171: Faradayspotting

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for August 5th, 2016. I am Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How you doing today, Bri-Bri? I'm doing alright, Jason. A couple quick notable things. On this day in history in 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead. Yes, I know.

It's also National Underwear Day. I did not know that. And a young Jason DeFillippo took his first breath today. That's right, 1971. Happy birthday, Jason. I'm reminded every year of Marilyn Monroe, but I should have been recording this in my underwear now that I know it's National Underwear Day. Well, thank God we're not on any sort of video stream.

Yes. Well, no, I have pants. I have pants. I have pants. I'm actually wearing, it's very funny, I'm wearing my ironic camouflaged cargo shorts. So I could fit in in the Midwest. And everyone's like, why are you wearing camo, dude? You're not a camo guy. I'm like, they were on sale. So why not?

Good enough reason. Exactly. So, man, this was a techno horrible week for me. I lost two four terabyte hard drives that had everything I had on them. That's a lot. Yeah. This goes back to our discussion on surge protection.

Ah, yes. Did you happen to order yourself a nice surge protector? I am now the, after this debacle in four days of trying to recover my drives to no avail and losing a month of very important work, which really sucks. And a month of photography, which even sucks even more.

All those dog pictures gone. Vinicor's wedding. Oh, well, that's not good. No. So, fortunately, somewhere there's a backup of those, hopefully on his machine. But, yeah, no, it was a very stressful week. But I am the proud owner of two UPSs now, one for my router and one massive one for my desktop.

Okay. Everything goes through the surge protection and UPS, and then it goes to a Furman power conditioner. Because my house was built in 1721 and doesn't even have, like, circuit breakers. It really has the old screw and fuses. Right. It's probably all, like, copper wire that has no covering on it.

Yeah, it's really bad, like, power fluctuations all the time. And I was doing a backup, which is the ironic part. I was backing up my data when both drives, when the whole system went down and the drives just got corrupted and were unrecoverable. Days of trying to run every possible thing to get them to work.

You know, short of sending them out to one of the forensic places, which would have been, like, 500 bucks in another month. I'm like, ah, sometimes you just got to cut your losses. That's true. That's true. So, yes, $350 later, we will talk about these UPSs in the software apps and gadgets section. Excellent.

All right. I also had some fun with tech stuff yesterday. I had to do the dance of the support system retards. Comcast? Which is a good time. No, no. A client who shall rename nameless and has their had their own existing hosting before they became a client with a company that shall rename nameless.

Mostly, you know, you know how this works. In general, generally, things just roll along and you don't have to do too much or deal with anything. But sometimes you do. And then it's a nightmare. I started to get all these error emails. So, you know, mistake number one, I went into – well, actually, it's not my fault. I couldn't find a number to call.

There was no number. There was no email. You could either open up a tech support ticket or a chat. So, I did the chat option, which then led after – you know how long those things take. I mean, luckily, we can always just kind of keep the window open and go do other things while we wait for these idiots to get back to us.

Just went through the dance and then it ended up being, well, we can't solve this on chat. You have to call a dedicated line. And then they gave me the number. So, then I went and did that. They opened up a support ticket. The support ticket that I eventually got the email for was not what I had described being the problem.

They got it all wrong. The email, of course, says do not respond to this email. This is a – you can't respond to this email. Okay. So, then I go back to the control panel interface. I find the support system ticket. I see the ticket. I'm going to update it and I get errors.

It will not let you update the form because the form is not coded correctly or something like that. So, back to the chat window and this is when I started to delve into madness. An hour and a half in a chat window, which basically ended up being, we need you to open up a support ticket about not being able to open up a support ticket.

Oh, man. I'm surprised you didn't just drive over there and like way laced. Lay waste, not way laced. I mean, it just doesn't get any dumber. It really doesn't. And I just stood there in shock, jaw open, and then I finally just typed, can you repeat that, please?

And they did. And I said, do you see the logical fallacy involved in that? And, of course, you know, they don't. Of course not. No. Yeah. Two times. I miss having my own boxes. I really do sometimes. I do too, but it's just not – you know, it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Fun times.

Well, I had to deal with the chat situation yesterday because I have that Nest camera, and I finally decided to bite the bullet. Since I already had $200 invested in the camera, I'm like, ah, I know about the sunk cost fallacy, and then I'm doing the wrong thing right now, but I'm going to spend $100 to get the Nest Aware so it will do recordings of my camera.

Right. Well, I did it, and two days later, it still hadn't kicked in, and I'm just like, okay, well, let's get on chat and talk to them. Fortunately, with Nest, they don't have that many customers, it seems, so my wait time on chat was actually about 10 seconds.

So they couldn't fix the problem because I had to leave, and they had to like, oh, we need five minutes to dig into this, and I'm like, I don't have five minutes. Just, you know, continue on and send me a notification when it's fixed. Right. Well, I got back, and it wasn't fixed, so I had to go back into chat and got the same person.

I think they only have one chat person over there, and it turns out that there was an error. They have, like, such a bad system. I go to the receipt, and it says, oh, paid. I go to my bank account, oh, paid. I go to their system and finally go to order history. It says error. I'm like, oh, so I can cancel the order.

They're like, oh, are you going to resubscribe now? Not until you give me my money back. I'm waiting for my $100 to come back. Right. And it still hasn't come back yet, so now I'm going to have to call my bank and deal with that. So, in the meantime, I found two cameras that I can get that are just regular, you know, cameras with servos that I can control for $45 each, run my own software, and it will cost less than having a year's worth of Nest.

So, sorry, Nest, you screwed the pooch on that one. Yeah. And I'm an idiot for buying the thing in the first place. It's shiny, and it's pretty, and the video is great, but the fact that I can't store video locally is pretty much a deal breaker. Yeah, that's, it's so stupid.

That's, that's just how so many companies are going. They just want to bake you into their infrastructure and get you to pay your monthly fees. Everything's monthly, man. Everything's a subscription. It's horrible. That's why. It's not the way it should be. No, that's why I'm so sick of Adobe, you know. I don't want to pay a subscription for that, but I have to.

I do, too. Every month it pisses me off when the, whatever, $29.99 goes out of my account. Yeah, I think if I have to do it, I'm just going to do yearly, because you do save some money, and then you only get pissed off once a year. Well, actually, you get pissed off every time you have to try and update something, and their updater doesn't work. Oh, so that's every day, basically.

Yeah, Adobe has just gone to, gone to the dogs. Everything has. Isn't technology awesome, kids? It's awesome. Hey, so we talked about that elevated bus in China that lets cars go under it, and we thought, oh, it was last week we talked about it, and we said, oh, it was just, you know, a mock-up, but nope, it's real. I know, it's real.

It was all over the news today. It is cool as hell. It looks nice, and it's, it's a genius solution. And it's only gone about 300 feet, but. It's a start. It is a start, and there's some technological issues with it, like when it goes around corners, people have to wait for it to go around the corner before they can drive under it.

And if you have a tall car, you're going to be stuck behind it, and the thing only goes 30 miles an hour. And don't forget the monthly fee that they have to pay to get their geonavigation systems running. Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. It is cool, though. I like it when we, when we kind of beat everybody on this stuff, because it was all over like the Today Show, and I was like, we talked about that weeks ago.

Yep, yep. And it just happened that we talked about it last week. But hey, you know what? Yeah. You know, we're always ahead of the curve, Brian. We like to be ahead of the curve. And ahead of the curve is where you want to be, especially with this bus, because if you're behind the curve, you got to stay behind it. That's very true. Mossberg wrote another article over on Recode.

I have come around to him being one of my favorite tech writers these days. He is a grumpy old geek, so. He is totally grumpy. He wrote an article about deleting his iPhone apps. He just deleted half of them, and you should too. Now, he realizes he's a bit of an outlier because he's a tech reviewer, so he has a lot more crap on his phone than most of us do.

But he believes that we've reached peak app, that the novelty of the app itself is worn off. The reason that Pokemon Go is such a big deal is because it's so rare that there's a Blockbuster app anymore or anything interesting. So he's right, I think.

I've started deleting an app a day. It's a little bit too much for me to just sit there and go through my phone and blah, blah, blah. You burn out on it really fast. But basically, I've already, I've nuked, since I read this article, I've nuked five apps. I will continue to do so. There's just a whole ton of crap on my phone that I just never, ever use.

See, I practice very app hygiene, like strict app hygiene rules. So if I'm not using an app, like all my travel apps, I used to keep them on my phone just in case I needed them. I can download them again. So I got rid of all of that stuff and freed up a bunch of space, especially since I'm back on my 5S, which is a smaller phone.

I need all the space I can get. But yeah, no, it's good to keep it small. I do have three pages with a couple folders, but everything on those, I use at least once a week. Yeah, I just have so much crap I never, ever use. Ever. So it's all going away.

Shazam, you're next. Bye-bye, Shazam. Pokemon Go! Fuck yourself! Well, we have reached peak app. It doesn't look like we have reached peak Pokemon. We took a week off last week because there wasn't really much to talk about, but my God, this week there's Pokemon everywhere.

So we thought we'd have a chat. I thought we wouldn't be doing this section at all anymore because ever since I got rid of the app, I have paid zero attention. But you captured a lot of stories. I did. So we're going to run through these real quick. A lot of them have been covered in other outlets, but let's just put them all in one place because there are a bunch here.

Okay. First up, Pokemon Hunters. You are the hunted, warns a Sikh priest. Awesome. Yeah. It's just guys saying, capture your own mind instead of capturing Pokemon. This guy in England, in Wolverhampton. It's just, you know, it's a silly little article on QZ.com, but it's, you know, headline bait.

Look at these priests being hip to the kids. Yeah, seriously. And Detroit's Larry Warford is freaking out about Pokemon because he thinks that there's something sinister going on. Oh, boy. Mind control and the like. Oh, he says it's not mind control, but he does think that there's something sinister happening.

You think he lines his helmet with tinfoil? I bet he does. Probably makes hearing the coach a little hard, but. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Way to out yourself as a loony. Well, concussions, you know. That's true. You know, he does have a fallback on that one. Yeah. And Pokemon Go's developer is being sued by people who are getting tired of Pokemon showing up on their private property and getting knocks on the door from all these kids saying, hey, can I come get my Pikachu?

