172: No Wood for Vader

Yeah, can I get a level check from you real quick? What'd you have for breakfast, Dave? What did I have for breakfast? I had breakfast with friends, so I actually had some bacon. Is that a new Zynga game? Breakfast with friends? Yeah. Yeah. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

The following content contains graphic, explicit, and vulgar language. And with that out of the way, welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks 172. I'm Jason DeFilippo here with... Brian Schulmeister. What up, Brian? Morning. Morning. Yes. I have thunderstorms happening, so if you hear big rumbling noises, it is not my tummy.

And if you hear the fire department sirens, it's not the coppers coming to get me. Okay. Well, I have a client that used to have people that use click farms for them. And if you hear me grumbling, it's because I'm continuing to get texts from somebody that doesn't understand anything.

Okay. So that's just a client, I thought. Pretty much, yeah. The click farm thing is new to me. I've never worked with somebody who actually had employed one in the past. Well, they didn't even know they were employing them. They employed somebody who employed them. So now they're wondering why engagement is down. And then I went through it and found out all engagement was coming from Turkey.

Doop. And I bet that would have even dropped off thanks to the coup. Oh, yeah. I'll mention that as well. Not that they'll understand. Yeah. Anyways, good times. Say, all of your clickers are now dead or in custody. All your clickers are in custody. Yes. So Up to Speed has been back this week. I've done four straight episodes. Woo-hoo!

Congratulations, Jason. I'm very proud of you for doing that. Thank you. That's a lot of work. I forgot how much work we used to put into that, like together, and now it's solo. I remember, which is why I'm currently not back doing it yet. We'll see someday. Hopefully. Maybe. Yeah. I get up at six, and I think I record the show at 10. And that's still with getting stuff together the previous day. So I'm going to tell you, man, like going through all these articles, there's almost not a single article in the thousands I go through every week that does not have a typo. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. Well, there's no editors, and apparently people have forgotten how to use grammar and spellchecks. And the really annoying part is for every single article I read, I have five duplicates that come through from every other tech blog that covers the same goddamn thing. Yeah. Tech journalism is probably even worse than regular journalism.

Oh, it's so bad. It's just copy and paste. It's like, okay, one guy's got a story. Let's just take that and run with it. Well, you know, you and I have been doing this for three years now. We know the state of tech journalism. Yeah. Yeah. But we still need them because that's how we have a show. That's true. It's not like we're going to go out and go interview people.

Oh, hell no. Ain't nobody got time for that. It's not like we're getting really paid for it. So, but speaking of getting paid, there's going to be a bunch of changes here at Grumpy Old Geek starting in two weeks. And for those people who really hate the intro and outro ads and the canned rolls in the middle, those will be going away. So you can stop sending us one-star reviews, unless you're talking about our politics, which then you can, because those are funny.

True. Yeah. We don't mind those at all. Yeah. We're going to make some changes. We gave something to go. Didn't really work out. So we'll try something new now. Yep. And speaking of giving something to go, how's that taken an app a day off your phone going? I'm continuing. And even though it doesn't really affect my day-to-day life, my phone's a lot cleaner looking.

Oh, isn't that special? And I haven't missed a single thing. There has not been a single case of, oh, I wish I wouldn't have deleted that. Well, there you go. That's why you get rid of them. Yep. So I'm still doing it. So a little follow-up on the Walt Mossberg piece last week about that started this whole thing. Yeah. VentureBeat has an article that says studies show only five app. People only use five apps on their smartphones.

That's it. Let me guess. Uh, Facebook, uh, messages, um, maybe something like a, a face Snapchat, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WhatsApp, the socials. Yeah. Generally. Okay. Um, now in contrast to that, another study came out saying that the app store will reach 5 million apps by 2020 with games leading the way. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, people do, people love their games. So everybody will download a game, play it for a while and eventually get sick

of it and nuke it. Um, yeah, but I, it's, it's kind of heartening to realize that people are actually using phones for what they're meant to be used for communication. Uh, well, don't go that far. They're still, they're still, they're still, yeah. Messaging and Snapchatting and WhatsAppping and that's, I consider that under the rubric of communication. Yes. They're just not actually talking to many people. Well, that's fine. I don't like talking on the phone anyways. Yeah. Who does? Oh, well I know vinyl buyers don't. Oh no, they don't.

