gives a crap about domain names anymore. Uh, I beg to differ. I beg to differ. How are you doing selling all those domain names that you collected over the years? All minor.com. So I'm almost done selling everything I had and I've made a pretty good profit on those.

So, uh, the, the new, uh, you know, all the crazy new TLDs, these guys are still making money on it because I, here's, here's the thing. They're making money on the speculators who are buying up the domains. So at that point, all you need is $19 million worth of speculators to come in and buy a bunch of dot blogs.

And then everything after that is profit. Right. So it's a, it's a decent, it's a decent business to be in, but you know, for WordPress dot blog makes sense for them to own. I mean, honestly, it makes sense for them. Sell the hosting. So, yeah. I said that was a no brainer and they went through a, uh, another company to actually do the bidding and the auction.

So nobody knew it was automatic because automatic's worth, you know, a gazillion dollars. They're like, Oh, WordPress is, is, is kicking in on it. Let's, uh, yeah, let's, let's rack, rack that up a bit. But there's an interesting article in venture beat with Matt Mullenweg where he talks about why they did it.

So that'll be also linked in the show notes. Very cool. Uh, if you bought concert tickets in the last, oh, say 20 years, you're probably going to be getting a class action settlement checks and some rebates and things like that, which is nice. Uh, Red Bull also didn't, uh, all these people, all these big companies, basically the only way you can ever get back on this class action lawsuits.

Uh, so ticket master finally lost theirs. So for at least a decade now, uh, you're, you're entitled to some, uh, some refunds there and Red Bull settlement checks are also going out because they don't give you wings. Um, I know, which is, I mean, that's bullshit though. That one honestly, that is the Red Bull one is insane because that is an abuse of the system.

It's obviously just a marketing campaign and it's a slogan. And of course it doesn't give you wings, but chicken master, fuck them. And I agree with this. It's all the stupid different little ways that they nickel and dimed you on everything. Oh, they didn't nickel and dime you. They, they dollared. Yeah, they hung you upside down over the balcony and took everything you had.

This is like a $24 concert ticket. There'd be $18 in fees. Yeah. So you're going to get some of that back now. However, companies have gotten wise to this, and this is probably the last of its kind because now everybody in their TNCs include the fact that include arbitration agreements. So you can no longer, uh, you agree to waive any right to a jury trial or participate in a class action lawsuit for basically everyone now.

So companies have gotten wise and this is it. So let's have a class action lawsuit against every company in the world that says you cannot put that you cannot be part of a class action lawsuit in your terms and conditions. I think we should, because I think it's ridiculous that they get out of that. That's total bullshit.

It is. It is total bullshit. And the fact that Ticketmaster only got dinged for like, what, $380 million? It's just nothing. It's nothing. No, they took billions out of our pockets for those crappy fees. Assholes. Yeah, I agree. Uh, artificial intelligence doubling back.

We probably should have organized these stories a bit better, but we didn't. Um, there's a great article in Salon that actually kind of wraps up why we need to fear our new robot overlords or artificial intelligence. And it's not for the reason you think it isn't the robot in the lab that decides to, you know, blow it up just for fun.

It's the Bose Einstein condensate. Yeah. It's just the geographic or geographic. Um, oh God, why am I forgetting the word I need geometric explosion of how quickly they think and how rapidly that they would advance and what that could and may mean when they just, uh, it's basically, you have to get everything right.

The exact first time you can't slot in the three robotic laws later. They have to be in place right away because it will just explode and, uh, you get one shot. Right. Yeah. As soon as you, as soon as you hit enter and it starts running, as soon as the monkey pushes the button, if you did not get everything absolutely right, we will all be dead.

Yeah. And just because, yeah, I was saying, uh, just the timeframe that it works in is so like, we are so slow compared to how computers can think. Yeah. So yeah, if we screw up, we screw up bad. Yeah. It's a really, really good article about it.

And, uh, I was fascinated by it. I was, I, you know, I was like, ah, here's another one, but I read it and I'm just like, you know what? You can make a lot of valid points in there. It's just, it is one of the best articles I've ever read wrapping up the whole thinking behind this. So a link is in the show notes. I highly recommend you read it.

Yes, I did. And I, I highly recommend it as well. And I'm going to go pick it. I'd never finished that book. Super intelligence. It came out in 2014, which is what a lot of people are basing their fear of AI on. Yeah. Um, I need to read that. I got to get on that one. But what I also, uh, don't need to get on roadie.

It's like Uber for shipping. Oh, okay. Uh huh. It's another, another, it's not a ride sharing service. It's a crap sharing service. So you say, Hey, uh, can you go pick up, uh, widget a and bring it to point B and it'll do the matching and say, Hey, Oh, Joe's going from, you know, point a where widget a is and going to point B.

I can pick that up and drop it off for you. I think this is funny because roadie.com, which is their website, uh, that used to be a turnkey service for bands for, to create crappy little apps so they could have an app. And I guess they went out of business. Must've gone out of business. Yes. Well, I expect something else to be at roadie.com in the near future.

Exactly. And, uh, you know, maybe roadie.blog is available. Hey, maybe I'll pay 1 million for that. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors.

Security. We've got another hack of the week or hack of the day. As it were, um, we haven't done one in a little bit because not that there hasn't been hacks. I just haven't bothered to care. Uh, there's so many. We just don't care anymore.

There's so many. We just don't care anymore. Uh, LinkedIn got hit for 117 million emails and passwords. Now the path passwords are all, um, obfuscated as it were, but I believe is the term you're looking for. Yes, but it's not, uh, all that difficult to undo that these days.

So yeah, well, it depends on, depends on the hashing algorithm. Did they use SHA-1 or did they do, uh, MD5? Uh, that has not been released to us yet, but you can find out if you go to the dark web and you can buy it or, uh, there, uh, let's see about five Bitcoin, which is currently around 2,200 bucks and you can get all 117 names.

Great. I'm going to go check my LinkedIn password. Yeah. Which is unfortunate. You know, I should just cancel my LinkedIn account. I am never going to use it again. I honestly don't understand why I'm on it either. Um, the other thing that I found funny about this story and the story came from motherboard, which is under vice and usually they do a really good job, but I'm going to say if you're going to start, it's our series called another day, another hack.

