162: Tronc in the Trunk

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, episode 162 for June 3rd, 2016. I am Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Woohoo! You're in Kanadida. I am Kanadida Land. I'm in my in-law's basement in a suburb of Toronto, eh?

Kanada-uck. Whatever they call those. Take off, you hoser. Yes. Yes, take off, eh? And by the way, Does It Have Legs will be coming back soon. And the first movie that we're doing is Strange Brew. Oh, it's a great movie. I'm sure it has legs. Certainly up here it does. We'll see. We'll see.

Yeah. So I'm in Toronto, which is ostensibly. I mean, it's an amazing city. I've always said it's kind of a combination of, you know, New York meets London. It's got a bit of the North America meets Europe thing going on. You should spend more time in Chicago because it's more Chicago than New York.

Oh, well, I don't spend a lot of time in Chicago. That's why I said you should spend more time. You've got it covered for me. Okay. But yeah, this is a massive city. It's, I believe it's either, I think it's bigger than Vancouver. So I think this is the biggest city in all of Canada. And the big story in the news this morning, Jason?

What is it? Not enough park benches in the city. We've got to get on this. Oh my goodness. I know. It's insane. I love it. Oh, God. That's the worst thing that happens in Canada. That you don't have enough park benches. Yes, they're not enough park benches.

We get Trump. They don't have a place to sit down in the open air. Well, I think they're also preparing for Trump. You know, we got to make sure that there's places for the Americans to sleep. To sleep. Yes, as we all, all of us homeless people move up there because the world is ending as we know it.

Yeah, it's been nice to actually not be in the U.S. for about a week. I have not heard any of the insanity that's going on over there. Oh, no, trust me. You don't want to. And as a little follow up on the Peter Thiel story, I didn't realize he was actually a Trump supporter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oops. Oopsie.

I mean, granted, what I still think he's doing with Recode is funny. I mean, not Recode, Gawker is fun and funny. So it'd be kind of tough to go up against Recode. But yeah, no, but fucking hell, man. Really? Trump? You know, I don't understand the world anymore. And, you know, I don't want to get any more comments about how we're so political.

No, I know. I know. But come on. There's a there's a point where it just becomes, you know, silly. It's been farce for a while. It's not politics. It's farce now. It's it is. And and I really, really, really, really, really, I mean, honestly, I hope I'm right because I just want I like being right at the beginning of this entire thing.

I said that this whole deal with Trump going up to be the Republican nominee is so Hillary Clinton can get elected because they're friends and we're being punked the entire time. We're just being punked. And I really hope at some point he just goes, gotcha.

I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately. I don't think so, either, because absolute power is, you know, that that whole that that saying. So I'll just paraphrase another one from Morrissey. This joke is not funny anymore. No, this joke is definitely not funny anymore.

So I found a new podcast. I saw this. This is interesting. It's called Grouchy Old Geeks, and it comes out of London. Yes. And they've gone two episodes and it comes up under Grumpy Old Geeks, which is weird. Yes, because they're part of the geek syndicate and get off my fucking trademark lawn, you bitches.

Yeah, you can't call yourselves grumpy old geeks, guys. Sorry. We're going to have to we don't want to send a C&D, but we're going to actually send a a tersely worded letter to the Brits over there and have them fix it because not cool. Not cool.

They were formerly the comic book outsiders. They are now the grouchy old geeks, yet they're still using URLs and tags as grumpy old geeks. Yes. Yes. They don't know how to fix their WordPress categories. Did you listen to their show? I listened to I listened to it for about 30 seconds and the audio quality was so terrible.

I was just like, I'm done. Well, since we're this episode is coming from my mobile rig in a basement in Canada, maybe we shouldn't make fun of audio quality too much today. Well, you definitely shouldn't. I heard that episode you did when I was gone. So it's OK. Yeah. Moving on, moving on.

So there's a big conference going on. Oh, really? Everybody's speaking. It's the Code Conference 2016. Everybody's there. It's exciting stuff. Not really. But Bill Gates, basically, since this is always the follow up bit, Bill Gates is talking about why artificial intelligence is almost here.

And there are two big problems that it's going to create. First, jobs. Second, what if we lose control? OK. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what we've been talking about the whole time. This is why, you know, all these all these people have kind of signed. I can't. Was there ever a name for the thing that they signed about artificial intelligence and being wary of it?

Was there? That should have a name. Yeah. It's called the useless document. Yes. It's the useless document because, you know. Asimov's three rules of uselessness is what it is. Because on the one hand, they sign it. And on the other hand, Elon Musk in the same conferences is charging forward and he's going to start exploring some different neural net types.

But it's like technologies. So no. Yeah. Here's the thing about this whole AI thing. I think back to nuclear weapons. Right. And I think I think back to the arms race. The U.S. is really the only people that are talking about this publicly. Yeah.

How do you think China and Russia are dealing with the AI problem? They're just charging ahead full steam. They're charging ahead full steam and say, these are the three rules of robotics. And then they just put in if Russian or if Chinese. It's like, do not harm a human if Chinese.

Do not harm a Russian if Russian. The only reason I'm not terribly worried is if the Russians are pursuing this full steam. They are actually using steam power. Yeah. You know what? I kind of have some inside track on Russian tech from from some people who are on the inside of that stuff.

Yeah. Not so much. Same with. Well, obviously with China. But no, we are. You know, those top 10 lists. Yeah. We are kind of at the bottom on a lot of those lists. We're definitely kind of in the middle on this one.

OK. Yeah. No, there's some stuff going on that most people don't know about that we won't talk about on the show because I might get rendition to someplace else. Anyway, moving along. The only thing that really pissed me off about Bill Gates's comments on this this issue.

Yeah. Is it he's talking about, oh, well, people can take early retirement, not if they don't have any money because you took their trucking job away. Asshole. No, I mean, that is an issue. The idea that people can retire to, you know, he wants we can sort this out by having people retire sooner.

I don't know if you've looked around recently, but most people are delaying retirement because they can't afford it. Yeah. No. So, you know, these billionaires that have gobbled up all the money and that trickle down thing that's supposed to be happening that isn't trickling down is causing an issue with that. So, yeah. Hey, you know, you sort out a way for me to retire tomorrow.

I'll retire. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck malaria. Fix retirement, Bill. Seriously. I mean, I know my dad is working like way past his his retirement age just so he can get the maximum amount of Social Security. And I'm hoping it's still there when he's ready to do it.

Well, it might be for him. It won't be for us. Oh, no, we're screwed. Yeah, we're totally screwed. So, Elon Musk is talking about praising the state of innovation, but he would like to see more in non-internet sectors like health care, which I agree with. It's about time somebody is paying attention to that. The health care industry is ripe for innovation.

And if nothing else, at least starting to use like one password so the hospitals don't get hacked every weekend. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's just like health care administrivia. As far as like health care goes, there's a lot going on there. I mean, look at Sergey Brin.

You know, he's put a ton of money into actual health care research. And some of these guys are doing that. But, yeah, I mean, if Elon Musk is just talking about getting one password, that's pretty easy. Elon, Elon, Elon, here's what you do. You go buy Agile bits for like $20 million or however much they're worth.