A little article I found just, uh, for someone special out there in the audience. Uh, vinyl buyers are lonely middle-aged introverts according to a new study. Yeah. I mean, this is a very funny, funny piece. It doesn't, it doesn't actually refer to the person that you're, you're talking about, but since he is married, not an introvert and has hundreds of friends. So I know he's the outlier. I had to throw it in for fun. He is the outlier. It is pretty funny. And speaking of which, I do need to just pimp my collection again, cause I'm still trying to get rid of it. If you are

interested in your lonely middle-aged introvert and love vinyl, please buy mine link in the show notes. Okay. And speaking of vinyl, if you're on the other end and you want to buy some new vinyl, the, uh, Twin Peaks soundtrack has been released on vinyl. I love the Twin Peaks soundtrack. So are you going to go buy it on vinyl? No, I'm just going to listen to it digitally. Like I do all things because I am not a middle-aged, well, I am middle-aged. I'm kind of an introvert, but I'm not lonely. No, you're married and soon to have a bigger family. Exactly. Uh, you were a big fan

of blue apron for a while, I believe. Still am. Still am. Just not doing it during the summer because if I'm not here, it is to give you some context last night when I was coming home from, uh, said vinyl owner's house, I walked out of his house at like nine 30 at night and it was 86 degrees.

Um, so when you're, when you're buying food for delivery and maybe you don't notice it out on the porch for a while, it can melt. So I am, I am waiting till the, the weather changes because in California, I got my deliveries right, like really early in the morning on time could bring them in. Everything was frozen perfectly here. I did two deliveries and the, uh, they, let's just say they were a little bit mushy. So yeah. And when you're talking about shrimp and salmon,

I don't like those a little bit mushy. Yeah, that's pretty gross. Uh, reason I brought this up is business insider did a comparison, uh, between plated blue apron and hello fresh. Cause those are the kind of three big ones that go everywhere. Uh, blue apron definitely came out on top with the caveat that if you happen to be a vegetarian, you're probably better served by hello fresh because they have their own plans just for vegetarians. You can still make

almost a full set on, they have vegetarian options on blue apron. You can point, uh, you did not read the article. The point being it is cheaper. Uh, the price I did. And I did read the article. So I, so thank you very much. I did read it. Um, but yes, I still think blue apron has the, I think I tried plated and I didn't care for it. Uh, blue apron has the best ingredients. The one, the one complaint that they had is one complaint that I also have, which is they should actually put what meal the

ingredient goes with on the label. That would make it so much easier. I suppose if you have a bunch of them sitting around, that would definitely make sense. I did try a blue apron once. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a very tasty. It was very kind of fun to do, but, uh, I, you know, I'm still old school. I'll just go shop for myself. See, I still think it's cost effective to do it that way, to have a really high quality meal for under 10 bucks. And especially for me, I'm single, so I get two meals, you know, and I get good leftovers. The other thing about blue apron is their portion size is so big. I get three meals out of it because I can't finish an entire portion that

they give you. Right. I think it's, I, I am definitely down with blue apron. So, uh, by all accounts, blue apron is the one to go with. And hopefully that'll be one of the ads that will be live reading in the future. In the future. Yes. Uh, speaking of weird ass things, how's your IMSI account going, Jason? Uh, I don't know. I haven't actually logged into it. They did send me the free shirt. It's on its way that I got for signing people like you up. I got five friends to sign up. I'm sure they're thrilled with that since I crapped on them on Twitter. And the funny part

about it is I had five friends sign up, uh, and my channel only has three followers. So, hmm, jerks. You know, I, I sent out five invitations to, to people that actually, cause I posted and I said, I've got some, if you want to take a look at this and five people said, yeah. And I sent them all out and only one of them signed up. Yeah. That's how it goes. That's, that's how it goes. Right. Right. Hello. Yep. How's that going? Hello.

MZ. Hello. Hello. But don't forget. Hello. That's the new one. Oh, yeah. This is hello. Is the one from the, some Facebook guys who are trying to do a mobile only, you know, just another mobile only social network and didn't work out for path. They, they're pretty much, you know, gone the way of the dinosaur. Now, hello, we'll be following them.

It's going to be, you know, hello path, LO and MZ just sitting in a tree. I don't think people quite understand that the market is saturated. We have a clear winner. Nothing is going to come along unless it's something drastically different as we've talked about before. They're trying to do something different, but it's not drastically, like you said. Yes. And also I think people have, they've got social burnout. I know a lot of people who are just, they're done with Facebook. They still have their accounts, but they never sign in anymore.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's part of my process of getting rid of apps. I've gotten rid of things like the, a bunch of the old social stuff that's still kicking around that nobody cares about. I nuked Snapchat from my phone. I got rid of Vine. I got rid of Periscope. I never use these things. I'm burnt out. I've got enough to keep up with. So bye-bye. There's only one person on my feed that's using Periscope and that's Scott Adams, the guy that did Dilbert. Yeah. And I can't even look at his Periscopes because they're so creepy. It's like every time I scroll through, I just see his giant head

and just like, you know, shot from below. I'm so glad you said the head. Yeah. And he's he's not, he's not an attractive man. Uh, he's ripped though. I give him credit for that. That guy's buff, but man, he's definitely not a good looking guy from, uh, on the Periscope. So I, you know, I can't, I can't do that. Yeah. Uh, I assume you saw John Oliver last week.