Um, you should probably have more than two articles. Okay. Yeah. Shouldn't you update this basically every day if it's called another day, another hack? Pretty much. That should be, that should be a daily, daily show. Yeah. They don't do that. There's two from the last year. Not good.

Not good. An interesting one I found, um, cause I haven't been on the security beat. You know why? It's been depressing me. So, uh, I, after, after talking about all this stuff so long, I'm just like, you know what? We're all screwed. Anyway, uh, tell you that in the first episode.

Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now I'm in the suburbs where it's like the fifties and I like, it's like, leave it to beaver town. I just want to be happy and stuff like that. Right. Yeah. That ain't ever going to work. Um, especially since I get yelled at by, uh, drunken teenagers every Friday night now, which is great.

Awesome. Yep. Hidden microphones exposed as part of government surveillance program in the Bay area. What the FBI was doing was bugging bus shelters. Why? Uh, because, uh, uh, they were doing it outside the Oakland courthouse where they were trying to, uh, prove that these real estate investors were up to shenanigans.

So, and these guys took the bus, so they thought that they, they could just go and bug the shelter and record everything. No, you can't do that. No, no, you can't do that. You need authorization from, you know, I don't know, maybe, uh, a judge to do that kind of thing.

And also, I mean, I've seen the wire, I know how this shit works, but, uh, yeah. So they're trying to get, get it thrown out right now, but yeah, it's like if you're having a private conversation, even if you're in public, there is a reasonable, you know, expectation of privacy.

Is there, I mean, this is going to be a real issue because of the drone thing. Um, you know, we can get mad at the government and the, you know, the feds for doing this, but, uh, people record people all the time now and throw it up online and there doesn't seem to be much going on about that. So I think we need some stricter rules about this put in place.

Yeah. Yeah. We've got a couple of recording things coming up, but speaking of the drone thing, uh, Gizmodo has an interesting article about this drone that can land on walls and ceilings to save battery life, but still keep recording while it's like, or waiting out the storm or whatnot, but it could just, you know, sitting in a bus station.

Yeah. They could have just landed a drone on the roof and, or underneath the roof and it would have stuck to the top. And then when it was done, it could have flown home. Yeah. This is getting scary. Yeah. Uh, I'm just like, if you would have had this one, it would attach itself to your face. It would have. I found some of the footage.

I found some of the footage from that. It was pretty, pretty sad. Uh, but yeah, this thing is, um, I, you know, the guys who are making this stuff have the best intentions at heart. I wish they would just be a little bit more malevolent when they're thinking about it.

Malevolent. Yes. No. In their thinking, like, think about, yes. So they could see what the nasty parts of what, like, think like a malevolent person would with the technology. So we're going back to like Oppenheimer here. Something like that. Yeah. You know, it's like, think about what you're making before you make it, but you know, they could go back to say, well, somebody is going to make it.

It might as well be me. I get the patent and then I get rich and cha-ching profit. But these, these kids nowadays, but yeah, it's, it's an interesting, I mean, it works. Thing will just land and fly, you know, like land on a wall and fly away or land on the ceiling and fly away.

But yeah. So you're going to sit in suburbia and instead of screaming, get off my lawn, you're going to say, get your drone off my wall. Exactly. Get your, there's your title. Get your drone off my wall. Um, but it's, it's, it's a cool video. Go watch it. And then just be scared for about five years when that's part of every drone, like, you know, commercial drones payload.

It's like, Oh yeah, I can land anywhere and it'll be the size of like a coaster and they're just everywhere recording everything. Ah, yeah. Well, you know, we've talked about all the, the Edward Snowden stuff ad nauseum.

And all the, the hacks and the spying and all the data breaches and all that stuff. Well, it turns out, um, a study was done and it shows that it has finally gotten to the general public and people are staying offline more. I don't believe it.

I, I, I called bullshit on this study. I don't know a single person that has scaled back their internet usage. We can't even get people to use one password. They haven't stopped looking at porn. Here's the thing though. I mean, we normally talk about scientific surveys and things like that, where they have just a, a, the sample size is so small that it's, you know, useless.

This is a 41,000 home survey. So it's not a, it's not an insignificant data point and people are scaling back their use of financial data on the web, um, shopping. It's, it's, it's interesting. So, you know, we'll keep an eye on it, but it's, this is the first study that I think has been done in a, in a while since all that stuff has happened.

Cause you know, you look at John Oliver going on the streets and everybody's like, who's Edward Snowden. But you know, that's entertainment, right? That's a completely different thing. They're telling, they're crafting a story there to tell the story that they want you to hear. This is an actual study that was done and 41,000 homes is not a small sample size.

Look, I'd like it to be true because the only way that people are going to start doing things in a better way is, is hurting them where it counts, their pocketbooks. So if people stop using the services, then all of a sudden they'll go, huh, well, maybe we should put some more security in here, or maybe we should not sell people's email addresses, or maybe we should be more plain and obvious about what it is we do.

So people know. Yeah. You know, the more, the merrier when it comes to the security. So I'm with you on that one. Yep.

Comment of the week. I want to give a shout out to a friend of the show, Michael Tomal. It was really nice to meet you. He dropped in at my regular pub trivia cause he's out here in Santa Monica visiting. So cool to meet you. Cool. Did you hook him up with a place to stay? Cause he hit me up and I was just like, ah, talk to Brian.

I don't know Santa Monica. I don't go to that shithole. I sent him some suggestions. I don't know where he ended up landing. I know it was out in this area. So, and he hit me up the other day too, cause his wife likes wine and Fins does not do good wine. Oh God, they do terrible wine. I gave some other suggestions. Yeah.

What do you want? Red or white or pink? Those are our, those are our wine suggestions. With flies or without. Everything at Fins has flies. It's so disgusting. So Seth Miranda, friend of the show and, uh, co-host of the Grime Life podcast, uh, tweeted to us, what do you think about the new quote unquote fan verification Comic-Con is requiring?