Then give away one password for free. You bought the Washington Post. Wait, no, that was Jeff Bezos. No, that was Jeff Bezos. Yeah, no. I get my billionaires confused. It does get confusing now, doesn't it? Because it's just it's a handful of 10 billionaires and you can never remember who's doing what. Oh, man, did you see the news this week that SpaceX is worth $12 billion?

I did not because I'm in Canada and we talk about benches here. OK, so here's the funny thing. SpaceX landed their third rocket on a barge, right? They're sending shit to space. Yep. They're valued at $12 billion. Yep. Snapchat lets you fart a unicorn rainbow.

They're worth $20 billion. Tell me how this fucking world is fair. It's the Internet reverse proportional law. We've understood this for a while. The less you do, the more you're worth. Well, shit, man, I should be worth $18 trillion. Yeah, it doesn't work for us for some reason.

In the news.

Oh, Sir Brian. Yes, Sir Jason. Brave Sir Jason. I feel like I should have some coconuts over here. Well, you do know that that's coming out next month. I do. Yes. Yes, I was I went to a movie the other night and they had a trailer for it and it was one of the worst trailers I've ever seen.

But yes, yes, the Holy Grail is coming back out. But anyway, brave Sir Brian. Yes. One of the world's most storied media companies has gloriously rebranded itself as Tronk. This is. Yeah, I hadn't heard any.

Again, I mean, you know, we talk about benches and Tim Hortons and Timbits here. I had not heard this until you put this in the show notes. This is I. Yeah. I don't even know what to say. It's so fucking stupid. Yes. The Tribune Tribune Publishing will now be known as Tronk.

These are the people that own the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. It's funny, I was back like one of my first jobs was Hollywood Online. They got bought out by the Los Angeles Times. I do remember dealing with this company. I quickly left after that happened.

But do you know what Tronk is? Oh, the joy of to have a Tronk business card now. No, I have no idea what that is. It is a content curation in monetization engine. Oh, so it's medium. Pretty much. And Twitter and Facebook. But you know what they don't say it is?

What? Profitable? No, journalism. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's not journalism, right? It is a no, it is a content curation in monetization engines, which means let me let me put this in lay terms. OK. Content curation is you being a lazy motherfucker and not creating anything yourself and taking shit that other people do and then making money off of it.

Kind of like our podcast. Right. So except for the money part. Oh, that's right. We don't make any money off of this. Maybe we should recall ourselves grumpy old Tronks. Oh, no. We might get sued. They even know that they have a really stupid name and a hideous logo.

Yeah. We they still have more lawyers than we do. You only have one. We have one. And she is kind of knocked up right now. So that's not a good thing. That isn't their real logo, right? I thought that was a joke. No, that's their logo. That's really that really is the logo.

I'm not. That's not a joke. So why isn't Tron suing them? Because it is legally differentiated enough from the Tron logo. Yeah. I love the fact that they actually have like circuit board patterns behind the dayglow letters. Exactly. This is this is like a like a rejected version of the hacker's logo from 1995.

You know how we were talking about how we're hoping Trump is just this big joke. This has got to be a joke. I really wish. And it's in Tronk stands for Tribune online content. So they took the tour from Tribune and online content. Jason, it's it's a portmanteau and a portmanteau.

You know what? I left a really nice portmanteau in L.A. I think I need that back so I can leave the fucking country because everything is going to shit. I feel like this is the first major corporation that's just gotten millennialed up the ass. You know, because, yeah, last time it was time, you know, the Time Warner thing back in the day with AOL buying them.

They got Gen X up the ass. This is the millennial of the ass. Yeah. Apparently, when this was announced, Twitter, sometimes Twitter can still be useful. Apparently, just there was a shitstorm. There's a link that Jason put in the show notes that has some of these best tweets I've ever seen in my entire life.

I'm a big fan of Farhad Manjou, who's a tech writer. I like his Trump Trunk 2016. Yep. Yep. That one's good. The whole Hodor thing is is very, very good. That was that was that was the best one. Oh, this I just can't.

I can't believe this is real. This is insane. Well, you know what? This is this is why our the tagline of our show should actually be. This is all happened before. No, I'll happen again. Because guess what? Yeah, this has happened before. When AOL bought Time Warner, there was a there was that whole big shakeup.

This is just this is just a simple rebranding. This is nobody got bought on this one, but it is just as fucking stupid as that whole thing was. Well, let's just say here we go. Old school like media millennial media.

The Tribune is a name that's derived from Roman officials whose job it was to protect average citizens from unfair actions of patrician magistrates. Trunk, as this article gloriously states, is just the sound of a millennial falling downstairs. Wait, you know what?

I have to pull this up now because of Kurt Wagner, Kurt Wagner. You are my new hero. He's the guy that wrote this article. And I love you, Kurt Wagner. He is the senior editor of social media, which normally if you told me that at a cocktail party, I would punch you in the throat.

But in this case, you win the day. Yes, it's a glorious article. And again, having been away and not heard anything about this, it's quite wonderful. Speaking of Romans, Periscope has an interesting new plan about how to basically police their own systems.

Pretty much just involves, you know, Roman tribes running around and killing other people. OK. Yeah, so they're basically going to allow if you're on Periscope and somebody is doing something bad or trolling you or whatever, you will now be able to push a button, triggering what is called a flash jury of other users watching the same live stream.

And then you get to basically hang other people. See, now here's the deal. You equated it to Romans. Yes. I equate this to lynch mobs. Well, you just said hang other users. You said that. So what I'm thinking of, what I'm thinking of is I got I'm in a group of people and there's one person.

Maybe it's Leroy Jenkins over there doing something really stupid. And then you want to hang him out to dry. Yes. Then you can all get together and go off and make him go on his merry way. But it's just a timeout. If this is like this is the Sesame Street version of vigilante justice.

Let's also, you know, keep in mind the fact that this is just Periscope and who the hell is on Periscope? About gazillions of millennials who are making a lot more money than we are because they're smarter than we are. Yeah. Well, whatever. I don't care. I'd rather be poor than be on Periscope.

Maybe that should be the tagline for our show. We'd rather be poor. But people who aren't poor are Facebook because now they are. You know what? They they have thrown down the I do not. This is the Facebook zero fucks given flag has been thrown down on the ground because now they're tracking and showing ads to people who don't use Facebook.

They have turned into a massive ad network. It is like everybody else. Are we surprised? Hell no. OK, yeah, I mean, I thought that was going to be the plan anyways. The whole point of Facebook being free is to collect as much information about you as possible to sell to you everywhere that you go on the Web.

And we've known that Facebook tracks your actions across the Web when you're not on Facebook. We've known that Facebook tracks your actions across the Web even when you're not signed into Facebook. Why is this surprising? Yes, it was called Beacon before. And guess what? There was a massive outrage. You know why? Because they branded it. But this time now they're just saying today we we're expanding our audience network.

Audience network. So we've also just we've all just given up. We don't care anymore. Oh, I do. I totally fucking care. Today, we're expanding our audience network so publishers and developers can show better ads to everyone, including those who don't use or aren't connected to Facebook.