Absolutely. So he went on his, uh, typically brilliant rant this time on journalism and the state of it, which we've talked about a gazillion times. And I just want to state for the record, I'm very proud of ourselves for this one, Jason, we beat John Oliver to crapping on trunk. Oh, we beat him by like a month. June 6th, 2016. We did trunk in the trunk.

Nice. Two months. We kicked his ass. Exactly. So there was a lot of feedback from the, the journalist crowd. Some of it great. Some of it not so great. Um, some of the paper owners were definitely not very happy with his approach and saying, you didn't really tell us how to fix it. Well, that's your job, dude. Yeah. You're supposed to be the, you know, the experts, but the problem is of course, just like anything else, uh, these are businessmen. These are not

journalists running these things and they're treating it like a business. And, um, to some degree it is, but there should be some civic responsibility here. Well, it is a business. I mean, you got to make money to pay the journalists. So you need, you need all, you need all cylinders firing, but. Yep. And if somebody figures out how to do that, please tell the music industry.

Nah, they're dead. Forget it. It's over. Oh man. Yeah. Uh, keys to happiness. Let's end this on, let's end the segment on a high note. Uh, according to a decades long study over 75 years by Harvard, you do not get health and happiness from wealth and fame or hard work. The mirages that many Americans chase after said they come from something a little more attainable, a simpler life as you were good, strong relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and folks in your community. That is

what makes you happy. Not all the shit that we keep trying to do. Uh, you know, I, I gotta tell you, I'm, I'm happier than I've been in a long time and I have a very simple life. I do still work hard, but, uh, I have, uh, I have, I'm comfortable. I know pretty much everybody on my street. Now I hang out with my friends and my dog and that's about it. It's fine. It's actually not so bad trying to just, you know, just getting along, but, uh, still, you still have to pay the rent and work your ass off

sometimes, but it's not like not working for the big paycheck. You know, it's just like, ah, I wake up, I do my job. I have four jobs, but that's fine. I like all four of them. It's not too bad. I, you know, can't complain about that. I podcast for a living like Jesus talk about lucky. So can't really complain right now. Well, for the first time in a long time, for the first time in a long time, a little downside to, to that previous study though, another study led by researchers

from MIT has analyzed friendship ties and basically finds out that only half of your friends actually like you. Well, then they're not really friends. If somebody doesn't like you, they're not your friend. Yeah, it's a little bit, this is a long form read and I highly suggest you go do it because it delves into deeper questions such as what is a friend? What do we really think a friend is? What a friend should really be. It turns out that about only about half of our relationships with so-called

friends are actually mutual. The other person is just kind of meh about us, even though we like them and call them a friend. Yeah. I just think that, I mean, this is all circles around the definition of friends. I'll, I'll definitely give this one a read, but I thought you said we're going to end this on a high note. I, well, that is high for me. That half your friends don't like you. Yeah.

Cause you figured it was more. I figured it was way more than that. In the news.

Now, Brian, you always make fun of me for installing beta software. Well, no, yeah, I sort of, but then you stopped for a long time, but now you're back again. It's more the, the flip floppy thing. This is because I, the public beta is out and I didn't, I never could sign up for the public beta program before cause I was a developer before. And when I stopped being a developer, I stopped really kind of caring for a long time. And then I was reading some of the stuff today or not today, this week on how this is an extremely stable beta and it's much faster.

But I also had a, an ulterior motive is because my iPhone six plus wasn't working right. The keyboard kept stopping all the time. So I'm like, Hey, maybe I'll try it and see if it fixes the issue. Cool. Lo and behold, it has. Yeah. So the, there was something in the software that was running in iOS nine on my six plus that was making the keyboard just intermittently stop working and have to turn it off, turn it back on. I'm running iOS 10 now. And the problem has not really come

back. So I am, I am back on my six plus switch. Oh my God. It's so much nicer than the five S I love, I love iOS 10. It's great. It's fast. It's very snappy. Excellent. When is the real, real release in about three weeks, three weeks, four weeks, September 7th is the, uh, is the launch day for it. So, uh, that's when the press releases for the phones. And usually it comes out like maybe a