Now, this I do find interesting. This is the one thing about Pokemon Go that I will continue to find interesting, because as we get more and more into these kind of layered over reality situations, it's going to become a real issue. And we don't know what the law says about this yet. Yes, because technically.

It's a private property. But there's nothing physically there. That's the point. There's nothing there. So where does the law come into it? I mean, yes, you could probably claim some kind of harassment charge by them putting the geo coordinates of, you know, something on.

House. Yeah. But I mean, that's a whole new set of laws there. You know, you're dealing with this whole AR VR thing is going to we're going to have new laws with this. So this is going to be interesting. Yep. I agree. Definitely one to follow. And this was going around and I actually saw this one on TV, too.

Did this man hack his Tesla Model S to play Pokemon Go? Well, no. OK, I had a guess. Yeah. No, I just, you know, Betteridge wins again. Yes. This guy faked it. It's, you know, it was funny. It was cute trying to use his rearview camera to catch some Pokemon. But yeah, BS.

OK. Arizona couple of Arizona couple abandons toddler to play Pokemon Go. Now, it's a special place in hell for people like this. They're 25 and 27 year old parents. They left their two year old boy at home for 90 minutes in 90 degree heat without water while they went and went to go catch some Pokemon.

So why don't you take your kid with you? This is supposed to be you get out and about and you walk around with your child and have quality time while you stare at your phone. Yeah. Seriously. While you're taking pictures of the sidewalk, you can play with your little boy. But apparently not. And they're in a world of trouble now.

Good. Yep. Couldn't happen. This is the culling of the herd. This is what happens when technology gets into the hands of the unwashed masses. We've been saying that for how long now? I believe you and I had a massive argument about that. And you're now taking my side. No, I've always thought that. Okay.

I've never liked it. Dude, this happened the day that AOL got on the internet. You know, we can we can trace this back to that day. Yeah. But good times. Yeah. Moving on. Ah, Kickstarter. Kickstarter. Oh boy. Yeah. There's a company that is Kickstartering their sneakers with customizable LED displays that can sync with your Pokemon Go.

So if you're chasing a Pokemon, it'll actually show pictures on your feet. So you can. Actually, I like this. Because it will let me know that the person walking towards me is not going to get out of the way and will run into me. It's kind of like a you're a moron sign. Yes.

It's a whole new definition of shoegazing. Oh, hey. So, yes. If you want to go kick in for these custom kicks, go for it on Kickstarter. I think I'd go pay for these, but I would have to make a law that you were required to wear them when playing.

Yes, absolutely. And Pokemon Go has topped $160 million in global revenue. That was fast. Yep. Yep. That was fast. This is a peak app or not. This is definitely one of the biggest things we've ever seen. And it doesn't seem to be shark finning.

People are addicted. No, no. We predicted it would shark fin, but it has legs. It unfortunately has little tiny legs that go. Oh, and I mean, this is nothing. Wait until they roll out the Harry Potter one, which they're currently working on. That's that's going to be insane.

Yeah, it's going to be insane. And, you know, a Star Wars one is coming. Oh, no, I'd sign up for that one. Yeah, me too. Well, I already I still play Pokemon. So what are you going to do? I'm only level nine. I only do it when I'm walking the dog. But I'm going to get you a pair of shoes. I'd appreciate it.

I could use some new kicks. And this fall, students at the University of Idaho can enroll in pop culture games, which the college is dubbing Pokemon 101. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. This is turning their physical education program into, you know, walking around, staring at your shoes.

People jumping on this quick. It's crazy. But there is a new LED crosswalk that will hopefully let you cross the street without dying. Maybe, maybe this is unwired. It's yeah. It tells you when to walk when you're staring down at your phone. They obviously don't think about priest drivers who don't care if you're in the middle of the street and will try and run you down anyway.

Yeah, I was about to say that's not really going to help. But yeah, no, I don't know if you've ever seen these videos of embassies with these like crazy shock walls that like if you break the barrier, these giant either pylons or walls will shoot up out of the ground at like lightning speed and then just stop the car.

Oh yeah, they have them over at the FBI headquarters in Westwood here. Yeah. They need to couple these crosswalks with that technology. So if somebody does try and run you down, they just kind of run into a wall, which would be nice because that would take out some of the priest drivers that you have a problem with over there in Santa Monica.

Maybe. Maybe. So and finally, to wrap up our little Pokemon segment, there is a great little video from these guys in Basel, Germany called Pokemon Go the Revenge, which is guys dressed up as Pikachu with giant pokeballs running around hitting people playing Pokemon.

I did see the video. I think it's it's it's quite clever. And I do hope everybody's in on the joke because they hit some people pretty damn hard with that ball. If you look at the first guy that gets hit in the face, if you look at the bench where he's sitting, you can see the multiple takes at the different spots where he has gone into the water already.

OK. All right. Good. Yeah. So that that looked that looked incredibly mean and painful. Yeah. No, that one. I think that one was staged. Some of the other ones looked pretty real, but because they were they were pretty, pretty nice with them. But that one was just like, oh, you know, got you in there. But it's a cute video.

Highly, highly recommended you check it out if you're into the Pokemon. All right. Hopefully this is the last time we use this segment. Doubtful. In the news. A bar owner in the UK has solved my Pokemon Go issues.

I love this guy. His name is Steve Tyler. He's not from Aerosmith. He owns a place called the Gin Tub in East Sussex, and he built his own Faraday cage around his bar to block mobile signals from entering the building. Nice. Nice, right? He could have just moved to San Francisco where every building is a Faraday cage.

But hey. Yeah. Or my apartment, apparently. Yeah. So, yeah, good times. But I like this idea. I think it's clever. I mean, you know, there is a point for, you know, texting to let people know where you are and all that sort of thing. But do it before you do it before you walk in the bar.

Yes. OK, there you go. Yeah. Problem solved. Problem solved. Now we just need to get this at every movie theater on the planet and we'll be going. Movie theaters definitely need to do this. We've complained about the credit card situation here in the U.S. and this new chip thing before.

Apparently, everybody agrees with us. Buying anything with a credit card in America sucks now. We do not understand how to use these stupid chip cards. Stick it in the slot. That's all there is to it. Yeah. It's quick and it's fast and it's easy in every other country. It's not here.

It's slow. It takes forever when you have it in there for no reason I can figure out. It makes that horrible noise that whoever did these things, the noise that it makes is an error sound. Yeah, it is. That means it went through successfully.

Yeah, it's an error beat. It's making it's making sure it gets your attention. So you take your card with you. Anyways, it would be nice if you just stuck it in the slot, but not everybody is doing it. So now you always feel like an idiot whenever you go up there because you have to do a checkout dance.

You have to see if you have to swipe or insert because they don't always tell you. Some places don't want you to insert. Some places don't want you to swipe. You got to try one of those and then they're going to yell at you because you're doing the wrong one and the wait is just too damn long. Let's get this going. People just use your watch.

Oh, wait, you don't have an Apple watch. Use your phone. Use Apple pay. I do. I always use Apple pay. That is quick and easy. So it is there. I use it. And yeah, we're going to get this chip thing sorted out, people. Yes. And we have a we have a segment in the upcoming security segment that talks about the chip and pin and how people are hacking that to just steal all the money.

So it's not it's not really working the way it is supposed to. No, no, it doesn't work. It doesn't work here. Facebook has added a new algorithm. I love their algorithms. They destroy businesses and make us all insane. But this one is an algorithm for good in theory. In theory. Yeah.

They announced yesterday that it has developed software to identify clickbait headlines by analyzing their text. And that will be incorporated into the news feed algorithm to downgrade posts whose headlines appear to be manipulative or misleading. So basically every post ever. Yeah, I was going to say there's going to be no news on Facebook now.

And there's a real simple regular expression they can use. If the first two to three or one to three characters of a headline is a number, then it is clickbaity. OK. Yeah. One hundred ways to feed your cat better. Exactly.

So Uber. Yes. Back in the news. Your favorite people. They they're giving up on Google Maps and going to map the world themselves or at least the 76 countries that they operate in. They're trying to have their own fleet of mapping vehicles on the road by the end of 2017. OK.

Yeah. Just what we need. Another set of maps. But I bet these these won't be for the public, you know, and a whole second fleet of cars that are out on the road causing more traffic for no other reason than to recreate maps that we already have. Yeah. Well, apparently Google's maps aren't good enough. And the open map, I think it's the open map project, the one that Apple used to start off with that worked really well.

These people just everybody needs to get together on this mapping thing. Nothing's changing that often. You know, yes, there's some construction here and there, but come on. Yeah. This isn't that difficult. We don't need seven different versions of this. And isn't Tesla's doing their own as well, aren't they? Probably, you know, the thing about, you know, the way that this is going to happen in the future.

Right now they have to have these specialty cars that are out there. Once, you know, we have this fleet of Teslas that are out there. They're driving the roads every day. There's your there's your fleet. You know, everybody's going to be part of this in the future. So everybody needs to get off their high horse, develop the open standards and share their data.

No, never going to happen. No, because if they share data, they can't charge you a monthly service fee to use it. Well, we're not getting charged monthly for maps on Google Maps. So yet unless you're a developer, you get 10,000 a day, 10,000 API calls a day. Yeah. The smart onesie is here.

Now, we talk about people using the using tech for wonderful things like playing Pokemon and not trying to cure cancer or save the world. Well, these guys are actually going the other way around. A team of biomedical engineers and physical therapists are developing a robotic onesie that can help infants at risk for cerebral palsy.

It's very cool. Very cool. Yes. It says this is notable because cerebral palsy affects movements and muscular coordination, but it's not usually diagnosed until the child reaches his or her first birthday. Right. So early intervention can help improve a child's capabilities.

And that's what the physical therapists and biomedical engineers are trying to do with this smart onesie. So good on you guys. Keep going. Woohoo. Yes. And in not fun news, the Netflix tax is coming. Mm-hmm. This is just basically a sales tax on digital downloads on things like Netflix and Hulu.

And it's already here in a couple of places, unfortunately, like Chicago. Thanks, guys. They're calling it the Netflix tax, but basically it is for streaming services and downloads. But digital versions of newspapers, magazines, and the Bible will be exempt from this.