But guess what? They are. This is Beacon 2.0. It's all this is. And if they if they had done the if they had done this the same like in the beginning when Beacon launched, if they had been this savvy in marketing, this is what they learned from Beacon was, oh, don't tell everybody that we're doing, you know, a we don't put a name on it.

We don't label it. It's just like, oh, hey, now you can advertise to everybody. If they would have said that the first time Beacon would have been here four years ago. Yeah, that's it. Because there are fucking Facebook buttons on every page of the goddamn Internet now. And we did it to ourselves.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. How's the outrage going there, Jason? I'm feeling pretty good. OK, good. And continuing with the Facebook theme and the no shit article, usually Recode is pretty good at this stuff. But Recode put out an article about Instagram's ad business.

And they're shocked and surprised about how it's looking more and more look like Facebook's ad business. Facebook fucking owns Instagram. Because Facebook owns Instagram. Why wouldn't it? Yeah. My only outrage is like, why did it take you so fucking long, you dumb asses?

I am wondering why it took them as long as well. Oh, you know what that was? That time differential from when they bought Instagram and the whole, oh, we gave a billion dollars to 13 people who made Instagram to the point where now, like, there are 10,000 people working on Instagram. That's called lube.

That's the lube before the ass fucking comes. Now, guess what? Here it comes. It's really not all that bad. You can now. You're the one that complained about it first. You're like, is every third post on Instagram an ad now? Yeah. I quote, I quote, I quote you.

I quote you on that. So. Oh, okay. Chill out, Jason. It's okay. We're all good. Let's just actually report the news on this one. We are. Okay. So. No, you're not. Brian, if we reported the news, what fun would that be? Okay. Well, nevermind. We can just have the internet outrage machine.

Sorry, it's nine o'clock in the morning and I'm over caffeinated. I have noticed this. So they're rolling out basically business profiles. So if you're a brand or a company or whatever, you can finally actually have a separate type account than the regular one. It adds a contact button and you'll be able to basically promote specific posts instead of just posting ads as you did before, which actually I do think is a slight, it's slightly better because that's actual content that's performing well that you'll be able to promote instead of creating a stupid actual ad.

And we all know the algorithm is coming and has already came. So you're not going to see. It's just, you got a new timeline. That's just photos, which is kind of what Facebook is at this point. Anyways, mostly people are just posting photos or their stupid live video shit, which I don't care about. Oh God, the live video thing. No, I think this is, this is actually better because they have to write a post to actually promote it, which, you know, I mean, granted, yes, you can still probably buy an ad, but yeah, if you can do a post, give it some juice.

It's the same thing. It is the same thing. It's promoted posts. Yeah. It's, I mean, Instagram is just a, it's your Facebook feed with just only photos. That's all it is now. We all understand that, right? Okay. But here's the funny, here's the funny part. Your Facebook feed is half Instagram photos because everybody cross posts.

Yes, exactly. I still, again, we can go back to like episode five where I was like, why do we have all these different things? Cause they're all the same thing. Yeah. Oh, well, poor, you know, yeah. Poor Ella just couldn't get in there. Hello.

Goodbye. And Facebook has also, well, announced, I wouldn't say they rolled out because I'm sure it's been there for a long time. Their new AI language processing engine called deep text, which I mean, this could, I mean, this is just straight out of Silicon Valley at this point.

Yeah, it's, it's going to power the bot. So when it'll start to do things a little bit smarter in the future, like instead of asking me if I want an Uber, when I've just spent an entire three paragraphs ranting about how much I can't stand Uber and Facebook message, it'll be able to note that I actually don't like the company and then won't ask me if I want to call one in the future.

So basically what they're doing is generic sentiment analysis on a post, which everybody should have been doing for how long now? I mean, we've had sentiment analysis for what, 10, 15 years now? Yeah, but I mean, the theory behind this is that it's much more than sentiment analysis and it's, it's learning, it's self-aware and learning and we'll be able to correct itself and not require somebody sitting there and coding it out anymore.

It's going to code itself. Damn it. Well, no, I, well, also I think what we have now is ubiquitous computing and the, the actual machines have gotten so cheap because back in the day, if you wanted to run sentiment analysis on like, not cinnamon sentiment analysis on, you know, any kind of tax, it would take you an SGI to do it.

Nowadays you can do it on your phone in about a third of a millisecond. So now that it, now that we have the so much computing power, it's, it makes it easier for them to do that. Yep. Now I, I have joked many times about Buzzfeed and their news, their news division.

Well, it turns out they've got a great new story about Northwestern Polytechnic University in California. Okay. Uh, they enrolled 99% of their students. Mm-hmm. Um, which means, uh, you have to really be shit at a human being to not get into this university.

Yeah. Yeah. Basically if you can pay, you're in. And they, apparently that's what, that's the one percenters, the ones who can't pay. Right. It's the reverse one percenters. Um, and they have abolished the F, which means everybody passes.

Yeah. And I'm reading this. I'm just scanning this right now. It also has no full-time faculty. Why would you need faculty? Everybody passes. When everybody passes. Yeah. So it's just, uh, yeah. Okay. So you can basically, you're just paying for a diploma, which I. You're paying for a diploma, which also means that you can use that as far as your immigration goes to get a job in the U S.

So this is one of those crazy loopholes that, uh, gets the, gets, gets the foreigners into America. Yep. They get, they get around the wall. Somebody better tell Trump about this. Yeah. I'm sure he's probably, he's probably part owner.

He's an investor. Ah, what are you going to do anyway? So yeah, check that. It's just like there, there, there are loopholes everywhere. People. I just thought this one was very funny because there, there has to be like, you know, I've worked with people that have gone through this.

I know it. I know it to my bones because I'm like, uh, can you do a regex for this? And they're like, uh, what is regex? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, you get a diploma, you get in the country. Good for you. I'm glad that all this stuff exists.

Uh, a while back, remember when there was a big kerfuffle because all of a sudden people were able to access what their Uber ratings were from their drivers. And first off, everybody was shocked and surprised that the drivers were rating people. Uh, and then they were really pissed off when they saw their ratings. Yeah.

And I'm like, well, I knew it went, worked that way from the get go, but you didn't because you're a moron. But yes, I do remember when that loophole came out and, uh, they shut it down, but now apparently you can just do it whenever you like. Yeah. I don't know how long this has been out there, but apparently, yeah, they've, they've now gotten the loophole is basically now just a button in your account section on Uber.

And I'm proud to state that even though all I do is complain and about Uber and say what a horrible company it is, I've got a 4.9. Yeah, me too. People like, I, I had a 5.0 for gazillions of years. If that was gazillions of Uber years as it were. Uh, but yeah, one guy gave me a, gave me a four, which really ruined my four point or 5.0 gave me a five.

Yeah. You must, you must be graduate from that college. I am because I can't do, I can't do math. Yeah. My math is bad, but yeah, no, it's, it's cool that they did that now. Um, I would like to see the average rating of my driver, which I do. Do they do that when you call them?