And he sent me a screen grab on the phone the other day and it was really hard to read. So I finally had to squint and read it, but what they're doing with New York, uh, New York City Comic-Con is requiring people to fill out a form that says you're a fan or not.

I don't know what, what's in this form because he didn't actually give me a link. It was a screen cap. So I couldn't actually look at the form, but it's, it's what the flying fuck? I don't have a problem with this. Why? I actually think it's quite smart. It's, it's double auth verification.

This is not two factor. This is, this is ridiculous. You've got to tickets to these things sell out instantly against scalpers and all that sort of thing. It's almost impossible to get tickets these days for people that are really into it. So why not include an extra step where you have to be aware of what's going on ahead of time?

Cause no scalpers like comics. Come on, Jason, the shit sells out every year, all the time. So now you're just, if they would have had this for the cure ticket sales, I would have been thrilled. I wouldn't have had such a hard time getting tickets.

I don't have a problem with this. I think it's, it's kind of interesting. People are exploring different ways to get around the fact that it's difficult. Everybody wants to go to everything these days. It's all about the experiences and everything sells out. So, and not always to the people that would really like to be going.

So I got, I don't really have a problem with this. I don't see what the issue is. Okay. It's just, it's, it's weird. It's weird. How, no, it is weird. We haven't, I mean, the thing is we haven't seen the form. That's the part where the, you know, we're, we're just assuming that it's, well, I'm assuming that it's just like, is, are they, is it like a trivia contest where you have to name like all like seven Star Trek captains before you can get a ticket?

I don't think it's going to be anything like that. I mean, maybe it is. And that would be interesting and quite funny. I just feel like this is a pre-registration. Okay. Yeah. If, so, if you're listening to the, listening to this, send us this form, if you filled it out or can give us the content of it so we can talk about it next week, because I'm really curious, not curious enough to get off my ass and go find the form.

So if you want to send it to us, I am Jason at grumpy old geeks.com or send it to podcast at grumpy old geeks.com. And Brian and I will both check it out and then we will, we will talk about it next week. Exactly. Yeah. I would, I would love to look at it, but for me, it just feels like it's a pre-reg, which I'm totally okay with. You mentioned Jason Bryant earlier, who also somewhat tweeted us.

He, he kind of ripped off our, our little slogan for pay our Patreon links, let the bandwidth flow, but he gave us credit for it. Yeah. And he misquoted us too. So it's called the bandwidth must flow. The bandwidth must flow. It's like the spice must flow. If you've read Dune like 18 fucking times, like Brian has, you would know that, but that's true.

And no, no, no. The best one of the week is the grand tour. We, we talked about it last week and I, I shit a brick when I opened my email up and I saw the thing say, Oh, the grand tour replied to your tweet.

I'm like, dude, dude, dude, what? So would you like to read the tweet, Brian? Oh no, go ahead. GOG podcast relieved. We got off easier than the new Instagram logo. And don't worry. We'll let you know when it's on. Now I, I, I am very happy about this.

However, there's no way it's Clarkson or Hammond or may because they would never use a smiley face. So thank you. Amazon employees who are doing social media for the grand tour. Exactly. You know what? We've made fun of the interns who are doing social media, but I didn't care. I still got, I still got my fan chubby from that one.

That was the coolest thing ever. Yes. It was very nice of them. It was, it was pretty cool. So, uh, we also got some iTunes reviews, a five-star review. Great podcast by skater. Three, two, one, two, three, one. Sorry. Uh, these guys rock. I really enjoyed listening to the show. It's got a little bit of everything and it isn't boring, at least most of the time.

And it makes my work days go by faster. I do have a question for them though. How do you feel about 50 K headphones from Sennheiser? Uh, thanks for the, uh, slap and the kiss. The slap and the kiss. I'm glad we're not boring most of the time. Okay. Uh, uh, Hey, if you got 50 K to blow on headphones, more power to you, Kanye.

Yeah, seriously. So that's about how I feel about that. I, I can't justify spending more than $200 on a pair of headphones, considering 99% of the time you're listening to relatively low quality streams. Yeah. No, a hundred bucks is my upper limit. You know, after, after getting burnt so many times with Shure headphones, cause their, their cables sucked and the cables would always break, you know, I, and I've lost, well, actually Brian, do you have your whiskey ready?

Oh, fuck. My dog drank, uh, or not my dog drank. Yeah, my dog comma drink, um, ate my Apple headphones, which I loved. I finally loved the new Apple earbuds and she ate them. So I've been using my Sennheisers, the really nice ones that we talk about on the show all the time, um, for walking around outside.

I do not recommend wearing those for outdoor use. You cannot hear anything. That's exactly why I wear them around Santa Monica. Oh, I know. I just, I need to be able to hear like, you know, everything when I'm outside. The Apple earbuds, you can at least hear like, you know, the ambience around you, those things you are in your own bubble and that's, that's dangerous.

Your situational awareness is shot to shit. You can't tell what's going on around you. Um, I do not recommend this for outdoor use. So at some point I'll have to get a new one, but I'm not going to spend 15,000 or $50,000 for headphones. No, no, no, no. And I don't even know any rock stars that would.

Yeah. Seriously. Okay. We've got another five-star review from RB 1195, an incredibly fun, intelligent, and informative show by two awesome guys who make tech news fun to listen to. Keep up the great work. We'll try. We will try. And hopefully we will only be boring some of the time.

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 grumpyoldgeeks.com where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, or better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air. If you have friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review.

They really do help us out. It'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes, and it'll take you right there. At the library. Jason just asked me what I thought about the book during the break, and I realized that I probably shouldn't be saying anything until he hit record.

I should maybe hit record before I ask you what you thought of the book. I finished the Fuller Memorandum, which is the Laundry Files Book 3 by Charlie Strauss. Like I said last time, I'll stick with it. The series is getting better as I go deeper in. I really enjoyed it a lot, but I do feel like I need to take a break from the world and read something else before I go into number four.