Okay. So if I only stream Mel Gibson's horrible movie about Jesus through Netflix, do I have to pay a tax? Yes, you do. Damn. Sorry. Trying to get around it. There's no Mel Gibson loophole, which honestly there should be. The sugar tits tax. Oh, God.

Show title. Well, you know, we talked about 7-Eleven doing their drone deliveries last week. And now Alphabet is jumping on the bandwagon. They are going to be able to start doing their tests in designated areas.

And this is coming from the White House because the National Science Foundation is going to be spending $35 million over the next five years on flight research. And Alphabet will be sharing their data with the government to kind of come up with safety parameters. All right. Okay. That's cool. Hey, by the way, why do we need fleets of vehicles to do the street mapping?

Why don't they just use drones? Trees, I'm guessing. Hmm. Okay. You can't really, can't really, drones can't really go through the trees. But I mean, otherwise, we still have satellites. Why do we even need, if you're going to, if you want to go, you don't need a drone to fly over. We have satellites everywhere. Aliens, Jason.

Aliens. Oh, aliens. Comcast. My favorite, favorite people on the fucking planet. Yep. They're getting sued for a hundred million dollars. Oh, great. So we're all going to get the two bucks back. No, this is only in the state of Washington. Damn it. Yeah.

And this is about their service protection plan, which the attorney general calls near worthless, which it basically is because if you read the fine print, which they don't give you when you sign up for it. Yeah, it's, it's supposed to cover all these, you know, wiring issues, but there's like, oh, well, if we actually have to go into the wall, it doesn't cover it.

Oh, yeah. Great. But the phone services have been doing that for years. I, I, forever. I mean, my parents' house is a, is a basic black hole of tech and they always have problems with everything. And, and ever, you know, back in the day, AT&T, you know, you purchased their service plan and as soon as it gets to your house, you're screwed.

They don't cover that anymore. Absolutely nothing gets covered. Yeah. So, uh, Comcast denies any wrongdoing, which of course they would, but, um, yeah, it's, it's good that somebody is going after them, but yes, this is only in the state of Washington, sadly. All right. Uh, some VR news.

Oh boy. Ah, this is good news. Actually, I'm kind of looking forward to this one. Capcom. Uh, they are going to be the first company that's doing a first person shooter in VR. Cool. They're doing resident evil, which would, if they can make this work is going to be cool, but there are issues right now.

Uh, apparently it's making people very sick. Yeah. Well, VR is going to do that for a while. I think. Yeah. Especially with a first person shooter where you have to be like looking around all the time. Yeah. You know, spinning around fast, all that sort of stuff. Yep.

The motion sickness is going to be a problem. So we'll see if they can, uh, crack that nut, but this is going to be, this is going to be one of those things that everybody's going to have to be working on. If you're going to do like Twitch games and things like that, where you're not just like glancing around, moving your head very slowly. But if you hear a zombie behind you and you got to turn around and shoot it, it takes your brain some time to, you know, get used to that.

I'm going to Kickstarter, a padded box that you can fold up and fold out. So when you're playing the game, you can surround yourself in this padded box and not kill yourself playing these things. Well, you know, we can just rent out asylums for that. No, that'll work too. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, if you, if you get really sick, you take you to the infirmary, give you some electroshock therapy, and then you'll, you don't want to play VR anymore, but I'm looking forward to this one.

Um, hopefully they can, they can figure this out because first person shooters. And I remember when I first started playing first person shooters back in the day with, you know, quake and doom and all that stuff, I would get motion sick. And after a while you get past it and you'd learn how to tweak the, um, the bobbin and weaving settings.

So it doesn't happen. You know, like, I don't know if you remember the old games when you'd be walking, your gun would be back and forth, boom, boom, boom. And like, you know, it's like you're walking. They tried to make it feel like you were part of it. That's what made most people sick. So you turn that off. Everything's fine. Then you can pull out your rail gun and start fragging.

Now, this isn't a VR news. This is AR news. Microsoft finally is, uh, selling their HoloLens dev kit. Cool. Three grand. Ouch. Ouch. Big ouch. It looks great though. Uh, here's the thing.

It looks great in the box, but when you see it on somebody from the, it looks kind of dorky. Well, I guess it looks better than most. Yeah, exactly. That's my point. It looks better than most, but this is like, uh, this is Microsoft's curse. This looks better.

It probably works better and nobody will use it. I don't know. We'll see. This might be the one that brings them back from the grave. So I still have stock. Uh, well, you know, they're going up against magic leap. So at least Microsoft has beat them to market.

So they're actually shipping as a product. Yes. Yeah. We'll see, uh, how magically, uh, if they, if they need to get something out there, I'm sick. I'm sick of all these videos that look great, but nobody can try it yet. I agree. I agree. Yeah. You have to be one of the techno Roddy to be able to get in there.

You'd think we'd count. And we'll be right back. But now a word from our sponsors. Software apps and gadgets. All right.

We're back again with Dave Bittner from the cyber wire. How's it going, Dave? It's going good. It's been a busy week. Lots to talk about. All right. Let's jump to it. Then I found a great article on motherboard, which is a part of vice. Um, and it's, this is one of those kind of scary ones, but it's written by Bruce Schneier, who, who we all love sometimes, I guess.

Well known, well known guy. Yeah. It's called the internet of things will turn large scale hacks into real world disasters. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's easy. There are, there's no shortage of, of breathless articles, uh, you know, talking about how basically the Hollywood style, uh, attacks will happen and, uh, you know, dams will fail and cars will start driving off cliffs and cats and dogs living together.

Mass, mass. Yeah. Pandemonium. Uh, so, um, you know, I, there, there's, there is a point to this. Um, but, um, I, I, Black Hat was this week. And so, you know, a lot of hackers, uh, were, were, were actively, uh, talking and mingling out at Black Hat.

And, and we were speaking to some of them on the Cyber Wire this week. And, um, a couple of interesting things came of that. One of the people I talked to said that the thing about some of this automotive hacking is that, you know, there's this notion that you're going to be able to drive a car off the, force a car to drive off a cliff or a truck or a, you know, an 18 wheel or something like that.

Um, and, uh, this person was saying it's much easier to simply put a bullet through the driver's head than it is to go through all of this trouble of, you know, hacking into the, hacking into the system. And, um, so, you know, don't, well, it's, it's certainly not as sexy.

It's not as, it's not as interesting Hollywood wise. Um, another thing that I learned this week, uh, you know, I've always joked about the internet of things where, you know, now we have refrigerators that are hooked up to the internet and, um, you know, what, what, how interesting is it that my refrigerator can tell me if I need milk or not and perhaps automatically order milk?

You know, what's the danger in that? Well, I spoke to someone this week who said the danger in that is what if someone hacks into all of the refrigerators and so, uh, triggers an automatic order of massive amounts of milk. So basically they're messing with the supply chain.

All of a sudden the supply chain gets an order for a massive amount of milk. Milk gets sent to all the stores, doesn't get purchased. And now we have literally all this spilled milk. So you know what? Yeah. Big orange juice is behind the hack. Right, right, exactly. Right, exactly.

Because they want, they want people to switch to orange. But on the flip side of that is they could tell the supply chain that, that everyone has plenty of milk and you don't need to order milk. And then people go to the store and there is no milk. So prices go up, then somebody profits. Right, exactly. So this is, you know, obviously this is a hypothetical scenario, but, uh, that is a side of it that I had not considered before that besides knowing how much milk, you know, you have in your refrigerator, if you can manipulate the supply chain in this way by manipulating individual devices in people's

homes, that can have a larger scale effect on things like the economy. So it's interesting stuff. Yeah. You know, and it's interesting. That's one, that's one point to go, but I mean, why not just move up the chain and then go to all the grocery stores and then use their, their internal system to do it?

I think that there's, there's fewer grocery stores, so less to hack. Right. But presumably the grocery stores would have a better, uh, default defensive system than my refrigerator. I would hope. That's funny. That's funny. You never know though. Yeah. Well, there are, there are two alliances out there that are, uh, trying to come together to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen.

The thread group and the open connectivity foundation are, uh, joining forces to try and make it a little better for us to, uh, to not have to worry about if we can have milk in our refrigerator or not. Right. Right. Right. And they're, they're getting, they're basically getting together to make sure that their protocols communicate with each other and that there aren't, uh, they're trying to reduce the number of compatibility issues, um, and things like that.

So, you know, this is, uh, people are, are trying to head these problems off at the past. It's good to see that these organizations are working together to try to, um, make this IoT future that we are barreling, we're barreling towards, try to make it, um, you know, as painless as possible.

So, so good for them. I hope they take a page out of the, uh, the syndication wars in the blog, the back in the blogging days when we had Adam RSS and whatever else came out, you know, uh, that was just a mess. It's like, okay, here's a, here's a standard that you can use. Now we want to add some new stuff to it, but they won't let us do the standard.

So here's a new standard, then another new standard, then another new standard, and then you end up with 10 different standards that nobody uses and all become incompatible. So hopefully that's what they're trying to head off at the IoT pass. Well, if we want to be grumpy old geeks, we could talk about beta versus VHS, right? Yeah. Let's not and say we did.

I'm, I'm with you. I'm with you. Um, we've talked a lot about ransomware on the show and so have you on the cyber wire because it's, it's a scourge. It is a terrible, terrible scourge. It is. And it is actually dangerous and, and it's become so popular because it works. It is profitable, uh, inexpensive to do, um, and easy to profit from.

Yeah. It's point and click nowadays for these script kitties to be able to do this kind of thing. Yep. So you can actually buy, you can buy ransomware as a service. You know, you can basically go and, and pay someone else to run your, your ransomware network for you and, and, uh, everybody makes money. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Well, there's a new website out there to, uh, help educate, edumacate the masses. And, uh, it's called nomoreransom.org. Of course, it's gotta be a .org. This comes from Kaspersky, Intel, uh, Europol, and one I can't even pronounce right because it's early.

Um, but yeah, if you guys are, uh, want to know more about ransomware that we talk about on the show, this is definitely a, uh, uh, a good resource to go check out. It's got prevention advice, decryption tools, a way to report what happens. Oh, there's even a crypto sheriff in town. Yeah.