It's been so long since I've done an Uber. Um, but yeah, they still show you the average rating. Okay. For the, for the driver that's showing up. Yeah. Yeah. You can say, uh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. So yeah, so that's a, I mean, well done on that Uber. Cause if you're going to talk about transparency and you should be transparent and you did that for once.

So good on you. Uh, what isn't so good is, uh, we talked about this a couple months ago. I, when they were first discussing it, but now they're actually unrolling the auto lease program where they'll basically give anybody, give you a car so you can drive for Uber, even if you can't really afford you a car, they lease you a car.

Yes. They lease you a car. And this is basically, oops. Uh, this is basically, they're bringing back indentured servitude. Um, that's, that's what it is. Well, actually they're not. There's a big difference between indentured servitude and leasing a short-term Uber lease car.

Okay. Here's the difference. A. Okay. Professor DeFillippo. A. You can quit Uber and you can give the car back. You can just give them the car back. There's no small print there. There's no fees. There's no penalty charges.

There's no nothing. You can just give the car back. These are short-term leases that you can cancel at any time. I want to look at the short-term. I want to look at the short-term print for that. Okay. Do that. I don't buy it. Here's, here's my issue with this. This program is preying on the poor, which I do.

I completely agree with you with that. They're preying on the poor for people who don't have cars, because what they're saying is you get an unlimited mileage lease on a car. You can drive for Uber. You have to log all your mileage, all that stuff, which I don't know why you would have to log your mileage because they want to know how much you, they want to know how much that you're using it personally versus for business.

Your cell phone shut off. I'm going to tell you exactly why. I just figured this out. They want to know if you're taking the Uber lease, working for Uber for one hour, and then driving for Lyft for nine hours. Yeah. What you're doing on Uber time is what they want to know what you're doing. Yeah. And then they're going to sell that to Amazon so they can figure out where you shop, and then they'll sell you coupons, and then they'll give that to Facebook, and then you can get better ads.

Anyway. Hey, you just encapsulated our new world in a nutshell. Yes, I did. The problem I have with giving cars to people who are not car owners and regular drivers, they suck at driving. They are terrible at driving because they don't do it every day.

Okay. Reel it back in. There's a comedic break here because Jason said something that was culturally inappropriate and is not going to let this air on the show because he is the editor of the show. For once, I actually agree. I'm glad you cut that because my jaw hit the floor.

Here's the deal what we have. We have people of inadequate means who do not drive cars every day and do not know, like they don't have the muscle memory that are out there every day. I know people like this. One of them is friend of the show, Dr. Teeter.

One of the worst drivers I've ever been in the car with scared me to death. Second person, Robert Fogarty, the guy that does our voiceovers. I will never again let him get behind the wheel when I am in a passenger seat. Love them both to death, but when you don't drive a car every day, you don't know how to drive.

That's it. So Uber is putting people who don't know how to drive behind the wheel of cars who are crappy at driving. So what could go wrong? I would argue that very few people are good at driving anymore, even if they have their own car and spend a lot of time driving.

No, no, no. There are some basics. There are some serious basics that go along with it. Again, see every comment I've made about Prius drivers in Santa Monica for the last two years. Well, I don't consider them drivers. I consider them douchebags in a metal cage with a battery.

That's about it. Also kind of encapsulating our near future in one sentence. Yes, indeed. Okay. Moving on from the driving thing before I say something else. Yes, let's do that. In the biggest laugh that I've had all week from a headline, time for Google to have consumer facing customer service.

No. Yeah, this is an article saying it's nearly impossible to contact Google for help. There's no direct email, no phone support. There's not even chat. You're basically on your own. So that's every tech company now. Have you tried to talk to anyone at Twitter, Facebook, anywhere? Good luck. No. Yeah, it's impossible because you know why?

Because Google pioneered this and everybody else said, oh, hey, it's working for Google. It should work for us. Hey, we don't have to spend any money on this pesky customer service thing. Yeah. No, my friend had her. She had 180,000 followers on Facebook. And yeah, they just shut it down one day because somebody hacked her account and posted like three posts.

And they completely banned her account, blocked it. They changed the passwords, went back in. There is like the arbitration process to get your account turned back on is almost non-existent. You have to know somebody at these companies. But since at some point we will all work at these companies, then it doesn't really matter.

We might be sweeping the floor. But then we can go down to Joe in the customer arbitration department and say, hey, Joe, can you turn Susie back on? She got kind of fucked this week. And they'll turn it back on. That's how I got Met Blogs put back into Google News. My friend Kevin worked at Google and we couldn't get anybody on the phone.

And I said, hey, Kevin, can you go down? Or actually, Sean Bonner called Kevin. I was too lazy. And he's like, hey, can you go down the hall and talk to the guys at Google News? And they're like, oh, yeah, we're done. Yeah, they're back on. It's all good. That's how it works. Back in the day when being verified on Twitter actually meant something, that's how I got a bunch of my bands verified, too.

I knew somebody that works at Twitter. I just sent her an email. Hey, can you sort these out for these couple of bands? I think we should call this techno-nepotism. That's what it is. That's all it is. Yeah. Good times. Good times. And yes, Google will never, ever put people in touch with the unwashed masses ever.

Yeah, it's not going to happen. You know what it could make it happen? Maybe if you paid for something. And all this stuff is free, so I provide customer service. I kind of understand that. Music news. Somebody, let's see. Spotify posted financials.

And speaking of, I should just go work for Spotify. Average Spotify employee salary is $168,000 a year. No, it's not. No, it's not. All right. Here we go. Okay, Jason. It's a disingenuous number because I guarantee the people that wrote this article put in the multi-million dollar compensation packages for the sea level employees, which raised the boat for the average general employee at Spotify.

For the point they're making, it's still valid. No, it's not. It's not? No, it's not. We're trying to show the difference. Okay. An average, no, an average Spotify employee. Take out. Moving on. Take out the, no, take out the sea levels. Take out the sea levels and give me what that number is.

I'm sure it is still. So, so she needs $228,000. You realize, Jason, all you're doing right now is shitting on the point of the article. Well, yes. That's all I'm saying. Exactly. We haven't even gotten to the point of the article yet in this podcast. And you've all, you've spent five minutes shitting on what the point will be, which doesn't matter if you include sea level salary packages or not.

The point being $288 million spins to equal the average Spotify employee salary. You take out the sea levels and you're still at 150 million spins, which is still fucking insane. That's the point. Well, I was going to agree with you on that point. You don't start to, you don't agree by starting by shitting on it. I wasn't shitting on it.

I was just saying the number is wrong. Oh, Brian, you've been in Canada too long, man. I know people are nice here. I know you're getting way too defensive. You need to come back to America. Robert, Roger Daltrey doesn't want to make any more music because there's no point because Jason will just shit on all points.

I think that's what he said in the article. No, no, I actually agree with every single point in his article. No, I just, I just, I, the only time I've ever seen Roger Daltrey live on stage was at a Highlander convention and it was amazing. And he sang, he sang and he, he sang and swung the microphone around so he could get sweaty.