Yeah, don't go like whole hog. You don't have to binge. It's no deal. Oh, kiss my ass. I finished Originals, which I talked about before. How Nonconformists Move the World by Adam Grant, who is a Wharton professor. The youngest tenured Wharton professor, by the way.

Had an amazing conversation with him on The Art of Charm yesterday, which will be coming out in about a week. When that comes out, I'll throw some links in the notes. But it's an amazing book. I love this book. It's like Malcolm Gladwell if he had a brain and did research. What?

Yeah. Okay. Honestly, I don't like Malcolm Gladwell because half of his stuff is just schlocky half science. You know, if you look at outliers, all that stuff's half been debunked at this point. Even the people who did the study that he pulled from said that, yeah, that's not really what we meant, you know?

So, but this guy is the real deal. And it's a really good book. Okay. Now, for next week, I have something that is really, really, you know, we talked last week about how there's the new Terry Pratchett coming out with the Long Earth series. Yep. Can't wait. There's a new Vorkosigan series book by Lois McMaster Bujold.

I've been trying to get you to read it. You weren't into it, but I am still a huge fan of the series. And there's a new one out that I missed because I stopped checking out Goodreads. And like you said before, many times, it's like, how do you find out when your authors put out a new book? Follow them on Amazon.

That is the single best way I've discovered so far. Yeah, I have to do that. And I also... Because Amazon's taken over the world anyways. Amazon owns Goodreads too. So I just signed up for... I didn't sign up. I re-established my Goodreads account and started putting in all the books I've read, but I've got like 500 books that I have to get up to speed with that.

But Gentleman Joel and the Red Queen is the latest in the Vorkosigan series. And next week, I will definitely have a review of that one because I thought the series was done because she hates writing these because they're very hard for her to write. They're very hard for me to read. I see.

I love them. I don't know why you don't like them. I don't know, man. I don't know. I just can't get into it. Hey, if... Yeah, I mean, if it doesn't float your boat, it doesn't float your boat. That's fine. You know, I can't read the Gunslinger series, so to each their own. That's what makes it fun. But if you're into the Vorkosigan series and you haven't heard that there's a new book out, there is.

And we'll be right back. But now, a word from our sponsors. Software, apps, and gadgets. I have to apologize when we start the segment here, or if you could hear it in the last segment.

A fleet of trucks has just moved onto my street and are chopping trees down, and there are wood choppers everywhere. Wood chippers, as they would say in Fargo, everywhere. So if you can hear a little background hum, I apologize. It's just, you know, we live in the suburbs and we have trees.

You live in the suburbs. Well, we, me and my dog, Frank. So anyway, Waverly Labs has debuted what they call The Pilot, which is an in-ear translator that uses your phone and earbuds and microphones to translate in real-time different languages.

How real-time? Looks like it's pretty damn real-time. Watch the video. I posted a link in the show notes. They called it The Pilot, though. Yeah. This is what pisses me off about this. Okay. If you're going to stick something in your ear that can translate multiple languages, it's got to be fucking called a babblefish.

Except for this thing called copyright, and that they would have had to pay for it. Pay for it. Pay for the rights to babblefish. Period. Yes. Drives me nuts. People, come on. This is the biggest missed opportunity in marketing in the history of the world.

If this thing works like it should, but maybe it doesn't. Maybe they did go to Douglas Adams' estate and said, hey, we want to call this the babblefish, and they say, well, it kind of sucks, so no. We're not going to let you use it. We need something that works. Another thing that I had to deal with this week is really bad HTML editors in the web.

If you're typing something and you hit delete or backspace on the PC keyboard, most browsers will take that as an invitation to take you back a page, which I don't understand. I cannot stand it. Firefox does it.

Chrome does it. So if you're in the middle of typing something and you just want to delete a few characters, boom, you're back to the previous page. You go forward. Everything you wrote is gone. Can't stand it. So there's an article in laptopmag.com with a bunch of different add-ons that will let you disable that feature.

And if that's ever happened to you, I highly recommend you check it out. I will. UPS is in the news. Everybody wants to know where their shit is. Yeah. That's about it. Because I'm tired of the eight-hour delivery windows.

Oh, man. Yeah. Did I tell you about Comcast and getting internet in my house? The guy showed up at, like, I had an appointment from 5 to 7. He showed up at 4.59 and texted me from the front door and said, I'll be there in one minute. And the minute was him walking from the truck to the front door.

And he was here at 5 o'clock on the nose. I'm like, wow. So now. It must have been his first stop of the day. It was 5 in the afternoon. It obviously couldn't have been, but. No, you never know. So UPS has now rolled out a MyChoice service that enables, because UPS MyChoice is the service that you sign up, the free service that gives you text messages and lets you do, like, deeper tracking.

I am signed up for that. Yes, I am, too. I love it. It's actually been fairly reliable, surprisingly. Now you can track that thing soup to nuts from when I think it's made to when it gets to your front door. It's pretty cool. And hat tip of a friend of the show, Shea, for bringing this one up.

But did you check it out yet? Yeah, I looked at it a little bit. I haven't gotten anything coming through UPS, so I won't be able to actually use it yet. But it's pretty cool. If it works, I'm happy. If it works. That's the thing. If it works. If it works. Speaking of things, we were talking about, you know, surveillance previously in the bus stops and how everybody's recording everything everywhere.

Yep. Have you seen Capture with a K? Well, I did after you put it in the show notes, and I can't believe this is a thing. It's got to be illegal. So, what it is, is it's a wearable. Yep. So, this is, you know, a wearable technology. And you can mix and match your colors.

Mm-hmm. This thing is just ambient recording all the time. But when you want to save, like, the last minute of your conversation, you just tap it, and it will save it for you. Yeah, 60-second loop that it runs through. And then you can edit and publish clips that are spelled K-L-I-P-S with a Capture Audio app.

Well, maybe you'll be a convict with a K, because in a lot of states, it is illegal for you to record a conversation without the other person knowing that you're recording it, especially in California. Yeah. I mean, technically, Jason, when you start recording, you should be telling me. Well, I think that there's an implied consent since you called me.