couple of days after. So I'm perfectly happy to wait for the real, real release. That's totally for most people. You don't have to do it. I installed it on my iPad pro and my, uh, all my iPhones just to, so I had parody between them and it works great. I got no complaints and it's, you know, it's with the beta program, it's actually really easy. It's easier than doing it through the developer program. So sure. That makes sense. It took, yeah, it took me just like, it took about 20 minutes to do the backup, archive the backup, and then just load the software. Cause you had a bunch of

reboots in there, but all in all, it was a really painless process, way easier than doing it with the, with the IPSWs or whatever that you have to download and then run all this stuff through iTunes. This was much easier. So if you ever want to give it a shot, try it. I'm not doing Sierra for sure because I run too much audio stuff. Yeah. And the Mac OS and upgrades are notoriously toxic to audio

software. Yes, they are. Since audio software is how I make my living. I think I'll, I think I'll hold back on that one. Probably a really good idea. Uh, feel free to text me the new water gun emoji that when you get a chance. Oh sure. I'll send it over. I don't think you can see it until you get iOS 10 though. Oh yeah. That's because remember it is just a standard and it's going to send you an ISO code. That's right. So I'll just get the old gun. Yep. Cool. Uh, so we are also apparently

getting new Mac book pros shortly and they are making this. This is a rumor. It's not been confirmed by anybody. We've got screenshots of every single IO, your iPhone seven out there, but there's no leaked shots of any Macintoshes that are coming out. So no, it is all just rumors, but what they are going to do makes a lot of sense if it's true, which is basically we're going to get a touch panel. Yeah. Just a partial touch panel, just on the touch panel on the top, which will, uh, basically give us another failure point for all of our Macs and supposedly, you know,

change its appearance based on context and what app you're using. Apple care. People always get Apple care. Probably a good idea, especially if you're going to be one of the first pioneers getting one of these when they come out, but it will be cool if they do. I like the, the fact that there's, you know, really starting to merge the, the, you know, mobile technologies with the old school, well, not desktops, but laptops. It's about time. I mean, it's been so long since they've revved these things and it's getting to the point of like, just it's ludicrous that these

things haven't been revved that much in the prices stayed the same. Yeah. And I'm not surprised at all that this is happening now because I just bought one. Yeah, no, that's the way it goes. That's exactly the way it goes. Yeah. And you know, honestly at this point, my, my 2013 or 2012 MacBook pro that I got like top of the line works great. It works absolutely great. There's no reason for me to upgrade. So I'm, I'm sticking with it for now. Um, I've got no, no reason. The one thing

that I did check out last night that really kind of bummed me out is I've got these really crappy LG monitors, these little 24 inch monitors that fade in and out all the time. It's just like, they can't, they can't keep the same, uh, lumosity or whatever on it. And, um, I went to go look for an Apple display because Apple displays are the cream of the crop. They've always been the best.

That's true. Discontinued. Oh, you can not get an Apple display anymore. The thunderbolt displays are beautiful and you can't buy them anymore. The rumor is they're working on five Ks, but who knows? So maybe, maybe we'll be getting a huge round of max coming soon. The, the, the rumor mill says that nothing's coming at the IO, the iPhone event. So it won't probably be till October.

That's a drag. It is. It is. I know a lot of people who are waiting to get, to actually move from the PC to Mac and are waiting and you're just stuck right now. So what you're going to do? What you're going to do? Um, found a new site that I kind of, I'm kind of digging. It's pro publica journalism in the public interest. And they had an article that's right up our alley.

Looks can kill the deadly results of flawed design. We complain a lot about poorly designed products and UI. Trent Reznor, are you listening now? iTunes crappy design, isn't going to kill you just your music collection. It'll just kill your soul. Yeah. It just kills your soul. Uh, this gets, this is another really long form article, but I think it's highly worth the read for everybody. If you're listening to this podcast, it will be of interest to you. It starts with unfortunate demise and, uh, the accidental death of Anton Yelchin who plays Chekhov in the new

Star Trek when his, uh, car rolled over him. And then they go into why the design in that particular car for the shifter is crap and horrible design. And it doesn't make sense and it's not intuitive and it's hard to tell where you're at in terms of the whole process of shifting. Um, I've experienced this myself with just a number of different things. I I've gotten a new car recently and everything is computerized now and it doesn't feel like a car anymore. So it's kind of

unintuitive to know what exactly the hell it is you're doing at any point in time. What kind of car'd you get? Uh, I got a BMW X3. Oh, okay. Fancy pants. It is very nice, but, uh, it is, it's almost more of a computer than a car. I know it's been a while since I've gotten a new car, but I hadn't quite realized the quantum leaps that have taken place in terms of buttons replacing absolutely everything.