And then he sold his, his moist, his moistened Roger Daltrey t-shirt for like $4,000 to a bunch of crazy housewives and probably made more money than he is on his next, next record, which is why he's not going to make a new record. Yeah, that would be the point. He did an interview where he said he's not going to bother making a record because he has to pay to make a record and you don't make any money off your music anymore.

So why would I pay to make something that I won't make any money off of? Yeah, he says, you get paid for streaming my ass. There's no control. Musicians are getting robbed every day and now it's creeping into film and television, everything now. You notice the internet is a slowly but surely destructive thing in all ways.

I don't think it's improved people's lives. It's just made them do more work and feel like they're, they, they're wanted a bit more, but it's all bollocks. They feel like they're wanted because they've got 50,000 Facebook likes or whatever and it's all bollocks. Look up for a while, live in the real world. I want to have Roger Daltrey on our show because I think he's one of us.

I, I, I, uh, yeah, I entirely agree with him and I think I was saying for quite a long time and it's starting to happen, which is, I said, people are going to stop your, your favorite musicians are going to stop making music because there's no fucking point. Right. And now they are. So in, in, in, on the previous article, I still agreed with you, Brian, I just disagreed with their math.

I know, but how about we introduce the premise of the article before you go off in a five minute diatribe about what you don't like about it. It was 17 seconds. All right. We'll take out the stop clock. The stop clock. Stopwatch. Is that a, is that a Canadian term for stopwatch?

Yeah. Yeah. It's the Canadian cyberpunk term, I think. Okay. Let's move on to Tesla's gigafactory because we have some, some very funny stuff. stories about this. Okay. It's your story. Oh, well, I just thought you'd start with five minutes about something wrong about it.

No. Okay. Tesla's gigafactory is set for a grand opening July 29th. There you go. It's going to be its massive Nevada battery plant. When, yeah, I mean, they've been talking about opening this for a long time. I'm excited about this.

I think this is a really good thing. We could use this. They definitely need it. Uh, there it's going to, at its peak output in 2020, of course, cause it's all going to take that long. It's expected to produce 35 gigawatt hours of battery capacity per year, which is pretty damn awesome. Okay. So this is the actual battery factory.

Yes. Okay. I was looking at the, the, this is where we were talking before the show. I was looking at the picture at the top of the article and I'm like, is that an artist rendering or is that the actual place? And then we started getting on to Bryce. It is definitely an artist rendering. It would be, if it looks like that, I would be worried.

Well, it's not, it's not even contouring to the mountain. Yes. I'm just like, they did a really good job of like, you know, landscaping on that one and all these roads and things coming into it just kind of seem to terminate into nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a, there's a couple wind turbines off the far right for no particular reason.

Yeah. I just saw those and there's also no parking. So yeah, there's no, well, it's all robots. Yeah. Oh, that's right. This is Tesla. It is a self-driving factory. Yes. But I was looking at this and then we started talking about the old program Bryce from way back in the day.

And if you've ever been to an industrial or electronic music con or, you know, concert way back in the nineties, you have seen the, um, the chrome sphere floating over a lake with the band name over top of it.

That is Bryce. Yes, that is Bryce. Uh, and Bryce is probably one of the reasons that, uh, our dear friend, Carl Wallinger, um, basically didn't record a world party album for about four years. Cause he went down the Bryce hole, uh, and he'd be sending me landscapes going, isn't this awesome? And I go, aren't you supposed to be recording an album?

Yes. So, uh, yeah, that great world party album landscapes, which was never released. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah. I, I, I have spent my time down the Bryce hole. I was, I was doing it on a, uh, Macintosh 2CI way back in the day.

And it took the, I, I, I actually still have the printout that's laminated. It was, so I made these spaceships. I, I, I was going the other way around trying to actually make something and not do like, you know, the standard Bryce thing and try and make like, you know, a 3d thing out of it.

It took, you know, day and a half to render. Then I printed out, I think it was called a Centronics printer, which was basically wax. You remember those things? Vaguely. Size of a bus. And we used to have them at Kinko's before we had, you know, uh, SGIs to color, color, uh, copiers.

This was the only color way to like do prints. And it was, um, it was like wax on paper and then you could laminate it. And then it would like, just make this beautiful little print. And I went down the Bryce hole for quite some time, but I still have it.

I should, if I, if I can dig it up, I will put it in the show notes. I have a picture of my, my, my down the Bryce hole prints. Awesome. Uh, and yeah, that was in, in Kai owned them. Kai's power tools bought them and then they were sold to, uh, somebody else.

But yeah. Oh man, that was the fun day. Those were the fun days when like you could, you could make software that was doing like just crazy shit. Yep. That's all gone. And we'll be right back. But now a word from our sponsors.

What is Loot Crate, Jason? Let me tell you, Loot Crate is a monthly subscription box service for geeks, nerds, comic book lovers, and pop culture aficionados. Basically us. Every month, subscribers receive a mystery box full of collectibles, figurines, apparel, and memorabilia.

Each box contains at least $45 in value and many items are exclusively crafted for the Loot Crate community. Each crate also has a theme centered around major franchises, theatrical releases, and events. And this month's theme is right up my alley. It's dystopia. Dystopia.

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That'll be dystopian for us because we need to make a buck or two.

Comment of the week. Big thanks to our new Patreon subscriber, Neat. Well, man, at least I make it through the first name. I usually just mispronounce the last name. Dude, I apparently I haven't had caffeine for like two weeks because I was sick.

I'm just saying that it is seriously not affecting me well. Look, we were talking offline right before you started this segment and you were telling me about this two quarts of cold brewed tea thing. And I was like, yeah, I noticed the first part of the show. Yeah. Sorry about that. But I had to do this early because I got another show right after this.

So thank you very much. A new Patreon subscriber, Steve Markulik. We really appreciate your support. And if you'd like to join Steve, go to Patreon dot com slash GOG. Yes. And I got to hang out with friend of the show, Ted, here in Canada this week. And he also tweeted us because I've talked about a little bit about how unlimited bandwidth is going away in the U.S.

and they don't have it in Canada and they never did. You've always had to pay for it. Apparently they're rogered by Rogers. Yeah, yeah. He rogered by Rogers. Exactly. Apparently, the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, is wading into this debate here. They may be looks like they may be rolling out some unlimited packages here.

But of course, the net neutrality issues come into play because it ain't going to be for free. It'll be for ads. And we also know that there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. Yes, that's. Yeah. Then, hey, Canada, you get to find out what, you know, what happens when they give you unlimited bandwidth.

And then all of a sudden everything slows to a crawl when you're talking to your friends in Sweden. Patrick writes, Brian, I've been using an app called YNAB. Mm hmm. Do we know what that means? You need a budget. All right. You need a budget. For years, I've been very happy with it.

iOS app is great. Desktop app is great. Only rub is that desktop in iOS sync via Dropbox, which is fucking dumb. Hopefully they'll that'll change at some point. Worth noting, I continue to use it. I continue to use the classic version.

I can't speak to the newer one. Classic still works and is still supported. Wasn't broke. So I didn't change it for once. Anyway. So the point of this is you needed a budgeting app because you have now moved to the Macintosh. Not so much a budgeting app. I mean, I need the whole deal. So I haven't heard of this.