Oh, that's true. Oh, wait. No, there isn't. You actually have to say that. You know what? You actually technically legally do. They should actually sell this as a package with a T-shirt that basically just says, I am recording you. You give consent. You know what I saw today?

It's the coolest thing. I'm driving to go get my new lawnmower. There's this truck that looks like a Brinks truck, but it is a, it's just like specialized canine tactical unit for the police. Yeah. And on this, on all sides of that truck, it said, this area is under constant surveillance.

Yeah. So, and I always wanted to have a T-shirt that said, you are being recorded. I think you should. I think we need to market. I think we have a, we have a product. I think we should Kickstarter it because Capture came from Kickstarter. It's Kickstarter our T-shirt that tells people they're constantly being recorded. Now, let me just run through some of the things that they have on here.

I'm looking through their, you know, the standard bullshit Kickstarter product webpage here with the scrolly pictures of very happy, shiny people smiling. Happy, shiny people. I'm a musician and I'm always looking for samples in daily life, whether it's a quote or sound effect or just a random idea on the fly, but you cannot use people talking without their permission.

You will have to get, go back and get permission for that. And, you know, if you do it without, they can sue you. And, uh, you'll owe them money. Um, uh, this, this other mom just, uh, records, uh, stupid shit. His kid, her kid says, and puts that up to embarrass him later on in life.

And we found that, uh, yeah, the, the jury is still kind of out on whether kids can sue their parents as soon as they become of age. Yep. Yep. And, uh, this guy uses it in business meetings, probably without telling other people that he's doing that. Uh, this, uh, Tom has a friend with such a quick wit that he never knows what she's going to say next so he can replay some of the awesome moments we have together.

Oh, that's called stealing jokes. I think, uh, it's also kind of pathetic that you just go home and re-listen to conversations you had. That's very stalkery. I bet he, yeah, I bet he's wearing lipstick when he does that. Okay. Next. What else we got? I'm done with them. Uh, yeah. So here's the deal capture.

Uh, yeah, your, your model is kind of creepy. That's all I got to say. And probably illegal. Yeah, that's definitely, I mean, it's the device itself is not illegal, but, uh, most usage scenarios are illegal. Yeah. That's like, you know, I wear the new grumpy old geek shirt that says you are constantly being recorded and monitored.

Yes. You are under constant surveillance. Yes. Uh, and my little bit for, for software apps and gadgets, I'm actually calling out for some help here. Uh, fuck into it. Fuck. Dude, I, that was, I was so worried about this when you said you were switching to Mac and you're a QuickBooks user. I'm like, oh no, this is going to be the one thing that he's going to have a problem with.

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. It was a total and utter nightmare. I'm sick of all these finance. I'm sick of into it anyways. I'm sick of the built-in obsolescence that they do. I'm sick of that. Sick of it. Sick of it. Uh, the new version of QuickBooks online is a complete and utter piece of shit. Oh my God. It's a travesty of software development.

It's horrible. And the, the process of getting my stuff over, I was smart enough to like do a full backup of everything from my windows thing, uh, only to find out that actually I have to back it up in a different format. And then, so I had to go get a PC laptop from someone and install QuickBooks as a trial to then do the export that would go to QuickBooks online, which really that didn't work well at all anyways.

And I had to spend four hours basically going in and cleaning up the mess of that import just to get QuickBooks online kind of working, which will then cost me $10 a month. And then last night while I was working on it out of service, we're sorry, but the QuickBooks online is currently not available and it was down for like three hours.

So thanks all the assholes. Um, yeah, I could, I mean, I honestly, I, I, I really thought about this when you were talking about switching over full time. I'm like, Oh shit, he's QuickBooks. He's fucked. Well, I mean, there's, I need Mac people out there that run their own businesses.

What do you use? I need a decent business financial package. I do not want to pay a monthly fee. I'd rather just buy a damn app and keep it on my computer. That's where I want it. I don't want it in the cloud. Anyways. See, I pay a bookkeeper. Anyways. Have you tried FreshBooks?

Uh, FreshBooks. Yes. I looked at them, but the charges get too high. If you send more than five invoices a month, it's like you end up paying like 20 bucks a month for it. And I kind of want to avoid that model. I hate that model. I don't want a subscription model for financial software. I think you might end up being fucked then.

I don't think I have a choice anymore. You know what you can do? Run parallels and then run QuickBooks inside of parallels under your Windows VM. Yeah, that's, that's a lot of work. Anyways. Well, it works at least, you know. I mean, for, yeah, for my business stuff, I'd prefer not to be in the cloud.

I'm starting to realize there's no choice anyways. I have tried out something that I'm doing for Quicken replacement, which is just my personal finances. Uh, personal capital.com seems to be pretty damn cool. It's free. They run under the model that they offer additional services that you would pay for.

Uh, it's primarily, I mean, it does all your general banking and stuff, but they've got a heavy focus on investments. Um, and that's a lot where their upsells are, you know, will help you with your, with your portfolios, et cetera, et cetera. So far, personal capital.com has been fantastic. And I, I don't think I'm going to go back to Quicken at all.

I think I'm just going to use these guys. They've got apps for your iPad and your iPhone and your Androids, or you can just go to the website on your desktop where they still haven't gone to a hamburger navigation yet. So thank you. Give them time. Give them time. My friend, give them time. Yeah, I would recommend if you're looking for something for, for your basic personal finances, personal capital.com seems pretty cool.

And if anybody out there has any ideas and thoughts on decent, uh, business financial packages that will be QuickBooks online, which would basically, you could beat QuickBooks online with a stick. It would work better. Um, you know, ideas, they've never been good. They've never been friends of the max.

Intuit has always been a cluster F anyways. And it's, I've just gotten to the point where it's completely unusable. Did you just say cluster F? I was, yeah, it was a clean segment for the kids. Yeah. The kids who are talking about their financial future. Great. Exactly. Yes.

Media candy. Title is back in the news. Mm-hmm. So that little kerfuffle with Kanye is like, oh, my album is only going to be on title forever. Yeah. Lying. Yeah. Lying sack of shit.