It's sort of, it's a one-stop shopping place, you know, for everything you, if everything you want to know about, about ransomware, uh, to both prevent it. And if you find yourself a victim of it, it's a great place to, uh, find out what, uh, what resources are available to you. So, you know, good for these people to, to put this thing together to try to, uh, you know, head some of this stuff off because it's bad.

And, uh, people go check it out before you're actually hacked. So you at least are educated on what can happen. Yeah. And just, you know, we always remind people, back up your data. That's the best thing you can do to, uh, to protect yourself against ransomware is just do, you know, daily, regular backups. That way, if they lock your stuff down, you have a copy that you can restore.

Indeed. And then once you restore it, lock it down because they got in somehow. Well, yeah, right, right. And then back it up again, back it up, back it up. All right. Next one. FBI blasted for illegally recording more than 200 hours of audio during an investigation. Now, this is a story that we covered on the show, uh, like a couple of months ago, uh, where the FBI tapped a bus shelter right outside of a courthouse.

Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, typically the, the, the general rule is that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place. Right. Well, the judge disagrees on this one. Yeah. Yeah. The judge disagreed. And, and, you know, as these cases often do, it comes down to judicial oversight.

It comes down to asking first. Um, so had the FBI sought judicial authorization for this, perhaps the judge would have said, yes, this is, this is a reasonable, this is in a public place. We're going to allow you to do this. Um, probably would have put some methods in place.

To try to make sure that they weren't recording conversations from people who had nothing to do with the subjects that they were trying to investigate. I can't help wondering too, how much, um, they got the judge's dander up by doing this outside of a courthouse. His courthouse. His courthouse.

So, um, you know, it's interesting. So, um, you know, it's interesting. I, I, I'm actually going to try to dig into this a little to ask some of our legal experts, uh, you know, what, where did they cross the line here? Because there is that, that expectation of privacy thing when you're in a pub, when you're in a public space.

So, um, it's interesting. Yeah. So here's what the judge said. The government utterly failed to justify a warrantless electronic surveillance that recorded private conversations spoken in hushed tones by judges, attorneys, and court staff entering and exiting a courthouse. Even putting aside the sensitive nature of the location here, defendants have established that they believed their conversations were private and they took reasonable steps to thwart eavesdroppers.

So just by whispering, they, you know, basically said that they were trying to keep their conversation private. So that's, it's the whisper clause. Yeah. I mean, that's really interesting. If you and I are walking down the street and just the two of us are having a conversation, is that a private conversation or not?

Yeah. Do we have to be whispering for it to be private? Do we have to, you know, um, I, that's, that's a really interesting, you know, hairs to split. So I don't know, but, um, you know, we'll see if it, if it goes any farther than this. Like I said, I'm going to try to dig in and ask one of our legal experts about it.

I'll let you know what I find out. Excellent. Yeah. We'll, we'll circle back on that next week. Okay. And the Jeep hackers are back. They're back. Yep. Jeep is having a rough week, man. Yeah. Besides, besides the, the original hack and then killing Chekhov and the, the lawsuit that's going against them for that, man, they're having a tough time.

Right. Them and Volkswagen need to go like have a drink together. Right. There was the story about, uh, about the actor who played Chekhov that, uh, you know, a few days after he was, uh, was killed, uh, crushed by his Jeep that he got a letter about a recall about that vehicle.

So talk about insult to injury. Yeah, no doubt. Um, but yeah, this week, um, uh, two cybersecurity researchers, Charlie Miller and, uh, Chris Valisek, uh, they remotely, uh, I'm sorry. Those are the guys who remotely compromised, um, the Jeep, um, uh, this year, uh, they, they have a more advanced hack.

Uh, it's different because for this hack, you actually have to have access to the vehicle. They're, they're accessing the OBD2, uh, port, which all vehicles have these days. That's how, um, you know, if you go in to get an emissions test or something like that, they, they hose up to your car to read the car's data.

So you have to be connected to that port, but when you are connected to that port, um, they've demonstrated that you can have a lot more control over the vehicle. And, you know, it's just a matter of time where they can bypass the port. The bypass the port or someone will come up with a very small device that you could, you know, plug into the port.

That's not noticeable. That is somehow going to wirelessly connect to. Yeah. Kind of akin to a card skimmer on an ATM. Exactly. Exactly. Where someone's, you know, following along in the car behind you and can take over the car and steer you off the road. If nothing else, this is going to show up in a James Bond movie.

Well, it's already been, if you remember the Tom Selleck movie, Runaway, kind of the same, same thing. We just need those crazy, we need those crazy spider robots that can come after you too. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, um, the, these kinds of things are coming and, uh, you know, fortunately the, the automotive industry has really changed their stance on going after these things.

You know, uh, not long ago, if you presented a hack to a, or, or even a vulnerability to the automotive industry, they would kind of lawyer up and come at you for trying to break into their system. They've done a 180 on that. And now they're saying, you know, we want your help.

We want to know what's going on. You know, safety is, is really a priority. Obviously some of that is, is reactive to, uh, you know, what direction, uh, public opinion is going, but hey, we'll take it. You know, it's, it's a better way for them to approach the problem and to kind of get all hands on deck to try to, to nail some of this stuff down.

Yeah, definitely. And, uh, in that same vein, same with the, uh, the port, uh, hack. Well, same thing works on big rigs and cement mixers and, uh, school buses. Um, if you have access to the vehicle, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can do to it.

And that's right. And, uh, what's interesting about this, you know, not unlike the OBD two port, um, evidently these, uh, large vehicles also have, most of them have some sort of common communications protocol that runs within the trucks. So that makes it easier for hackers to, uh, you know, basically create a standard way to get in and a monkey with these, uh, with these vehicles and, you know, cement truck barreling down the road.

That's, uh, that's not something to be trifled with. No, definitely not. Um, this is only going to get worse like we were talking about. And, you know, I think that, uh, I think that the stance that the car companies are taking is the way to go for sure.

You know, let's, let's let these guys do their thing and, uh, let's, let's find these flaws as fast as we can and get them fixed. Have an open reporting system, have a bug bounty, you know, like everybody else. But, but I think it's, it's worth, it's worth remembering that for, in order for someone to, to execute one of these attacks, you know, you, you have to be, you have to be kind of, you have to be unhinged, right?

In order to, I mean, I, I, I mean that, I mean that seriously. You need to, and so there are lots of examples of, of in our society where people could do really, really bad things if they had, you know, if they were unhinged, if they had some sort of, you know, uh, um, you know, mental or emotional, uh, problems and those things generally don't happen.

So I, I don't think we're going to see a wave of cars being remotely run off the road because, you know, there generally aren't a lot of people who have the mindset to do that kind of thing at all. It's, it's, it's interesting to think about in a Hollywood kind of way, but, um, you know, there are no shortage of people who have that mindset to do that sort of thing.

And it's really not that common thing anyway. So these things are bad. We need to prevent them, but let's try to keep it in perspective at the same time. Until we get ransomware for your car. Well, right. Well, you know, interesting thing. Yeah. Get in your car, you power, you know, just try to start up your car and as thing pops up on the screen that says, if you want to go to work today, you know, send us a hundred dollars and we'll, we'll let your car start.

Yep. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. Oh man. But, uh, the thing that, uh, one of the things we talk about moving on from the cars, cause this is, this is going to be an evolving story over the next 10 years. Yeah, for sure. Um, we always talk about one password and password managers on the show. And one of the things that drives me crazy is when I go to a site and they make me change my password.

This happens. I have to do this all the time on outlook.com because one of the companies I work for, they're like, oh yeah, we change it every three months. It's like, oh, you idiots. I've always said that they were idiots and now the federal trade commission is getting behind me. I love this.

They're saying frequent password changes are the enemy of security, which is absolutely true. That's right. And what they're getting at here is that when you force people to change their passwords frequently, you're encouraging them to be lazy about their passwords.

So, you know, if their password, if they started out with a, let's just use a bad password example. If they started out with password one, uh, in three months from now, they're going to do password two. And then after that, they're going to do password three. Yep. And so they're going to, because passwords are hard to remember.

And when you're forced to make a password that is both complex and hard to remember, and you force someone to change it regularly, they're going to, they're going to fall back on tricks to make it easier to remember. And those tricks make the password, wait for it, less secure.

And easier to predict what it's going to be in the future. Right. Right. Exactly. We actually had a guest on our show this week who was making the point that, um, when it comes to passwords these days with, with the amount of computing power we have, uh, the length of the password is much more important than the complexity of the password.

So, you know, go for a long pass phrase rather than turning your A's into ats and your E's into threes and, you know, capitals and lower cases. Um, the, you know, the easiest way to go is to, uh, you know, a random string of words is a, is a great way to, uh, to go as long as it's long.

Yep. Indeed. So, uh, now the Australians, they're part of the five eyes, you know, they're in the club with us. Yep. Yep. But this, this week they've posted, uh, their malicious email mitigation strategies document, which is, uh, it's a beautiful thing.

Highly recommend everybody go and read it. Um, and I found this from the registers, Australian spooks, email guide banishes, uh, MS word macros in JavaScript. Yes, obviously that's the way it should be. Um, but, uh, you found a great line in, in, in this, which I really like.

Yeah. Yeah. My favorite, my favorite line is treat attachments like live grenades. Exactly. I love that. So we're great. That's just a great mental image. Uh, and, and, and it really does put, put it into perspective because they are a lot of times they are waiting to explode.

If you click on it, boom, there goes your pooter, you know? Yep. So everybody should go, uh, check this out. It will be linked in the show notes. That'll be grumpy old geeks.com slash one 71. And along with the, uh, no more ransom website tech, check this out as well. Get your security on people.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so the Rio Olympics, uh, are starting, uh, opening ceremony. These are, are Friday tonight. Um, uh, very exciting, but also an opportunity for the bad guys to, um, take advantage of people going to Rio.

Uh, we, we talked to some experts earlier this week and, um, they're saying it's basically a cybersecurity nightmare. The com, the combination of, uh, lax law enforcement, um, uh, lots of opportunity down there and, and people generally not being on their guard, you know, uh, vacationers and tourists, um, makes it, uh, uh, a, an environment ripe for all kinds of, um, of cybercrime.