I should take a look at it. I will take a look at it. Thanks for the tip, Patrick. I'm not bothered by the syncing via Dropbox. Yeah, I mean, it's stupid, but I use one password and I sync it via Dropbox. It's just convenient. I'm kind of OK with that. The security is mostly there. Interesting.

I mean, I don't I but the thing is, I need the whole package. I need to be able to track income, bank accounts, credit cards. And I need you need a bookie bookkeeping app. Well, yeah. Yeah. So which is what QuickBooks was, and I need to be able to export to give to my accountant at the end of the year, all that sort of stuff.

So it sounds like this is cool, but probably not big enough to deal with everything I need it to do. Well, we'll see. I'll check it out. And I am already worried by the I'm still using the classic version and won't upgrade because that is the Intuit crap hole that we all end up in. That is exactly the Intuit crap hole.

Yes. Yes. I mean, I'd love to still be using QuickBooks 1997 if I could. Because that one worked. And they removed the ability for you to continue to use old versions. So, yeah. Back in the day on your Macintosh Quadra 650, Intuit ran great.

Yes. So I will take a look at it, though. So thank you for the tip. If anybody out there wants to get in touch with us, you can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast on Instagram at at Grumpy Old Geeks or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG. We have a website, old school of us, 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. And we've got quite a few of them now. So keep those stars coming. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes, and it'll take you right there. I've been trying to finish a book.

The friend of the show, Greg, has been trying to get me to read for years and years and years. I haven't quite finished yet, but everybody can look forward to my review of The Dirt, the Motley Crue story next week when I do finish it. Oh, that's a Neil Strauss book, right? Huh? That's Neil Strauss.

Is it? Did he write that? Yeah. The Motley Crue thing? Oh, yeah. Well, even better reason for me to be reading it right now. I did not even notice. Yeah, Neil did the Motley Crue book. He did the Marilyn Manson book. And by the way, here's a bit of trivia. When Neil was writing the Motley Crue book, that's when he decided to become a pickup artist because he went on tour with Motley Crue and wrote that entire book.

Didn't get laid once. Backstage with Motley Crue for however long it took him to write that book. Didn't get laid once. That's got to be next to impossible. I mean, you know, the argument could be made that you don't want to get laid by anybody that's back there, but hard not to. But we're doing the out in the library segment anyways, because I've had this in the show notes for like a couple of weeks and it's too good not to talk about.

Bill Gates has reviewed Neil Stevenson's Seven Eves, which we've talked about at great length. It's one of our favorite books that came out in recent years. I just think it's funny that Bill Gates is reviewing it. And because it's Bill Gates, he doesn't just review it. He goes and has coffee with Neil Stevenson. And reviews it in VR.

Yes, that's the point that I really liked. He reviews it in VR. Yeah, it's a it's really cool. It's this is definitely worth the read. I think I enjoyed it a lot. And if you haven't read Seven Eves yet, I don't know what's wrong with you. I do, because you don't have a whole lot of time because it's a long book.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And, you know, we're still kind of a little bit at odds on Seven Eves. I thought I still think the first half was amazing. I still think the second half, not so much. But, you know, that's OK. Yeah, Bill apparently liked it very much.

So, yeah, Bill and I are on board. So, you know, Bill, we can come hang out together. We'll ignore Jason. Yeah, Showmeister and Gates. That's right. BFFs. If only.

Software, apps and gadgets. The Hubsan H501SX4 FPV brushless drone. Or what I like to call the Jason finger killer. Well, it was a finger nipper.

It wasn't a killer. It was a finger nipper. I bought this at the Boing Boing store and I've been having a ton of fun flying this thing. I've been running out of propellers. So I have to go find where to get some propellers. And then I texted or I did some DMs with Shenni and Mark from Boing Boing.

Because, you know, we're friends. And that was my weird douchey voice. Yes, it kind of was. Yes, that was the point. Anyway, this thing has been a monster.

I have run it into just about everything. Like, literally, I've landed it in water, pulled it out, shook it off, and it flew again. Unfortunately, I did fly it into something that was much more hard than a pond, which was a concrete wall. And so there are links in the show notes on the drone on Boing Boing.

And I'm not going to mention the price because I found out that you can find it much cheaper at other places than I paid. And I believe they're working on changing their pricing now to be more commensurate with what it actually costs in the real world. But the actual replacement parts for it are very cheap.

So I've got propellers coming. I've got gyroscopes coming. And I have new compasses coming. And little rubber feet. Because I lost all of that. Because this thing was like, you know, it's like a robot when it hits a wall and just all the parts fly apart.

I had to put it back together. That's kind of how it works with my drone. Might I also suggest, like, Falconer gloves? No, no, no. I'm getting good at flying it. I'm actually getting good at flying it. Because I practiced every day. And that's why I beat it to hell and broke it.

Because that's what I wanted to do. This is my starter drone. I knew I was going to break it many times. But the replacement parts for this thing are great. They're cheap. They're super cheap. It honestly is a worthwhile drone if you want to start learning to fly a drone.

It's not a DJI, which is going to cost you a lot more. Like, their base price for their base base model is twice as much as this thing is. And the characteristics are the same. But once you're done learning, like, how to fly manually, here's the deal.

This is like learning how to drive a car with stick. And then you move into an automatic. That's the difference. So you know how to drive well before you move into the one that actually can do everything for you. So when things happen, you can actually take over and know what's going on.

That's all I'm saying. And it's a fun investment. And you're going to have a good time doing it. OK. Excellent. Drone away. I will. So Henry Graber, who I've not read much about before, has an article over at Slate talking about the iPhone SE and how it is a design classic, simple, functional, and as iconic as a swingline stapler.

What say you, Jason? It's a 5S. Yeah, I know. That's the thing for me. It's a fucking 5S. The article is great because it gets really into the weeds about why it's good design, why it's et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I do have to argue that it looks like a relic compared to the 6.

It just does. The 6 is way better looking than the SE. Anyways, I don't agree with him, but I like the article. It's funny. It's very funny. I have a 5S right here on my desk. I use that to control my Alexa PlayStation through Spotify for my Echo downstairs.

So my dog is happy. That's what I use my 5S for. My 6 Plus I use for daily life. So his iPhone SE is a design classic. Perfect. It is classic, which means it's old and barely useful.

That's what I got to say. The one thing that I do agree with, I can't even remember if he even said this. The one thing that I actually adore about the 5s is that they have a flat bottom. So you can actually set it down and it will stand up.

The 6s do not have that. You have to have a case that has a flat bottom. I prefer phones that I can actually sit on their side, put on my desk, put on my wherever I'm at and look at them without having to have an accessory. Yeah, that's the one thing that I really love about the 5s in that whole generation.

Yep. And I also ran across an article on Dipley, which is 15 iPhone tricks Apple has been hiding from you. I wouldn't exactly say Apple has been hiding it, but as we all know, this is the age of there are no manuals anymore and nobody really learns or hacks their systems anymore. There's some really interesting stuff in here that I had no idea about having had an iPhone forever.