So see, I got, I got a new car too. We got kind of the same type of car, but you got like Mr. Moneybags car and I got, I got the, uh, the pauper version of the Ford. Well, I got the, uh, new life coming into the world that better be protected. I got the same thing, but she's got pause and not, you know, right. Yes. Anyway, um, mine is, has pretty, it's pretty low tech. I still have to use a key, which I like. I do not. Yeah. I, the only nice thing that mine has is like, if I'm listening

to audible on my phone and then I step in the car and I turn the car on audible starts playing in the stereo, that's about it. You know, we'll see the thing that resonated with me with this article is, is with my new car. Uh, I I'm always used to, you take the shifter, you push it all the way up. That's park. Yeah. There's a button for park now. What? And pushing the shifter all the way up actually puts it in reverse. So for the first four times I got in this car before my brain wrapped itself around this, I would just throw it up and take my foot off the brake and start to get out of

the car and it would just start rolling backwards. Holy shit. So now I press the button is ingrained in my head, but that's a design change from years. And I've been driving for how many years? And now all of a sudden I have a different way to park. Yeah. See, this is dumb. Yep. This is really dumb.

And the problem here is everybody's doing it differently now. Exactly. That's the thing. Like, I don't know how these, I feel, I feel like I have to pay valets a lot more now because somehow they're keeping up with all this shit, either that or they're just banging up our cars left, right and center. Yeah. That's nuts. So it is different. I mean, it's a different thing.

I don't know why you would change it when you know people are just used to this certain thing and there's no real benefit to replacing park from being a position on the shifter to a button. And yeah, the other thing being everybody is doing it slightly differently. Yeah. So it gets, the article starts with the cars. It gets further into it. It talks about product design, things like cleaning products that are made to look exactly like pop drinks and are often stacked next

to each other in, in supermarkets, uh, which has caused people to die. Um, particularly gets deep into a UX or user experience on hospital equipment and how that's caused some deaths because people couldn't figure out what the hell it was doing. Um, it's really interesting study into how we're basically fucking around with, with, uh, design and it's making things really counterintuitive when they could be very easily Trent Reznor. Again, um, it could be very intuitive. Well, you know what?

Cause designers are smug little bitches and always think they're smarter than everybody else. So they have to do it their own way. Well, and it's the, it's the constant, uh, it's a human nature to change things. Um, particularly if the way to seem like you're doing something is to change something. Yeah. Whether it needs to be changed or not. And that's, that's a really unfortunate aspect of, of corporate culture. I mean, bring back steering column shifters like the old days, like my dad, my granddad's Ford LTD. That's how, that's how you shifted cars back in the seventies.

You had a steering wheel shifter that you had cranked down. Oh yeah. With that really satisfying click. Yeah. Yes. I love that. Tell me about it, man. Bring that back. We should get a Pono. I bet those have it. Oh, Pono. Yes. You know what I haven't seen about Pono lately? Anything? Any advertisements? Yeah. I don't think they add. They advertise in like high fidelity magazine. Well, well, their store is shut down. So I guess they shouldn't be even bothering to. Yeah. It's still

down. Actually. I did check on that before we started the podcast. Uh, so anyway, uh, speaking of advertisements, the FTC, the federal trade commission for you foreigners, uh, here in the U S is cracking down on sponsored internet posts. So Kim Kardashian's feed is down. Uh, well, she's going to be one of the people they're going after. Cause after this settlement that they had with Warner brothers over all those YouTube videos for the game that came out, we covered that a couple of weeks ago.

Um, they're like, Hey, this is, we can, we can get behind this. We can get some cash out of this. So, and they're saying that a hashtag or a below the fold description will not be good enough. You have to state it at the beginning of the advertisement, uh, saying that you are being paid for this. And, you know, on, on some of my other shows that I work on, we have, we've already adopted that this show is sponsored by blah, blah, blah. You know, you have, you say it up front because that's where, that's where your bread and butter comes from. Otherwise it's a, it's,

it, it, it basically, I don't want to say fraud, but it's, you know, it's disingenuous and misleading. Yeah. So I'm not a doctor, but I play one on Twitter, that, that sort of thing. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, I think specifically Twitter, I can see this being problematic because if you've got to put a disclosure in there and you've only got 140 characters, they need to put in some sort of new symbol next to it, like a verified symbol, like a shill symbol.

Well, yeah, just put a dollar, put a dollar sign emoji in front of it. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. I think that would be, that'd be awesome. It's funny because I'm dealing with this with a different client right now who doesn't understand that you're actually, it's kind of illegal to do this unless you disclose it. So. Oh, we'll send them this article.