What they were saying to us is if you can avoid it, don't take any of your own devices with you. Uh, take a burner phone, you know, uh, buy a cheap laptop, you know, buy a Chromebook or something like that. If you have to take a computer, buy something like that, change all your passwords before you go, change them back when you come back because, um, they're going to be after you.

Don't use, uh, ATMs that are nearby, um, the event because they are going to be skimming those ATMs. Also, uh, don't use a debit card. Use a credit card because, um, credit cards generally protect you much better against lost funds than a debit card does.

Um, the other interesting thing is that to be looked, look out for, um, uh, phishing attacks that are sort of wrapped around the Olympics. So if you're someone who's interested in the Olympics, there's going to be people sending out emails that say, you know, Hey, are you a fan of the Olympics? You know, click here for exclusive, uh, streaming video of your favorite events.

And you click there and boom, goes the grenade. They are exactly, boom, goes the grenade. Exactly. Exactly. So enjoy the Olympics. If you're actually going down there, please be careful because you, you've got a big old bullseye on your back when it comes to cybersecurity.

And even if you're enjoying them here at home, uh, be really careful if you get any, uh, unsolicited emails about the games. Indeed. Taking the fun out of the Olympics. Well, you know, you just gotta be careful. Uh, and we were talking about Black Hat this week.

Um, of course, Black Hat is a big conference out in Las Vegas, big cybersecurity conference, one of the largest every year. Uh, there were some security researchers who, uh, who demonstrated an exploit of a, an ATM machine or, uh, using chip and pin cards.

Now, chip and pin cards are supposed to be more secure than just the old regular, um, Magnetic strip side. The old magnetic strips, right. Um, but, uh, they've demonstrated a new way using a chip and pin card where, um, basically they get the machine to just spit out money.

Like that. Yeah. And you know, there's, there's some limitations to it. Um, the, the, each machine can only be spoofed for a limited amount of time, but, uh, but it's about volume. If they can, if they can attack, you know, 20 or 30 machines at a time, um, and have them spitting out money, there's profit there.

So, um, I guess the point here is that the chip and pin cards were supposed to be, uh, you know, the next big thing in protecting you, um, so much for that. Well, and also, you know, there, there, how many, how many machines are you walking up to at registers right now that say with a, that have a piece of paper taped to it that says chip, chip doesn't work.

Yep. Right. Oh man. And it's just, this transition has really not been handled very well. So no, it hasn't. And, uh, and the fact that you can still, you know, read chips at a distance, you say you definitely want to get one of those, uh, uh, RFID blocking wallets or a little Faraday cage wallets, especially if you're going to Rio, by the way.

Yeah, that's a good point. They did make that point as well. Yep. Keep your passport in there and keep your credit cards in there and your debit cards, anything with a chip that can be read at a distance. You definitely want to keep in a protected pouch at all times. Yeah. I also heard someone suggest, uh, um, there are people who put their passports in the microwave to destroy the, um, you know, just a few seconds in the microwave will destroy the chip in there.

You know, it could, could make it a little, uh, take a little longer for you to get through security at the airport, but because they'll have to manually check your, um, your passport, but it'll keep it from being scanned. That's true. If the chip is busted. Yeah. Yeah. A little more time at, uh, customs, but might be worth it.

Yeah. So wrapping up this week, uh, this is not directly security related, but, uh, never, never passing by the opportunity to rant at, uh, Comcast, um, and sort of wave my grumpy old geek flag high. Um, I happen to live, uh, right near Ellicott City, Maryland.

It is my hometown. Uh, many of you have probably seen on the news this week that Ellicott City, uh, suffered a devastating flash flood this week. Uh, Ellicott City is an old mill town. It's a, it's a, you know, 200 year old town. It's a lovely shopping area with antique shops and cafes and things like that.

Uh, great tourist destination nearby. Um, there was a flash flood that really wiped the town out. Uh, the, basically the first floor of everything is just, is gone. It's going to be months, if not longer before they get back on their feet. And of course, there are many people there who are suffering and have, have lost everything.

Uh, both their businesses and their homes. Well, it turns out some of these people, after getting settled down, after trying to, you know, start to get things in order, one of the calls they made was to Comcast to say, hey, Comcast, uh, I'm not using my cable anymore because the building is gone.

I don't have a TV because it's 10 miles down river right now. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, and Comcast's response to this was, uh, oh, well, no problem. Um, of course, we're going to charge you a $600 early termination fee, uh, for canceling your contract. Um, and also we're going to charge you for the week of, uh, time, uh, but in between when the, the, the flood happened and today when you called, we're going to charge you for that time as well.

Um, way to go Comcast. Now, the, the good news is that, uh, in the end, the, the county government did get involved, uh, and Comcast did back down and agreed to waive the early termination fees, but it should never have gotten to that point.

Nope, it shouldn't have. This is, you know, this is like, uh, when Uber does their surge pricing in the middle of a, uh, disaster. It's like, oh yeah, actually this is a little bit different. This is just, you know, dickery at its highest level. Yeah. There's no algorithm, there's no algorithm involved here.

This is just people being dicks. Well, and I, what, how I describe it is a lot of these big companies have lost their human scale. They are so large that any individual customer really doesn't matter to them. You are merely a statistic of churn, you know, it really is not in there.

It doesn't matter if they, if they resolve your problem to your satisfaction because, you know, you're, you're a fly, you're an ant on the sidewalk to them. You're a tick on a spreadsheet. That's it. You're a little, you're a little box. So some middle manager's numbers can, can look good at the end of the month.

Right. And so, uh, to respond this way, you know, on the phone to someone who has lost everything to a natural disaster. Um, I just, I just think it's shameful. It's, it's good that they've turned around and back down, but boy, it should never have come to this. Indeed. Yeah.

No, we are no, no fans of Comcast here at Grumpy Old Geeks, as you can tell by all of the segments in, uh, in this show and the past shows. So yeah, suck it, Comcast, do the right thing every now and again. All right, Dave, thank you very much for joining us this week and we will talk to you next week.

All right. Sounds good. Talk to you soon. Comment of the week. Our first comment of the week comes from, uh, speaking of the techno-radi, Kevin Rose. Hey, Kevin.

Yes. A friend of mine from the old days, he started listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. He said, dude, your podcasting voice is amazing. Listening to Grumpy Old Geeks now. Great stuff. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kevin. I appreciate that. And, uh, if you are interested in what Kevin's up to these days, he's got a really cool email list.

It only comes out once a month, which is great. Yes. I like that. Yes. It's, uh, at the journal dot email and it's just called the journal. And I think that's a great domain. I didn't know they had dot email domains now. Nice. Yeah. We'll definitely check it out for that. Yeah. It's just the cool stuff. Yeah. It's the cool stuff that he finds over the course of a month.

And he's got some really interesting picks in there. There's, um, there's an umbrella in this week that I really want to get because I'm in Chicago now and I need a good umbrella and this is like super heavy duty unbreakable. And since it is the windy city, I need something like that. Cool. Well, I will sign up for Kevin Rose's email list.

Now, does he do what friend of the show Sean Bonner does and complain on Twitter anytime anybody unsubscribes? Uh, no, absolutely not. Great. I like your, I like your email list too, Sean. I'm just kidding. I find it amusing when Sean's like, Oh, well I lost two thirds of my email today because I talked about politics.

I do too. I think it's hilarious. Yes. Uh, let's see. Seth Miranda from the Grime Life podcast asked, do you think this Instagram stories will put a nail in the Snapchat coffin since it seems better for a wider age range? We didn't even cover that news. Uh, yes. Uh, Instagram rolled out a basic copy of Snapchat.

And they said, we stole it. We stole stories because they did a good job with it. So we're going to use it. Yep. Can't, uh, you know, can't, can't copyright it. So let's take it. Uh, it's, I, no, I don't think it's going to kill Snapchat because Snapchat has a pretty heavy duty user base and they're pretty active already.

Um, I think it's Snapchat for older people like us, uh, who will never get on Snapchat. So, uh, you know, but I, I also just don't care about the stories. Like a bunch of my friends have already started to do them all. And I was like, you know, it was enough that I was already just seeing what you had for dinner.

Now I don't, now I have to watch a movie of you making dinner and then eating it. Says the man who posted a picture of his hamburger last night. Yeah, but I didn't make a story out of it. No, you did not. I could have. Damn it. Yeah. Thank you, Seth.

Appreciate that. Um, this next one comes from Charlie H. Hey guys, been busy with reads from your past endorsements. Here's my somewhat brief take. The Reckoners, uh, finished the series some time ago. I can appreciate the views of both you guys. I did enjoy the entire series. Not sure that the first ones were better than the later ones, but I can see the points you guys make.

If there is another created, I'm there. Also just finished the laundry series book seven. The last couple focused on Moe and Alex. I thought Moe's take on what happened in the past and the present story was quite good. I agree with that spoilers in this actually. No, there's not gotten that far. No, no, no. But remember I said, uh, book six was Moe and, uh, her and her violin, which was, I thought one of the better ones.

And then the book seven, uh, here we go. The final book with main character, Alex was a good read. Um, listen, somebody else listens. Good for you, man. Again, I can appreciate Brian's view on the template for all the books. However, each was unique and the storylines were very engaging. Perhaps next I'll go back and catch the new Enders game book.

I hear there is a new one. Not sure on that. Apologize, apologizing, apologies for prattling on with the library segment, but I have enjoyed the recommendations. Keep it flowing guys. Thanks. And good work on getting Dave to join the security segment. I'm a fan of the cyber wire. Cool.

Thank you, Charlie. Appreciate that. Yeah, appreciate it. I do think there's another Enders game book coming up, but you know, my feeling on those are about the same as, as the continued Dune books that come out. Uh, the initial series was the best, but I'm so sucked into the world. I still read these crappy ones. Yeah.

So enjoy. Thanks. Uh, next comment, uh, is anonymous for good reason. Hey guys, still loving the show. I posted a comment a few weeks ago. Jason, I heard you're having problems with your Comcast service. Uh, we just talked about Comcast. I work for the company. Hey, jerk. And I would like to send you a contact card that gets you through to the special call center located stateside.