Uh, so, uh, there's a $5 million client. Class action lawsuit. So apparently title hasn't fixed their TOC yet. Uh, yes, apparently they left out that whole bit. So, uh, there, this may be one last class action lawsuit. Unfortunately, I didn't pay for it. So I'm not getting any money. Here's the thing though.

The people who are in the lawsuit, it's not just about, um, getting their money back. They want to make sure that title deletes all of their personal information. So they cannot like sell to them in the future. Oh, well, good luck with that. Yeah. You know, I mean, I'm sorry.

There are databases kicking around from everybody everywhere, all on the dark web and everywhere else. Why would you think there's so much spam? This is never going to get to. It's just a lever that they're trying to use to move the boulder of title. I mean, that's honestly it. You know, some lawyer came up with it. The boulder of title. Yeah. I like that. I think that's a good title too.

We're coming up with a couple different ones. Uh, the Mr. Robot season two trailer has been released. Now we talked a lot about Mr. Robot when it ended and how it ended and how it was basically just fight club where the world blows up and the financial systems go away. And the really interesting thing being, well, what the hell are they going to do after that?

There's a reason fight club ended where it did. Uh, looks to me from the trailer, they're just ignoring that that all happened. As far as I could tell. No, I didn't take that away from the trailer at all. Okay. I, the whole thing is that, you know, they even had the president, Mr. Obama say, or president Obama saying, you know, this is the hacker group that's ruining the world.

And there's a scene at the end of the trailer that is from the end of fight club directly from the end of fucking fight club. And I'm just like, you know what, dude, I, I want Chuck Fallon to get a class action lawsuit against the assholes that wrote Mr. Robot.

Honestly. Uh, no, I mean, having, cause I wouldn't, I want them to pay for my time that I spent watching Mr. Robot because I, I am pissed off at that show. I love the first couple episodes, but like, you know, halfway to two thirds through, I'm just like, ah, gotcha.

I know. Yeah. We talked a great length about that. I'm invested enough to at least give it a go. I'll watch the first couple episodes and see how it's going to go. Yeah. You know, yeah, it is what it is. Uh, it is what it is. Uh, it, you know, yeah, it's something so directly marketed to us and done so wrong that to piss us all off so much.

Yeah. You know what? I'll just have a, have a cocktail and just scream at the screen. You know, I'm like, you stole that from there. You stole that from there. You stole that. Maybe that'll be it. That's the new podcast. It'll be called. You stole that. You're going to reenact my watching the very last episode of Battlestar Galactica. Yes, exactly. Throwing the bottle of whiskey at the TV.

Yeah. And so I need a lot of TVs and a lot of whiskey. So please go to patreon.com slash G-O-G and donate so we can buy TV and whiskeys. Yes. Um, Trainspotting 2 is now filming. Hit late. No, I think it's perfect. Nah. Everybody's back.

I know. Everybody's back. I know. I am going to go see this with Vim and Vigor, Danny Boyle's directing. Um, I will give him a pass for his, his last problems he's had with directing, but here's the deal. Everybody's back.

Yeah. I cannot wait to see this movie. Now, did you read the book that it's based on the sequel? Uh, the book is called porno. No, I have not. That was a rough read. So we'll see how you feel. Okay. No, I, yeah. Well, I didn't read Trainspotting the book before I saw the movie and it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

So, okay. Um, and a little followup on ab fab. Ooh, can't wait. Um, yes. You posted the trailer last week and I watched the trailer and I immediately went and downloaded all six seasons of the show. Did you really? Haven't had a chance to watch him yet, but I'm in, I am in, this is, this is basically me and you.

It's genius. I mean, it's just, they're, yeah, they're alcoholic drunks and just wander around and bumble through life and it's hilarious. And like I said, it's us. Yeah. So I'm, I mean, I don't have the money, but yeah. Oh yeah. That's good stuff. So I think you'll really enjoy it.

Um, yeah, I can't recommend it enough. It's quite funny. Uh, Rocky horror picture show is being redone. Okay. I Fox. I mean, come on. Okay. Fox has some hits, you know, they, they have some hit and misses. It's just, you know, when you hear Fox, you always think Fox news, but Fox as a studio is still 20th century Fox.

I just, I don't know if it needs to be remade. I watched the trailer. I think Laverne Cox is great, but, uh, you know, she's no Tim Curry. Uh, nobody's a Tim Curry. Exactly. And unfortunately, Tim Curry is not Tim Curry anymore. If you've seen him lately, it's really sad.

But yeah. Um, and here's the thing. Rocky horror picture show is not a good movie. It's a terrible fucking film. It's terrible. The whole point is it's terrible. Yeah. So, you know, this is, you know, the trying to craft the, the spark of genius, you know, it's like you can't go back and remake evil dead too, because it is what it is.

Um, but you can go with Ash versus the evil dead, which I recommend on the stars network. And there's an app available. They didn't pay me for that, but I don't know why I'm talking about it. But anyway, as far as bad stuff goes, go watch evil dead too, instead of the Rocky horror picture show remake. Yeah.

And the teaser for the new star Trek series was released. Uh, it'll be coming out next year. Um, think about this because I'm intrigued on your opinion on this one. Uh, it's the, it's, they tell you next to nothing. So you can't tell, uh, who knows there's a new logo, which is fine.

And all of that. Um, I, I don't know if it's a typo because nobody pays attention to anything anymore when they did the read new crews, new villains, new worlds. Yeah. We'll see. I don't know. Uh, I'll wait till we see some actual footage and get some idea of what the plot's going to be about.

Is it, you know, is it, we have no idea about anything and this told us nothing. It didn't get me a little excited. Here's the thing that the, the stylistic visual language that they're using for when they go to warp and when they're flying through the, you know, the universe, this could just be, you know, trailer departments are very autonomous from actual production departments.

I know this because I worked next to a trailer department when I was at Paramount. They completely have autonomy when it comes to making a trailer. Yeah. And this felt overly CGI'd, but I'm giving them the pass on that because what this looks like doesn't mean anything compared to the show. Well, this reminded me of like the credit scene in guardians of the galaxy.