Yeah, I will actually. Thank you for putting that in there. You're very welcome. So I want to go to some Google fiber news, which is really interesting. My friend is really bummed because he lives in San Jose and they were going to start running Google fiber up there and they said, ho, ho, ho, hold the phone here. There have been advances in wireless technology that might mean that we can give just speeds that are just as fast as our fiber, but not have to put it in the ground like savages.

So they are, uh, Google has pulled back on fiber right now and they are, they're investigating all the different wireless plans out there, uh, that might be able to bring it to dozens of cities, much faster and much cheaper, which is pretty cool. You know, it's a lot of it is line of sight and, uh, you have to study the terrain to do these kinds of things. I used to have a microwave tower on top of my roof that was 50 feet tall. My neighbors hated me for it.

So yeah, I can't imagine why. Yeah, it was pretty funny. It looked like alfalfa from little rascals. If I, I think I have a photo of it, I'll dig it up and see if I can put it in the show notes. It was really obnoxious, but it was fast. It was faster than, uh, their internet back then. So suck it neighbors and soccer moms from hell. But anyway, good for Google on trying to, you know, if they can do this faster and cheaper than instead of digging up the ground and putting in fiber, then more power to them. I think it's fine. Go back to their, their plan to use a gigantic

air balloons. Ah, yes. Project loon. I'm pretty sure that's still going on right now. I'm sure it is too. Yeah. Um, Facebook back in the news. Uh, there's, they're, they're trying to bypass your ad blocker. They're saying, you know, the interesting thing is like over 80% of their revenue comes from mobile ads, but you know, you figure even 15% of their revenue, if it comes from the web, that's a pretty, that's, you know, you're in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue from these ad blockers, even

though like 20% of the users use ad blockers, that's still, you know, tens of millions of dollars. So that's worth throwing some weight behind trying to get that money back. Yep. And they said, Hey, we're going to say, screw your ad blockers. Um, good luck with that. Yep. Uh, it took two days. Ad block plus has already defeated Facebook's new ad blocking restrictions. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. Well, of course it's, it's just going to be an arms race. It's straight up tech. Uh, they'll figure it out. Then Facebook will find a new way to squirt it past and then they'll figure out another

way to block it. And it's, it's wacko. It's wackazuck. Yep. I like that. We should make a game. So yeah, ad block plus a good on you. Yep. I'm, you know, I, for sites when I go to and I get the, you know, the pop up, the, it's the, the sad puppy pop up, you know, it's like, we need some money. Would you please turn off your ad blocker? Most of the time I'm just like, sure, I'll turn it off. I got no problem with it. Um, it's just the, some sites will just ruin your experience. Like, uh, well,

I think it was the New York, Oh no, it was the New York post that I left open and I left it open for a couple of minutes and I'm watching the little ticker on my ad block bar in my, it was, it was over 10,000 cause it was just sitting there like spinning out of control, like just blocking and blocking and they kept reloading. And then I looked at my processor, my processor is like 80% and the bandwidth is off the charts. I'm like, what the hell are you trying to send me people?

I think it must've been like two or three months ago. I tried to go a week without using an ad blocker and the internet was basically unusable. I know. I still wish there was a way to, the one thing that the ad blockers can't figure out are those overlays to join my fucking mailing list. They're everywhere. Cause everybody has rediscovered that email works, but in, they're just going to crap on the parade and email won't work again. So you got to find something else. But every time you go someplace, you scroll down

like one paragraph and then the down comes the slider sign up for my email list and talk. And here's the unfortunate part about this. All the marketing people I know. Yeah, it works. Unfortunately it fucking works. No, it does. There was all those sites for a long time that wouldn't even let you get in unless you signed up for their mailing list. And it works. It works. I still get mailings from them sometimes, even though I've tried to unsubscribe eight times, you know who you are. Yeah. Oh God,

Jason. I mean, this is a bigger issue and maybe we should do a show about it some days, but I am still, I'm so pissed off at the credit cards back in the day when we could have had micropayments and micropayments could have changed the entire way we deal with the internet, but they just wouldn't let them do it. Nope. They're like, Oh, we can't do that. Transaction fees. How are we supposed to do a charge for 20 cents? You bastards. You ruined the internet. Yeah.