If you could send me an email address, I can send you a scan of the card. I would really like to help as thanks for all of the great podcasts. Ah, yes. And thank you very much because he did actually send me a couple of cards that let me jump the queue. They're one time, they're one time use cards. So I have to use them judiciously.

They're like, get out of, get out of hell free cards. But when there is, when the time strikes, I can, I can actually get through to someone who a speaks English. And, uh, since I'm calling on like, you know, the bat phone, hopefully we'll, we'll, you know, jump my issue up.

Cause the problem is when I have these issues, they are so time sensitive that if I have to go through level one support and like, did you turn it back off and on? Yes, I did. Yes. Can you tell me what your IP is? Yes. And I'm not, I'm not making fun of Indian people. I am saying that's exactly every time I call what he sounds like.

I, this is, it's not hyperbole. I only get Indian guys anymore and that's what I go through. Those are the main questions when I first sign on. So yeah, yeah, that's very true. Well, thanks everybody. Uh, you can find us on Twitter at GOG podcast on Instagram at grumpy old geeks or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG.

We have a website at grumpy old geeks.com where you can listen to shows, leave feedback or better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air. If you have friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out and it'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes and it'll take you right there.

At the library. Well, it looks like we only have one book this week and, uh, I got the new nonfiction by Neil Gaiman, the view from the cheap seats. Okay. It's a, uh, basically it's a, uh, culmination of all of the speeches and book intros he's done and stuff like that.

It's like a 14 hour audio book. So there's a lot there. I love listening to him read audio books. So the content actually is kind of an aside. I just, he kind of is my lullaby. Like I put it onto play when I go to sleep and set, set a timer and, uh, he, he talks me to sleep.

You are so weird. I know I am. Uh, I can't sleep without noise on. I'm just weird that way. I have to have a podcast or something going. If it's silent, then the voices in my head take over and then I can never get to sleep. Uh, so if somebody else is talking, I'm out like a light. Yeah. You just went from weird to scary.

Of course. Uh, anyway, the, the book is pretty interesting. It starts to get a little bit, uh, repetitive because he does tell some of the same stories in different ways in some of the speeches. But, uh, for the most part, it's fairly interesting. It's because it, it spans his whole career, even like from the nineties to now.

And there's some really good speeches in there. There's like, you know, some interesting things with different authors that he had to introduce at different conventions like Terry Pratchett, um, and a bunch of other like really good ones. The Harlan Ellison was a good one. It's just an interesting, interesting little listen. I recommend, I wouldn't read this one.

I would listen to this one because they're his speeches. So listening to him speak to him is actually much more entertaining that trying to read this book. I think it would be boring as hell, but listening to it is actually really entertaining. I highly recommend it. All right. Excellent. I have not finished my book yet.

It was becoming a real slog and I was getting ready to dump it. And then all of a sudden he flipped the script on me and I'm totally into it. So I will be finishing that this week. Uh, the other reason I didn't finish a book is you'll find out in media candy because I just watched a ton of shit. So yeah, let's, let's move on because media candy is a monster this week.

So I talked at the beginning of the show about my new APC UPS battery backups. I got the, uh, BR 1500 G, which is a monster 10 outlet, uh, beastie with five powered outlets and five surge protected outlets.

I, you know, I haven't done too much testing on it at this point, but it looks like it's going to be able to run everything on my desk for about an hour with no, with no power, which is great. I can get, I can almost get a show in for that. And I also got the B E three five O G, uh, which is a smaller one that is hooked up to my router.

So I should have internet and computers, even if the neighborhood is dark. So that should be fun. I think total on these, both of them with shipping and everything was about 330 bucks. So it's not cheap, but compared to losing all your data in weeks of, or a week of trying to rebuild it, seems like a very good price.

You'll be able to clean up all the Pokemon when power goes out. Yes, I will. Except that's on my phone. So that has no bearing whatsoever to me going after Pokemon. Oh, that's true. Nevermind. Um, I found an article on Vox, which I think everybody should read. If you do play games and, uh, it's called how free mobile games are designed to make money.

We've talked about the psychology of these apps on the show, but it's been a while. And Vox does a pretty good job of discussing how they work and why they get you to, uh, basically kick in a hundred bucks, like a hundred bucks after a couple of months. Uh, if you are addicted to these things, go read it.

Um, if you don't understand it already, uh, even though, even though you know what they're doing, a lot of people still fall for it, but you know, more ammo never hurt anybody. So I highly recommend giving it a read. It totally, I, it, I mean, they just engineer these things to suck cash out of you.

Absolutely. Be aware of it. Uh, Apple announced on Monday that they will be, uh, rolling out iOS 10 shortly and it will have over a hundred new or redesigned emojis. Yay. Yay. New emojis focus on creating more gender options for existing characters, adding female versions of professions like bodybuilder, basketball player, and private eye.

Uh, they will include a single parent family emoji and a rainbow flag. And the pistol emoji will now be removed and replaced with a water gun, which I think is, I'm not even a gun guy, but this is, uh, this is, this is political correctness gone amok.

It is so stupid. And did you hear what Microsoft has done? No. So their gun emoji used to be like a little laser blaster from like, you know, the flash Gordon days, right? They just replaced it with a revolver. They're like, we're trying to, we're trying to match the standards body, the ISO standards body more.

Um, basically they're trying to, you know, play by the rules. Yeah. Which Apple is saying, go screw yourself and squirt you in the face with your, your water pistol. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? Uh, but if you do like emojis, you can now have Siri describe them all to you.

There's a video, uh, you can go, you can go listen to it. Somebody figured out that if you, uh, if you have CarPlay, you can send an email with or a text with all of the emojis in it. So if you can, if you can sit through it, good for you, but you'll probably go mad after, after about 30 seconds.

In the click baby headline arena. Um, you should absolutely listen to Siri describe every emoji on the iPhone. I'm thinking I should absolutely not. No, you absolutely should not. Okay. Good. Uh, last week we talked about the star Wars drones that are coming that, uh, we're both on board with. Yes.

We can have battling millennium falchi. Uh, somewhere over what's, uh, in between LA and Chicago. Yes. I'll meet you there. Yes. I'll meet you and, uh, meet you in Boulder. We'll do it there by the Rockies. Um, but this week we have star Wars toasters.

These are pretty cool. These are pretty cool. I mean, they've had this concept spin around for a while where it was kind of a normal looking toaster and it would burn in images into your toast, like hello kitty. And I think that they had a star Wars one previously. I actually had the hello kitty one. Somebody gave, I think, didn't Wendy give it to me for my birthday?

Probably. Maybe Missy. I don't know. Some, some chick gave me a hello kitty toaster for my birthday that I had. For a very long time. Yeah. These are cooler because they're actually the shape of either Darth Vader's, uh, helmet or the death star and burn it. I liked the death star one a lot because it burns in the cool looking tie five. Tie five.

Did you just say tie five? Yes, I did. Oh God. You're regressing to a millennial. Great. Did I mention that I only had three hours of sleep? Oh, and the baby's not even here yet. I know. Oh, you're just so screwed. You're so screwed. Uh, but then maybe you can get the Zeke smart pillow.

It would, it will stream music. Uh, it says it will stop snoring, which I don't believe. Uh, sleep smarter. Uh, it's, uh, uh, pillow with a speaker in it that lets you, uh, listen to your tunes. I actually want one of these except fucking kickstarted doesn't exist yet. Or you could just have a speaker next to you, which is what I, but, but the point is that this will not wake up your partner.

Now we're going to spinal tap territory, but this has one in it. Yeah. So maybe the problem with the speaker is if you don't sleep alone, then the other person is stuck listening to Neil Gaiman. How am I not going to still hear the sound coming out of the pillow when it's next to me?

Uh, well, I, apparently it's, since it's so buried in the pillow in such a low volume that only your, your one ear will be able to hear it. I don't believe that for a second. Uh, I don't know. I've got a pair of, uh, basically they're a sleep mask with speakers in it and you can't hear them outside those.

So go get the pillow and I'll come and sleep next to you. No, thank you. I, I'm not spooning Brian. I refuse to spoon. Uh, yeah. Uh, more technology for good. Uh, a bit late for me on this one, but you know, for those of you out there that, uh, haven't procreated yet, Ava or Ava, I'm assuming it's Ava.

I'm going with Ava. A-V-A is pronounced Ava. Sure. I had a dog named Ava. The first wearable fertility tracker designed for women. It's a product which looks very similar to the Apple watch and it's FDA approved, uh, medical device for ovulation detection.

So it allows women to track their cycles, uh, by just wearing this thing. So you can, uh, choose to use that for, to get pregnant or to try to avoid being pregnant. Let's go the other way around. Yes. Well, you know, uh, if you do this dance, you know, quite literally of trying to, uh, trying to actually procreate, it can be troublesome.

So this would be helpful if you're trying to do that. There's a very small window of time in which things actually work. Uh, yes. We're, we're just going to move on from that one. I was just thinking for teenagers for their birthdays, uh, maybe get one of these. Um, yeah, let's move on from that.

There's a new electronic tattoo that you can get that will warn you if you've had too much to drink or just listen to your friends. True. True. Hey, uh, but this, this is, uh, assuming that you have friends because if you're, if you have to resort to a tattoo to tell you how much you've had to drink, you've probably have lost all your friends by now.

So, uh, it's interesting. Uh, check it out. It's not out yet. It's one of those, you know, proof of concept jobbies. Yeah. We'll see if it works. We've covered the whole idea of electronic tattoos a couple of times and I've yet to see anything out in the wild yet. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

I think, I think it's an interesting use of the tech, but we'll see. Uh, we talked about Siri a little bit ago, but, uh, this is a site that gives you all of the commands that Siri can actually use, which is a great website. Oh, look at this. I have, uh, you know, I, there's so many things that I don't know what that work with Siri or not, but this is just a very comprehensive list of everything that you can say to Siri.

And it's a, it's actually a well-designed site. It is. I like this. I, I, I really don't use Siri much. Um, this might make me do it more because I really just never, I don't even know where to start. This is what happens when we get rid of manuals. Uh-huh. So consider this the, the Siri manual, uh, for a link to this, check out the show notes at grumpy old geeks.com slash one 71.