It really, it just the way that they were like swooping and stopping and starting and going and everything. I'm like, okay, well it, it, it, it's quite possible. It could be the same guy, you know, or same team that did that. Cause I'm sure it's not one guy that does that. Um, so that's what I took away from it.

It's like, Hmm. So the visual language of it's different. The, I'm looking at the logo right now in the logo actually looks like if you took a board cube, turned it sideways and made it tan and then sliced it. It's very strange.

I don't know. We'll see if any of this still exists, uh, when they released the next bit. So who knows? Um, and the other, the other trailer that came out this week is for MacGyver. I want, I can't believe you made me watch this. It was so bad. See, I, I never watched MacGyver.

Everybody talks about MacGyver. Like it's the greatest thing. Like he can blow up the world with a chocolate bar. Okay. I mean, I guarantee you that the original MacGyver is probably not aged well, but of the time it was awesome. He should be at least, you know, like the, the senior person who's sending MacGyver out on missions to just give Robert Dean Anderson some work since Stargate is over and he has nothing to do.

The problem is they can't do that because they do what they always do with these reboots, which is they do the tongue in cheek callbacks. Like they don't take it seriously. They don't just do it. Everything is done with a fucking wink and a nod. Like, look what we're doing here. Aren't we clever? Yep. I totally agree.

I totally agree with you there. It's like, own the shit, make it your own show, not go back to that. Clever. You're not being clever. You're being annoying. So, you know what, when, when Congress has those studies, like, you know, the Kennedy assassination and all these different things where they, they seal the records for like 50 years.

So all the people that were involved will be dead by the time the records are opened. That should be the rule for remakes. That should be the rule for remakes. Anybody that was alive to watch the original show, you need a 60 or 50 or 60 year window. And so we're all dead by the time you come back and redo it because we don't want to see it.

You're allowed to do Star Trek kind of things where you place other things in the world that have nothing to do with the original ones, but you know, remakes for 50 years. Ah, death to the reboot. Moron of the week. Our first moron of the week is 51 year old businessman, Paul Salo.

Salo. Who knows? He is a conspiracy theorist about the 9-11 crashes and he wants to reenact them by buying and flying an old plane, a 747 to be exact, into an abandoned Thai building. So he wants to reenact 9-11 with the wrong building, probably the wrong construction and the wrong aircraft.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a smart guy right there. One only hopes that he will fly it himself. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that really is the hope, I guess. I mean, if he wants to reenact it completely, I think he should. Yes. You have to, if you're going to reenact it, you need to have the right construction.

We know all about the construction of the World Trade Center. We know about what type of plane was flown into it. So why would you buy a decrepit old 747 just to prove a point that you're an idiot? Yeah. So good times. Speaking idiots. The front man for the Eagles of Death Metal.

They were tragically the band that played at the Bataclan Theater when the terrorist attacks occurred in France and Paris specifically. And they got a lot of goodwill and did some very, you know, emotional interviews after the fact, after this had all occurred. And in, you know, a typical way to go ahead and destroy all that goodwill, he is now going around talking about how he was sure that this was a conspiracy and that the Muslim guards at the theater were the ones that let in the terrorists.

Terrorists. America. He's a Trump supporter. So America. Yeah. And thus ends my interest in the Eagles of Death Metal. I had no interest in the Eagles of Death Metal. I felt really crappy for them that that happened to them. But I felt crappier for the fans. They got killed. But he's, this guy's just, um, how do we say this?

You, sir, are a douchebag. Ooh, fancy. Fancy. Ooh, fancy. I was talking about my, uh, Amazon Echo earlier. Um, and I found a video of a guy who tweaked his Echo with, uh, you know, a couple scripts, this, that, and the other.

And tied it into his Tesla. All right. To make the Tesla with its, uh, with its, you know, automatic driving, take itself out of the garage. Okay. So it's, it's fancy. I'm going to give you that. I can't afford to do that. And I wouldn't spend the time to do that because what I would do is I'd walk into my garage.

I would press the button on the wall to open the garage door. I'd sit my ass in my car, take it outside and drive away. I'll tell you exactly what I'd do. What would you do? I'd get an Apple watch and go and change Siri's name to kit. Get my car out here. Sadly, there's no, there's no Apple watch Echo, uh, tie in.

Damn it. See, they ruin everything. I saw a guy the other night in a new Camaro that had the kit light on it. And I'm just like, are you kidding me? Yeah. At least do the Battlestar Galactica Cylon light instead. It's cooler.

The web's not dead. Oh no, it's not. Game of Thrones last week, uh, Tyrion Lannister had the single best quote of the entire show, perhaps any show, uh, as he's sitting around scheming, he pouring himself, more and more wine.

And they're wondering why he drinks so much. He says, I drink and I know things. Okay. This is now a t-shirt available from teasley. So, uh, we should probably, we should have had, we should have made that first. I know. We could have kickstarted it. We could have thrown started it.

Oh wait, copyright. Oh, that's not. That's that. Yeah. Uh, I found a great site called how fucked is my database.com. Shouldn't the answer just be yes. It is. I kind of clicked through. Yeah. If you guys basically all roads lead to yes is how it works, but it's still a fun site.

And, uh, if you have ever run a relational database or any kind of database, cause they don't even stick to relational in this one. Um, it's fun to, it's fun to read. I, I, if you're, if you're a coder, check it out. Are you kidding me?

Love it. We're not known for deep thinking on this show, but this segment is, uh, is the, the thought producing segment. Not that we're going to think much about it when we read it, but you know, you'll go look at the articles and then you'll think. Take it away, Jason. Okay.

Well, yes, we're, we're going to link to thinking in the show notes. I found an article in the Atlantic called there's no such thing as free will. Uh, and the tagline is, but we're better off believing it anyway. That's true. I've been, I've been kind of interested in this because, uh, I was part of an interview with Sam Harris last week and he has a book called free will where he has ruined a lot of people's lives in saying that there is no such thing as free will.

This article also kind of backs that up saying that we're just kind of programmed meat. Uh, there are ways to change your programming as you know, as it goes, but for the most part, you don't really have a lot of choice in the things that you do. It made me think a lot.