I didn't know you could create your own custom vibration pattern, which is kind of cool. I love the flashing alerts thing. Wait, wait, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? We did that on, like, episode 5. Yeah, I don't pay attention to you. No, we did it together on episode 5. Well, I forgot about it.

We were drinking back then. Oh, that's right. Yeah, see, there you go. See, I forgot about that. The flashing alerts thing reminds me of the only thing I ever liked about having a BlackBerry, so I like to be able to do that. I did not know that you could shake your phone to undo mistake-filled typing. That's fun. I knew that, yeah.

I've been doing that for a while. I like especially the tech stuff, like how you clean up RAM and clear the cache and all that sort of stuff, which you never think to do because they always tell you it doesn't really matter, but it does. Time stands for messages and tabs in Safari. I don't use Safari on my phone anyways, but there are a couple really cool things in here.

So this is 15 iPhone tricks Apple has been hiding in plain sight that everybody else knew except Brian. Yes, everybody except me, I'm sure. Okay. Although I do want to point out that number 13, don't settle for bad Wi-Fi, is actually a bad thing.

Wi-Fi assist, turn that shit off. Turn that shit way off. Way off. So my gadget of the week is the Logitech MX Master Wireless Mouse. Now, we've talked about this before, and you had it and didn't like it.

I can't remember what we were talking about, and I just said it looks ugly because it kind of looks like a Cylon ship. Oh, it's hideous. It's ridiculously hideous. Automatically, it's perfect. Actually, it reminds me of the Slave 1. The Slave 1? Boba Fett chip. Actually, I'm holding it up sideways to see how it looks when it flies sideways.

Actually, you're kind of spot on on that one. All right. Thank you. The thing about this mouse is I did not. I need it for editing. And everybody that uses Logic Pro was like, you need this mouse. This is the best mouse.

Blah, blah, blah. I got it. Couldn't make it work right. And now that I'm going back to Logic, I'm like, OK, you know what? I'm dealing with a magic mouse. Let me try this thing again. I've got it. I own it. It cost me $100. You can now get it for $80 because technology goes down in price.

There are multiple things about this mouse that I hate. The first one is there's this downward thumb button that basically I turn off. The other thing that I hate about it is that it's very dark.

That's it. Those are the only two things I hate about it. Everything else I love about this mouse now because I figured out how to make Logic bend to my will by using this mouse. OK, but other than Logic, what about just your regular day-to-day Mac using?

Yes, absolutely. The one thing that this has that most – OK, so it's got a vertical scroll wheel and it's got a horizontal scroll wheel. When I use my Apple Magic mouse, I use two fingers to simulate the vertical or the horizontal scroll wheel, right?

So I'm going left to right. What you can do with this is you can use your pointer finger to create a modifier key and then use the horizontal scroll, which in Logic or any other program means that you can do zooming or zoom in, zoom out type of stuff.

You cannot do that with a Magic mouse. This is the only mouse that you can do that with that I have. Obviously, you can probably do it with another one, but having a modifier key with horizontal scrolling is key. It's absolutely key.

And you can do the same thing with the vertical scrolling. There's a ton of stuff that you can do with this thing. Completely pre-programmable for all of your different apps. Stop typing. I can hear you in the background. You're checking your email, damn it. OK. You got me.

I did get you. Although I am actually also placing this mouse in my Amazon account because I've been trying. I'm still using the ones that I use with my PC. I'm using my old keyboard and my old mouse with the full Mac now, and it's not cutting it. So now that you just sold me on the whole zooming and scrolling and all that sort of stuff, because I was going to use the Magic Mouse now, but I hate the Magic Mouse.

So you got me. I've loved the Magic Mouse until I found that there was a way to have an option, but like a key modifier with your vertical and horizontal scrolling. I would appreciate it if you would take it out of your Amazon account and then go to the show notes at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 162 and click on the link to the Logitech mouse so I can get like my 10 cents.

I would really appreciate that. Wait, you can get your 10 cents? I thought this was a Grumpy Old Geeks Amazon account. Hey, the way this works is you pimp something, you get your share. I pimp something, I get my share. All right, fair enough. Because guess what? I bought a Mira fucking two chair from your Amazon account, and you got a hell of a lot more than I'm going to get from you buying a Logitech mouse.

That's true. I think I made three bucks off that. Yes, my $1,000 chair. Anyway, yes, definitely check this out. And the last thing I wanted to mention was that it is USB. It's got a USB charger on it. Yep. So it has, you can use it, it has kind of a tethered mouse, but it's also got built-in rechargeable batteries, which means that you don't have to go find double A's every time your Apple Magic mouse runs out of juice.

Nice. So all in all, and now that it's like 80 bucks, just go get the damn thing. It's amazing. Yeah, the keyboard that goes with it doesn't look too bad either. Yeah, skip that. Okay. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors.

Media Candy. Top Gear is back. No, it's not. No, it's not. Top Gear is not back. Because Top Gear is dead. It's in the ground. It's tits up like a fucking Monty Python parrot.

It's gone. Does that mean you saw it? Hell no. Yeah, I didn't either. But online, everybody's crapping on it. So I downloaded it and I was going to watch it just because you said you were going to make me watch it. Yeah. And then I'm like, you know what? I want this bitch to watch it first.

And you haven't. So ergo, I get a hall pass. That's true. You do. You know, I'm in Canada. It's hard to get this stuff here. Sweden. Yeah, I haven't had time. Anyways, I'll do it. I'll download it when I get back. You know what? I cannot I cannot fault you because this is your last vacation before you're a dad.

It kind of really is. So it hasn't been much of a vacation, but I haven't been able to do a lot. Obviously, I will watch this when I get back, even though I'm just looking at the screenshots and it looks painful. Oh, it looks so painful. It looks so painful. You know, I've I lived in England for a while.

I know Chris Evans. I don't like him. I was never a fan of friends. I don't give a crap about Matt LeBlanc. This is I this is going to be painful, but I will do it for you. I'll wait a shit on something before you've seen it. Yeah. Well, it's what we do here.

It is what we do here. And speaking of shitting on things before we see it, Rogue One, a Star Wars story is in trouble. Oh, this might be too much of a good thing. And I was a bit worried about this as well. I was like, why don't we just do the three big ones? Why do we have to start all these different franchises?

Oh, yeah. It's because it's money and they have to beat everything into the ground. Apparently, it's not going well. They they did some screenings for execs and they didn't like it. So there's going to be a bunch of reshoots this summer, even though they're still shooting for the Christmas release of the movie. The only good thing I did here and this just came out today is that reportedly the movie ends 10 minutes before the first Star Wars begins.

So I'm assuming we will have a shot of the Princess Leia ship flying over Tatooine. OK, so that's interesting. Now, there's two things. Actually, there are two interesting things here. They screened it for executives. Yep. Right. Yep. Executives are historically fucking morons.

They the cloud of dirt that my dog just shit on in my front yard is smarter than a studio executive. Your your metaphors this episode, Jason, have been spectacular. I'm trying. I'm really I'm stretching myself. I'm trying to get better at this.