Oh man. I still wish, what was that one site that we, uh, that Peter Peterson from the Pirate Bay did? Yeah. I can't remember, but obviously it didn't catch on. We don't remember. Yeah, no. And I was even running it on, on my site for a long time. I made about 30 bucks over the course of, you know, like two years. Yep. Um, man, I wish I could remember the name of it, but that really

does kind of say flatter. That's what it was. It was flatter. Yes. See what we need is a ubiquitous system that everybody is involved in that could handle the credit card companies and get them to do micropayments. Facebook. Yeah. Nope. It's never going to happen. No, it's not. Give that, give that up. It's done. Yeah, I know. And the war is done anyways. Nobody's going to pay for content. Everybody wants it to be free. So there you go. Uh, well, we'll see if it comes back. Um,

hope springs eternal now on a, on a happy note, there was a, I covered this on up to speed this week, but I had to bring it back for just so you could see it. So I knew that you saw this video. Uh, there's a Ugandan village that does a satire of Silicon Valley to raise money for their village and start, uh, some entrepreneurial, uh, ventures from the bulimbuli district in Eastern Uganda.

The video, the video is worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, their Indiegogo is already over. So if you're listening to this, you missed the boat and you can't actually go give them any money. But, uh, 420 people have raised a $17,000, $17,323 for them, which for 420 backers is a pretty good chunk. Yeah. And well, it's a genius video. I was, I fell out of the chair laughing. The first 3d egg printer, a chicken. That's pretty good. Chicken is also compatible

with rooster. So whoever, whoever produced these videos did an excellent job. So very, very funny. Um, yeah, fantastic. Yeah. Big kudos to these guys and I'm glad they hit their goal. Um, Oh, wait a minute. It looks like they've actually, I didn't know you could do this on Indiegogo. They've changed their date. So now there's a month left. Excellent. So if you, if you feel like it, go watch the video and give them like a buck or two, I think, yeah, $5 is a, is the basic

one. I gave him five bucks. It's, it's worth it for, uh, for just, just for the sheer entertainment value of this video. It's worth it. It was very good. I loved it. Uh, Hulu is getting rid of its free TV service. Yeah. Yes. Uh, continue. Cause I have something to say about this. Eight years in, they're turning off the free service. Uh, viewers will now be required to sign up or log into its subscription service. Hulu plus for 799 a month, 1199 without commercials. Uh, free Hulu, however,

will continue on. Uh, it is being moved to Yahoo, which is launching a new TV watching site called Yahoo view. So apparently you can still get some free TV, but not all. Uh, a lot of people are saying that because of this, the free TV, uh, model did not work online. Uh, my take and a lot of other people's take as well is actually it worked too well and people are willing to pay for something.

So they're getting rid of the free version to make sure that everybody pays for something. I just think it's fucking fantastic that Yahoo is, is buying the division that couldn't make money or that doesn't make money. They're spending money to buy the unprofitable division and, and roll it into their product. Um, this is, this is Yahoo par for the course. Let's buy the thing that doesn't make any money and make it part of our platform. If you are out there as an internet

entrepreneur at this point in time, and you're trying to figure out what to do, just ask yourself, what wouldn't Yahoo do? Yeah, seriously. Oh man. I, and you know, I don't have an actual, I don't have cable here. I'm a cord cutter. I hate that term, but, um, I just, I just don't want a cable box and a TV. So I might actually go for the, the $12 without commercial version of Hulu because I still can't stand those commercials. Yeah. I haven't checked out Hulu in a long time.

I mean, do they basically have everything? They've got a lot of stuff. Um, I still have to go back and check. Last time I checked, there was nothing there that really compelled me to jump into it. So, right. Yeah. See, that's, yeah, I, I would love to pay. I would pay all in for any service that had everything. Yeah. It's the same, you know, the same kind of bull crap that was going on with like title, trying to do exclusives and crap like that. No, just get license it to everyone.

Let people buy into a service. I don't want to buy into eight services to be able to watch whatever is going on. That's super hip. Like I'd be pissed off if I had Hulu plus and I couldn't have watched stranger things. Well, you can't because it's on Netflix. Right. Yeah. That's exclusive to Netflix. That's why they want you to sign. So I have two subscription services. I have Netflix and I have a HBO. I can never tell if it's go or now, but I think it's HBO now. Yeah. It's confusing as to which is which I think HBO goes the purely mobile thing. No, no. I think HBO go is the one that you get

when you have a cable subscription. HBO now is the one that I pay for straight up for. Yeah. The crappy thing about HBO now is unlike HBO go, you can't share your password because it's tied to your Apple account. That's how I signed in. So bummer. Sorry. Sorry. Friends who wanted to bum my HBO.