And I've been trying to figure out how to hack the meat as it were, how to, how to inject the free will into the, to give the hot beef free will injection as it was. Yeah. And nice train spotting, uh, reference there. Um, so yeah, it's, it's one of these things where it's been a very thinky week for me.

I don't know that I've had a thinky week in a long time, but this week has been a thinky week. All right. Well, I've, I've found two articles and perhaps a site that you might want to start visiting for thinky weeks. It's bigthink.com. There are two articles I found on here. Uh, first is intelligence, a burden on making good life decisions.

Yes. Spoiler alert. Yes. Well, it ends with a question. So normally we would say no, but maybe they, uh, they go away from the rules. I think, I think betterage's law does not apply here. It does not apply to thinking, uh, having greater intelligence can actually make you a more foolish person because intelligence breeds hubris.

According to sociologists who study how intelligent people make life decisions. When a person becomes aware that they are smart relative to those around them, they become blind to biases that plague our ability to understand the world. In this sense, intelligence is a kind of hindrance that keeps us from moving past our mistakes. I 100% agree.

That's a quite interesting article that goes into a greater detail about that. So again, if you feel like thinking this week, this is the thinking segment. Also, before you get onto the next one, if you're into this kind of thing, what it says when people are aware that they are smart relative to those around them, the word smart, I hate the word smart.

Um, if you're interested in that kind of thinking, get mindset by Carol Dweck, a great book on smart versus hard work and intelligence versus, um, just grinding it out. It's a, it, it, it ties into all this stuff and all the language that's used around intelligence.

Yes. So highly recommend mindset by Carol Dweck. Dr. Carol Dweck. Also related to the podcast that you and I have both talked about quite a bit on the show. You are not so smart, which gets a lot into this, including Bayes theorem, which was an episode from just a couple of weeks ago, which is, uh, again, us thinking that we're much better at things than we actually are.

Yes, yes, yes. No, his whole, his whole cognitive biases series that he's doing for the, like the past 12 episodes or whatever has been fantastic. I highly recommend it. Yeah. I've really been enjoying it. I'm a Patreon subscriber to him. So I get them without ads, which is even better. So before you subscribe to him on Patreon, go to patreon.com slash GOG and subscribe to us.

But after that, go check him out. Yeah, I agree. Uh, the second article I found, I just found interesting, um, because, uh, studying the effects of taboo drugs, such as magic mushrooms or LSD was soon as, you know, has been taboo for years. Uh, but, uh, apparently scientists from the Imperial College in London were able to do, to give managed doses of magic mushrooms, uh, to people and were able to do a real study and found that it actually helps treat depression.

Yes. And Tim Ferriss is just crowdfunded a study for the same exact reason. So it does, it does actually fight depression because it turns out when I had my issues, I, I talked, I like called up Tim and he's like, yeah, I had the same thing. And so he's always like looking for different ways to do it.

I'm glad that they're doing this over in England because it's so hard to do in the U S Yes. It's impossible here. And I, that's why I think Tim Ferriss is somewhat insane trying to get it off the ground over here. Yeah, no, it's like, it's like, think about like Amazon and the drones. You know what? Go to fucking Canada, do it there. It's like, if they're not going to let you do it in the U S go somewhere where they'll let you do it.

Don't, you know, granted, we have a ton of great scientists here and he wants to get into that community, but there are great scientists everywhere. And guess what? Scientists can get their ass on a plane too. And they're also quite funny. So we'll end this, uh, end this podcast with a scientists are punnier than you think.

This is a fun article on slate, uh, that goes into some very hilarious, uh, scientists that have managed to sneak things into peer review journals. And it's quite funny. Awesome. I'll definitely check that one out. Closing shout outs.

My first shout out is to the motherfucking cure, the cure.com. I'm going to see them on Sunday. I have not seen them for a couple of years now. And, uh, by all accounts from all the reviews that are coming out, the shows are expanding plus three hours and the set lists are absolutely insane. So I am massively looking forward to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of the things I'm missing by moving back here to the burbs. I really wanted to go see that show. They played Chicago. I think they just played it before you got there. Exactly. So I probably passed them on the road. Um, I did get to see them at riot fest last year or two years ago, and it was the best concert of my life.

I will, I will hands down say that you kept saying it and I never believed it. And I saw it and I'm just like, this is the best concert I've ever seen. And the only downside of riot fest is that they had to stop because of local noise, you know, issues. But man, yeah. If you can go out and see the motherfucking cure, go see the motherfucking cure.

Yeah. They're unbelievable. Live. Uh, my shout out is to my friend, Ted Reingold and, uh, and Molly I've, I've been staying off of medium for a while now. And in doing so I fucked up and I missed, uh, a post from Ted entitled, I have some really fucking awful news.

And it turns out he's got a carcinoma in his stomach that spread. Um, he's not doing well. He's back home now, but he's going through chemo and all that stuff. And his, um, I don't know if, I don't know if they're married, uh, Molly bloom, his partner, they have a daughter together, but she wrote a post called, uh, the last normal day where she's talking about what happened when he was diagnosed.

Cause they were going to go on a trip and he was going to go to Hawaii and have a great time. And he was down to like 150 pounds. He's like, screw this. I'm going to the ER. And then they're just like, oh, um, so I mean, fight the good fight, Ted. I know it's going to be fucking terrible and I love you, man. So hang in there, honestly.

Yep. We're back to being really depressing in our closing shout outs. Sorry. I mean, I did, I was pissed off because, you know, just by staying away, this is the thing about like, you know, in the old days I would just go to my friend's blogs every day and see what was going on. But with social media, you get so much shit in the stream.

You never get to see the important stuff when it really happens. That is very true. Yeah. So also a shout out to Morley Safer, uh, who also passed away, uh, at 84. Not our fault. Not our fault. We did. We have never mentioned him on the show before, but I was quite a fan last, uh, one of the last of the real journalists.

Yep. Farewell, Morley Safer. So on that depressing note, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo and you can check me out at jpd.me. Yeah. I'm Brian Schilmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus. What's that little circus bit? It's trying to cheer people up.

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