Media candy. Now we talk about how Hollywood has run out of ideas and all these reboots and sequels and everything. There's finally a sequel I can get behind train spotting too. They finally released a teaser trailer and it is just a teaser.

It is just a teaser. Sadly. I would, uh, like a little bit of anything, but, uh, you know, I, I like train spotting. I'll, I did not really enjoy the followup book, uh, which this is based on, but, uh, you know, they're, they're great actors. It should be interesting. Yeah. No, I've seen this movie probably at least 50 times.

It is one of my favorites. I saw it in the theater opening day. I cannot wait for this. Uh, even if it sucks, it'll be nice to see the old crew back together. Yes. Uh, another show that I found this week is Jeff Ross presents roast battle. It's a comedy central show. It's, it's kind of like a rap battle, but they, the comedians roast each other.

Okay. I was in tears. It is so vitriolic and mean and hateful. You would love it. It's right up your alley. Yeah. So definitely check this one out. It's a, yeah. Comedy central. They problem is if you go to the website, it's going to tell you who won.

Don't let that bother you because it's the, the journey matter. It's about the journey. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I like mean and vitriolic comedy, which reminds me how much I really love Dennis Leary's no cure for cancer. Uh, remember that comedy album came out way back in 93.

Oh man, I haven't heard that in so long. I should go back and listen to that. And I, I love that album. I probably played it a gazillion times and he's mean and angry and vitriolic. And, uh, he was recently on, uh, the late show with James Corden, which I never watch. Uh, but he revisited the hit song that came off of that album asshole.

Oh yeah. Dedicated it to Donald Trump. And I highly recommend watching it. It's pretty funny. I watched it. It was pretty good. So good times. Even the, even the, uh, the bits where they had to bleep it were pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah. They did a pretty good job of it. So it was, it was good.

And I'm, yeah, I'm going to go back and listen to no cure for cancer too. It's, it's, I don't, let's see how well it's dated since 93, but it was, I remember it being damn funny. Okay. Uh, are you up to speed on Mr. Robot? I am. What do you think? I like it. They've got me back into the show.

Now I will freely admit that I have a massive problem with it. Uh, blowing up the entire financial system of the world really doesn't seem to have had much effect on the world. None whatsoever. As far as I can tell, as long as you go ahead and run with that, um, I like what they're doing with the show.

I mean, they basically sidestepped the problem that I was going to have, which is what do you do after you blow up the financial systems of the world by just not addressing it and pretending everything's going along. And there's just some crazy problem that has happened that everybody kind of talks about, but yet the world is still running as it did before.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Now, first, first three episodes, I was like, Oh God, uh, I wasn't into it. Episode four brought me back in. I thought episode four was excellently done. Yes, I agree. Um, that really like, you know, dove into the mental illness side of it with him and his dad.

And I thought I just, I loved the storyline. I loved the dialogue and then they ruined it with the opening monologue with episode five, where he actually says the word pwned. Um, that's how you spell it. That's not how you say it. You have a problem with that. Uh, yeah, well, it's, it was stupid.

Um, but you know, all in all, I, it's bringing me back in and I like where they, they close out episode five. So the acting is great. The writing is great. The new story arc that they're doing is intriguing. Again, the main problem being that the entire scenario that they ended season one, with, they're just ignoring.

Yeah. Just kind of pretending. Yeah. The whole financial system is blown up, but still bars and restaurants and everybody's being orderly. Okay. Yeah. Honestly, you can still, you can still get to catch an Uber in the post-apocalyptic, no financial system world. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the dumbest thing that ever, but we're all still watching.

So, okay. Yeah. It works. Sure. You know, it's, I mean, this is like Dallas in the shower moment. Oh, I was just in the shower and it was a dream the whole time. Yeah. Okay. All right. Sure. Whatever. We're on for the run. Okay. Yeah. Preacher ended its run this week or last week.

Loved it. It's amazing. And if you go to the URL in the show notes, you can watch the entirety of season one online. And, but I'm going to actually go back and rewatch it because there are so many extras that they give you, like all this behind the scenes stuff. Yeah. I am totally going to go back and watch it because they, I, I read a few reviews and they thought they, the season ended with a whimper and I'm like, man, it was one of the best season finales I've ever seen.

I don't know what these reviewers were talking about. All my friends, you know, when we were talking about it after, we're just like, we're going to go back and watch it again because it was funny. It was vicious. It just wrapped up the first season perfectly and set up the rest of the show. Highly recommended.

Highly recommended. You're one of many people who've told me I should watch it. So I'll probably get on that. Yeah. And, uh, I would watch it through the first time without the extras and then go back and check out the extras. I will never watch the extras. Okay. Uh, yeah, I I'm going to, I know me. So another show that I am totally head over heels, uh, for his animal kingdom, which is kind of like point break, but instead of, uh, Swayze, uh, you've got Ellen Barkin is the Bodhi character.

There's no Keanu in it, but, uh, it's this family of, you know, criminals. And it's really, really good. Um, yeah, there's, uh, honestly, you just got to check this one out. It's, I think it's been picked up already for the next season.

If it hasn't, it's stupid because it's everybody's saying this is like the breakout hit of the year as they say, but it is so good. It's so good. Second one up vice principals. Let's let's, I figured I'd put in something funny. That's I've got, you know, we've talked Mr.

Robots, depressing preacher. You're talking about, you know, devils in the afterlife and all this crap, right? Animal kingdom. You got bank robbers and murderers. Vice principals is just funny. It's just flat out funny. Is it? Because I, I was terrified that all the funny stuff is in the little trailers.

Uh, no, I, I'm really enjoying that show. It's 23 minutes of just lighthearted funniness. So excellent. And Walter Goggins, you can't go wrong with that guy. He is so damn good. I mean, he's, he's pretty evil in this, which is funny evil.

You got, you got to watch it. You'll, you'll like it. All right. I'll give it a shot because the, the trailers do make me laugh, but it's just, I was worried. So, and the, and the cameo in episode one, the whole thing starts off with is just fantastic. So he just, just watch the first episode and see if you dig it. All right. Uh, the TV spot has come out for star Wars spinoff rogue one.

I watched it and I am all in on this movie. There's no, there's no new footage from the other, the other teaser trailer though. Doesn't matter. Okay. I love it. It's a rerun, but it's a shorter rerun, but you're a shorter rerun. I think the editing's a lot tighter. It makes it look a lot more interesting.

So all right. Very excited. Can't wait for the full trailer to actually come out whenever the hell that'll be. Uh, one of the reasons I did not finish reading my book for the, at the library section is I went on a massive standup comedy tear, uh, through Netflix because Netflix has tons, tons, huge amount of, yeah, huge amounts, huge.

The best, they have the best standup collection. It's huge. Uh, so I just tore through a whole ton of crap. Uh, Jim Jeffries, who's one of my favorite standup comedians right now has a brand new special out freedom. That's what started all of this. Uh, it was extremely funny. Really, really good.

Um, there's this woman, Ali Wong, who has a standup special called Baby Cobra. She is, I believe, eight months pregnant when she does the standup and she is dirty as fuck. It is hilarious. Um, that was really, really good. I can't recommend it enough. Uh, then I watched Patton Oswalt talking for clapping, which was okay.

I, I, I Patton, I've got a soft spot for particularly with all the tragedy he's currently dealing with in his life. Didn't think the standup special was all that great. Yeah, I've never been a huge fan of his, his standup. I mean, I'm more of a fan of him on Twitter than I am of him as a comedian. He was, he's good in agents of shield too.

I like him as an actor more than I like him as a standup. Right. And then there's Russell Peters, who is one of the, the most successful and biggest comedians in the world. Uh, his special Notorious. I don't understand why he's one of the funniest and most successful and most well-known comedians in the world.

I've never heard of him. And I watched, I've watched almost every standup special on Netflix. Yeah. Uh, well, he's, he's huge kind of not so much in the U S but everywhere else in the world. Uh, so not good. Not, I didn't think it was funny. Okay. Hey man, you're allowed.

That's the, that's the thing about those, those comedy specials on Netflix. That's the thing about life. You're allowed to have opinions. Yes. Yes. I've gone through so many of them. I mean, I, when I'm just not doing anything, I'll throw on a, one of those specials on my, my laptop and just play it in the background. And some of them are fantastic. Some of them are terrible. Yeah.

I just went on a total Netflix role on this and I kept picking up my book and, but then I'd start a new standup special and I just watched that. And the other thing that's been sucking up my time is I've started to watch the Pacific on HBO. Okay. Which is a, uh, uh, you know, produced by Tom Hanks, uh, band of brothers esque, except instead of in Europe, this is in the Pacific.

Uh, it's, it's fantastic so far. It's the, it's the same production crew from band of brothers. Um, and you watch the same, looks the same. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're a band of brothers fan. I take it. Oh, I love band. Okay. Just making sure of making sure. Yeah. And this is, uh, probably not as good, but it's, if you like band of brothers, you're going to love this.

There you go. And I've got, I wasn't, I wasn't a huge, I wasn't a huge. Oh, really? I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. I mean, it's beautiful, but, um, the thing about it just, I couldn't get into it as much as I could band of brothers, you know, it, it, it just had a different feel to it.

I mean, yes, it, the, the war had a different feel to it in the Pacific than it did in the European theater, but maybe I'll go back and check it out when the snow starts. Like, did you watch them like almost back to back or something? Because I've got so much distance between the last time I watched band of brothers in this that it might be helpful. Yeah, it might be, but I've seen band of brothers pretty recently.

So I go back to that, like maybe two or three times a year and just put it on and I'll watch it. I'll leave it on for an entire day and just go, go soup to nuts. But it's funny because you, you make fun of me for going back and rereading Dune all the time, but you watch things over and over again.

I put it in the background and just background noise. Okay. You know, cause I, I, I need, I need people talking. I live alone. I need somebody to talk. Oh, um, so I didn't know that Netflix was doing death note, a live action death note until today.