But that is an accurate metaphor. I'm sorry. If you've ever worked in Hollywood, that is about the most accurate metaphor. We'll get for a studio executive. No, that's right. They have no idea what they're doing. And I want to read this one particular paragraph really quickly. And this is from Vulture dot com. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they screened the film and felt it was totally off what a classic Star Wars movie should feel like.

Apparently, this rough cut had the feel of a war movie and the goal of the reshoots will be to lighten the mood, bring some levity into the story and restore a sense of fun to the adventure. I think that this should have a different tone. And this terrifies me because this sounds like they're going to Jar Jar Binks it. It's supposed to be a fucking war movie because how many people lost their lives, getting them the plans for the fucking Death Star?

I'm sorry. That was that was laid out clear as day in a new hope. Remember that really awkward moment where she goes, many Bothan spies died to bring us this information? Yes. Yes. That's the entire fucking point of this movie.

Yes, it is. So I'm a little I'm worried. So we'll just leave it at that. I'm worried. Oh, well, maybe there'll be a director's cut because we know those are always great. I can't believe it took people this long to make this.

But Think Geek has a line of Star Trek swimsuits. These are awesome. They're old school classic style or actually, I guess they're kind of next gen, right? These are next gen. These are all next gen. Yeah, these are next gen outfits. So you can bust out your inner Troy. My only recommendation would be don't wear the red one.

OK, here's here's the thing. Where's the dudes? Yeah, they didn't make anything for dudes, which is a bummer. But I guess what do you do? Really? I want to speed up communicate. I want to speed up with a communicator. Oh, boy. Here we go, ladies. No, that's it.

I'm like, hey, baby, want to chat? Touch my communicator. And this is precisely why there isn't one for men. This is precisely why there should be one for men. These are really, really cool. I love it.

And, you know, now that we've reached a point where geek culture is kind of regular culture, I can actually see women wearing this and not feeling stupid. OK. Yeah. Well, since you took it lowbrow. Me? Well, you started the whole thing. I've reported about.

Don't even start. OK. Just sit down. Sit down. You're the one that talked about this. So I'm going to talk about the only playable Stradivarius guitar left in the world, which I did not know that Stradivarius made guitars. I knew he made violins. And I'm a classical music fan.

So I knew about the Stradivarius guitars. But I did not know he made the Sabionari, which was made in 1679. Shut up. Which was made in 1679 and sounds amazing.

It's in the hands of a private collector, but it is a beautiful guitar. The fact that there is a Stradivarius guitar is pretty cool. Little known fact. This was used in recording Girls, Girls, Girls. Are you kidding me?

Love it. So you want to know about something that's fucked up, Brian? This story that you're about to talk about is pretty fucked up. Yes, it's pretty fucked up. Even though even though you shit on my Stradivarius story. Oh, don't be so butthurt because I didn't have a comment about your Stradivarius.

Oh, it's OK. You are butthurt about half my stories all day. I know this is payback. I like this story. In the mid-1950s, the Army was using motorized blowers in low-income housing in St. Louis to test biological weapons on our own people.

Yeah, this is all messed up. This is all kinds of messed up. Dude, this is just un-fucking. You know what? I'm going to go millennial. This is un-fucking-redonkulous. Yes, it is. Maybe that was 80s.

I think redonkulous was 80s. That's more 80s, yeah. So this is all local officials. This is cray-cray-ridic. Local officials were told at the time that the government was testing a smokescreen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked. What we're going to do is we're going to create a smokescreen that kills everybody in St. Louis, so if the Russians attack, there's nobody left to kill.

That's what they were doing. You can't kill them. We're going to do it first. They actually sprayed zinc-cadium sulfide, which is a fine fluorescent powder, all over the low-income areas of St. Louis because, you know, why not? Yeah, yeah. You know what? I might not come back from Canada is what I'm saying at this point.

I'm saying this is fucking indefensible. This is fucking indefensible. And the fact that it isn't on, you know, it isn't on 60 Minutes. It isn't on the nightly news. It isn't. It'll be there at some point. Nobody is screaming from the rafts. This comes from CBS News, so it's coming. It's, you know, because there's a massive lawsuit from the people of St. Louis.

This woman who lost, like, her entire 17-person family because, apparently, instead of buying condoms, they just, you know, whatever. Way to go there with that one. No, no. Look, man, I'm an anti-breeder. You know that.

Yes, I know. Even though you're having a kid, you can have one. I'm with China. Actually, they release their – they relax their restrictions. And actually – China's not with you anymore either. And here's the funny thing. You know why China relaxed their restrictions? Because when the elderly parents need actual care, one child cannot actually go to work while the other one is taking care of the parents.

So that entire one-child strategy backfired on them because they're like, oh, well, we need a family to take care of a family. Derp. Dumb asses. Anyway. So, yes. Yeah. This whole thing in St. Louis is crazy.

And we dumped nuclear crap on our own people. Yep. We sure did. Well, we didn't. The greatest generation did. Closing shout-outs. I'd like to give a closing shout-out to my friend Tim Ferriss and a random dog tip that he threw out.

You don't have to drink. You don't have to drink. I didn't mention the puppy. No, I've got some Canadian club whiskey here. Yeah, bullshit you do. It's fucking 9, 10 in the morning over there. Whatever. Have a maple cookie for me. This is not a drinky podcast. So what I want to say is he put out this weird thing where he's just like, yeah, I'm having sardines for breakfast, which is the most disgusting thing in the world, by the way.

I would never wish that on my worst enemy. But he's taking the sardine oil and pouring it on his dog food to help their coat. That has, my dog has been very itchy in the summer. If you have a dog and they're very itchy in the summer, try just putting a little sardine oil on it.

And when you run out of sardine oil, keep the sardines in the can because you don't want to eat them because they're fucking disgusting. You pour a little bit more oil on it, leave it overnight. Next morning, guess what you got? Or sardine oil. So you can take a $2 can of sardine oil, make it last for four days, and it's 50 cents a day, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, my dog is shiny and smells like a fish now. I love it. So thank you, Tim. Yeah, thanks, Tim. I'm going to give a tip of the toque to Tim Hortons and their lovely breakfast sandwich that I had this morning.

To my Canadian friends and family, I had a blast here. I am somewhat looking forward to going home, although after reading all these news stories, maybe not so much. And a definite thank you to friend of the show, Ted, who I got to hang out with here, and friend of the show, Kevin, who bought me a pint or two the other day. So thank you very much.

I've had a blast and I'll be back in the U.S. soon. So thanks a lot. All right, great. And if any friends of the show are in the Downers Grove area of Illinois and want to buy me a pint or cookies or whatever the hell Brian gets up in Toronto, then give me a call and stop by because I'm here with my sardine smelling dog.

Way to sell it, Jason. I know. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And you can check me out at jpd.me. And I'm Brian Schillmeister. 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, eh? If you don't want to or can't donate but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG and get 10 exclusive tracks.

Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash houseofandy. And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. And he's a proud Torontonian. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 162. You kind of read that like you had some of my lipped in Crazy Cold Brew Iced Tea!

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