Um, Willem Dafoe is going to be playing, uh, the main demon. So it'll be interesting. Uh, they could have just had him play the demon, uh, but he's going to be playing Ryuk, who is the main guy who loses his, uh, his death note. Okay. It's going to be interesting.

I am such a huge death note fan. It's ridiculous. I, I actually liked the Japanese live action version. I thought it was very well done. This is going to be an English version. I don't know. I don't know if I, if I even care about it because I think that the animated version is the best second best was the, you know, the live action version, which was much shorter if you wanted to get a, it was only three movies and you know, the animated series was 50 episodes.

I believe it was very long, but very well done. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see when that comes out. I would rather they just go and do another season of daredevil or Jessica Jones, but. Oh God, I'd want more Jessica Jones. I know. That was so good. What I don't want any more of is Jason Bourne.

I went and saw the, I went and saw the film yesterday. Right. Uh, Jason board was, was what I came out of it as, uh, Matt Damon only says 288 words in that movie, which equates to 45 lines of dialogue. So that actually for you, that might be a good thing.

This is a selling point. Yeah. What I can't stand anymore is the techno babble that these guys use for the CIA and all the tracking and the electronics that they use after doing so much research on the CIA and talking to the people that work there and seeing a lot of how they work.

I see these movies as just ridiculous. Now it's like, they need to start like, you know, getting away from these old technology tropes because everybody's so technologically competent. Now everybody looks at it and just goes, that's not how it works. You know, it's silly. Yeah. I want to go back and watch the net with Sandra Bullock.

Oh God. The guy that dies in the plane at the beginning of it was my old neighbor. Well, yeah. He apparently didn't die. It must be, it must've been the make-believe. Ray Kurzweil is back in the news.

Oh. Your favorite guy. I do like him. Yes. He is, uh, he is saying now that, uh, rich people will be thousands of times smarter than poor people by 2035. Computers will be a billion times more powerful, 100,000 times smaller, the size of blood cells.

That kind of advance will allow us to provision augmented reality and virtual reality from right within the nervous system, direct silicon to brain integration, not the clunky goggles and hardware we wear on our faces today. That will also allow us to connect our neocortex to the cloud, not just to do search and language translation, but to actually extend the capacity of our brains.

Sounds pretty cool. Sounds like everything he's always been saying, but now he's saying it's, uh, there's going to be a schism between the rich and the poor because only the rich people will be allowed to be super smart. Yeah. I, there's been a thread of that in a lot of his work and obviously a lot of sci-fi throughout time. So it kind of makes sense.

Sadly, um, you know, the rich, the richer you are, the better off you have a lot of things and you're going to there. I can't remember the sci-fi book that actually posited that will actually be come two separate species entirely. So I'll have to Google that later. HG Wells, the time machine, you have the Morlocks and the, well, yeah, that's, that's one of the original ones too.

There was something more recent, but hopefully for follow-up next week. Okay. Uh, scientists have discovered a new state of water molecules. Ooh. Ooh. Dihydrogen monoxide, a discovery made by researchers at the U S department of energies, Oak Ridge national laboratory reveals that water molecules tunnel in ultra small hexagonal channels of the mineral barrel.

Basically, this means the molecules spread out when they are trapped in confined spaces, taking on a new shape entirely. So I guess you can teach old water, new tricks. God. Yeah. That's about all I had there. Okay. Um, and I did find something called drive motion, expressive car message signs.

I love these little things. I was wondering what your take was going to be on these things. Um, I dig it. I always wanted a ticker tape in the back of my, my window that would play things that to the drivers behind me, back the fuck off or whatever. Exactly.

This just does it with kind of emoji faces. Yeah. They have their own like little weird set of emojis that, uh, they can, you can, uh, program it into this little led thing that you hang in the back of your car. I think they're cute. I don't know if they're worth 60 bucks. I was going to say the, yeah, the, the, the price there is a little high and, uh, uh, the proof is in the pudding.

Are you going to get one? No. Okay. Well then it ain't that cool. Yeah. Something that is cool though, is a hundred year old theater has been converted into a stunning bookstore in Buenos Aires, a by Amazon. It's a bookstore called El Ateneo Gran Splendid.

Yeah, it's, it is very nice looking. It's beautiful. It's amazing. Um, and the dog is barking. Oh, drink. God damn it. Yeah. So, uh, this, this bookstore, which you have to go to the website. And see the pictures is unbelievable. And it gets over a million visitors every year.

If I were there, I would totally go there. This looks amazing. I love library porn. That scene in game of Thrones, when he goes into that library, I, wow. Oh yeah. Yeah. This is just beautiful. I love books. I love libraries. I love, this is fantastic. I may just go to Buenos Aires just to see this.

And get some tango and steak too, while you're there. But, uh, yeah, definitely buy some books.

The web's not dead. Oh no, it's not dead. My first link is a link that I probably wouldn't see anymore on Facebook because they've rolled out their new algorithm that stops clickbaity stuff.

Um, 18 tech items from the eighties and nineties that seem funny today. Uh, not. Oh, you know, you left part, you left off the clickbaity part. Can we bring back number 12, which will, you know, encourages you to click at least 12 of the. Yes. And it is the annoying, there's only two on every page and you have to keep going next to next and next.

And really the only thing that this did was make me feel incredibly old because some of the stuff that they are positing as old, I remember vividly and I didn't think was that old. Ah, yeah. Dialing progress, instant message windows, download bars. Yeah.

These things are not that old people. No, they're not. The internet is not that old. But I guess we are now. So, uh, one thing that is, uh, you know, also in the same vein of old is, uh, Mario. I found this link on Mashable of all places. Uh, they, they were showing a London underground map done in the style of Mario.

I do love this. But if you go to Mario maps.com, they have all sorts of different, uh, maps. You can get, uh, the Bart map. You can get Portland, DC, Chicago. I'm going to have to get the Chicago one. They've got different ones, but all done in the style of New York.

Of course, all done in the style of Mario, which is pretty, pretty cool. I got to give you credit for it. Yep. Yes. I like this a lot. Are you kidding me? Love it. If you live down under, uh, better prepare yourself for a massive jolt on New Year's Day because Australia is going to be moving 1.8 meters north on New Year's Day.

How exactly does that happen? Well, the Australian plate is moving about seven centimeters northwards every single year. This motion is accumulated over the decades to produce a significant discrepancy between local coordinates on maps and Pokemon Go. Okay. Uh, and global coordinates and digital navigation systems used by satellites.

So this right now amounts to an error of 1.5 meters, which is basically five feet. That is not insignificant and it's enough to cause a problem to anything in Australia that uses GPS-like systems, including smartphones and vehicles. So they are going to adjust for that on New Year's Day.

Good thing. Because, you know, the autonomous cars and drones would, that's five feet. That'll run you into a tree. Exactly. Exactly. It will. And, uh, I found, well, that was from IFL science. And then when I Googled it to get a little more information, I found a funny site called Satire Wire, who have their own take on this.

Australia gets drunk, wakes up in North Atlantic. After what witnesses described as an all-night blinder during which it kept droning on about how it was always being bloody ignored by the whole bloody rest of the bloody world and would bloody well stand up to do something about it. Australia this morning woke up to find itself in the middle of the North Atlantic.

And the, uh, the article goes on and on. It is quite funny. So, uh, and I found one other clickbaity thing, but I actually do like this. Uh, the ancient defense mechanism inside the great pyramid of Giza is blowing my mind. Ooh, blowing my mind.

This is pretty cool. If you go into the article, uh, this guy is basically saying this is real life Indiana Jones things going on there where there were grooves used to direct slabs of granite towards the entrance to keep them vertical. And another set of thicker blocks that were to slide down the passageway, blocking entrance from anybody trying to get in pretty cool stuff.

Neat. Yes, it is neat. Closing shout outs. I'd like to give a shout out to my co-host Jason, who is a year older and a year grumpier today. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes. The big four, five, this, you know, this is one of those drop down, uh, cusp years because next year I get to go one more down on the, the block of drop downs of age range.

I get to be in the 46 to 60 group. Wow. That's, that's quite a way to measure it. Yeah. Uh, yeah, you are. That's funny. Uh, I know I've been, well, I've been doing this since I, I started on the web when I turned about 24. So, you know, I've, I've been keeping track of this thing.

It's like my hair keeps receding and my, my scrolling keeps getting longer. Yeah. Finding my birth year takes a lot longer now on those lists. That too. Yeah. That too. Bastards. Uh, my shout out is to my co-hosts from, uh, does it have legs number 36, which I forgot to talk about last week.

Uh, we did the last action hero and, uh, Chris and Seth from the grime life podcast joined me for an, uh, for a show. It's been a long time since we did does it have legs and, uh, hopefully we'll be doing more of these soon. As soon as, uh, MXV gets his house back in order and we have a TV where we can watch, watch movies.

Although I'm guessing maybe, uh, you'll start joining me since you'll have time home with the kid to catch up on some flex. Yeah, we'll see about that. We'll see how this is all going to pan out. It's all new to me. So we'll find out. Uh, I might just be too damn tired all the time. That's true too. Well, thanks for listening.

I'm Jason DeFillippo 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. If you don't want to or can't donate, but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show.

Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Sarchansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy.

And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in the episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com It's shite being Scottish. We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking earth.

The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shot into civilization. Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by.

We're ruled by a few assholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy. And all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference. This is Christine Ko from the Edit Your Life podcast. Decluttering is tricky for a number of reasons.

And one of the big ones is the physical act of getting stuff out of your home. And I have a great solution if this is the case for you. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which helps get unwanted items out of your home or business. The process couldn't be easier. Just pop in your zip code on the website and see what the next availability is.

When I did this on a Sunday, there was same day pickup available in very short order. All you need to do after you book your time is point at the stuff you want gone, and their friendly team handles everything else. Lifting, hauling, and sweeping up when they're done. It's an easy, fast way to reclaim your space without breaking a sweat.

This is also a genius option if you have older loved ones who are downsizing, but the moving of stuff is a key hindrance to the process. Once your items are loaded into the truck, they recycle the recyclables and donate the donatables, so as much junk as possible is diverted from landfills.

Are you ready to check this out? Book your free in-person estimate today. Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com. Again, that's 1-800-GOT-JUNK or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.com to book your free in-person estimate today.

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.