You can't. But yeah, you know, I've thought about doing Showtime, but I'm, you know, I'm definitely not going to be doing the one to watch Star Trek, but I am. I'm going to watch. I'm going to pay to watch Star Trek because why not? I have to. Showtime. That's a tough one for me because I really do love Homeland, but that's it. And I don't want to pay that much money for Homeland. The amazing Mr. Limpet

land. The final article I found, I just think it's another good long form read. Are replicas changing the way we experience art replicas? What? Oh, sorry. Not replicas. That may be 20 years. Are replicants changing the way we experience humans? Yes. Uh, this is about the art world and precise digital reproductions, which allow more people to own and view masterpieces minus the works soul. It's a very

long article, but I liked it. So I suggest you read it. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors. Security. Okay. As you can tell, we're back here with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast.

Uh, we ready to dive in today, Dave? Let's do it. All right. Microsoft's golden key leak debacle that's been going around this week. Uh, what do you know about it? Well, um, you know, Microsoft, uh, had, uh, had built a back door into, um, one of their systems. Um, it's a, it's a, what's happened is a security key has leaked that allows a windows based computers, phones and tablets to be unlocked.

Um, uh, but, uh, you know, this is the story about the, the, the golden key. If you have the back door key, uh, you can get in. And, um, so the, you know, the people are using this as an example of why we should not have back doors. Why back doors are a bad idea because back doors always get leaked or cracked or, you know, discovered. Um, it's, it gets cracked and leaked and discovered even when there's not a back door. So why make it easier?

That's right. Um, so Microsoft is working diligently to try to, uh, close the back door, which, uh, you know, the horse is out of the barn. So we'll see how it goes with that. Um, but of course, you know, people are going to be jumping all over this as, as an example, uh, for why back doors are a bad, bad idea. And, uh, I have to say, I agree with them.

Um, but I, I think the best part about this story is the actual website that they released the, the hack or the, the information about it on, uh, it's a secure golden key boot. I mentioned this on up to speed this week, go there, check it out. If you're at work, turn your speakers down. If you're at home, turn them up because it's awesome. It's a wonderful trip back to the eighties.

Yes. Oh, I like it. I like it. All right. Moving on. Data fusion companies are making files on everyone. Even you, uh, professional and private detectives have for years been able to search troves of public and non-public records and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as 10 bucks. Uh, now they can combine that information with all the kinds of things marketers know about you, such as which politicians you donate to, what you spend on groceries and whether it's weird that you ate in last night to create a portrait of your life

and predict your behavior. Now this is basically everything that everybody's worried about the NSA doing, but these are private companies. Uh, IDI, a year old company in the data fusion business is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information. Uh, it's a Boca Raton based company and their service is called IDI core. It combines public records with purchasing demographic and behavioral data. Uh, the CEO, Derek Dubner says the system isn't waiting for requests from clients. It's already built a profile on every American adult, including young

people, uh, how young that'd be interesting to know, uh, who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases, which only indexes transactions. Um, the CEO says we have data on that 21 year old who's living at home with mom and dad, uh, which would not normally be in any of these databases. So this is kind of creepy, but not unexpected.

It is. I think maybe weaponized is perhaps a strong, uh, a term for this, but, but at any rate, I mean, um, yeah, their private companies are collecting all this data. Um, I saw a report earlier this year that they're, um, they're actually also vacuuming up license plate numbers.

Oh yeah. So, you know, figuring, in other words, if you park your car at the commuter lot, um, they're, they're going through and tracking license plate numbers. Um, you know, so they, they, they may even know your comings and goings, your, your, your schedules, you know, where if your car is routinely at a, at a certain place, these private companies are vacuuming, vacuuming up that data

as well. Um, and so far there's nothing illegal about it. This is about velocity, isn't it? I mean, I, I, I remember if we can again, you know, talk about our grumpiness and our oldness. I remember when Google first put everyone's telephone numbers and addresses, you know, at your fingertips for searching and people were all up in arms because, you know, oh my gosh, you can just go to a computer and look up someone's telephone number and, and that'll automatically bring up a map to their address.

Gads. Right. And, and, you know, it was, it was a strong emotional reaction to that. Well, we all got used to that. The world didn't end. Um, well, it did for yellow book. So, well, yeah, good point. Good point. But this is, but this is an extension of that sort of thing. This is all, you know, most of this information is something that someone, if they had, if they really wanted to, they could have gathered up manually, but it wouldn't have been practical to do so at any sort of, uh, you know, large volume. And now they can, and they are, um,

and people can buy these databases. I think where it gets tricky is, um, things like obviously, you know, political inclinations, um, uh, whether or not someone is gay, uh, whether or not someone owns guns, you know, these are, this is private information that people could, uh, potentially use. Or say weaponize. Or say weaponize. See? All right. All right. Boom. Gotcha. Touche. Touche.

Touche. Um, so I, I think, you know, privacy advocates are obviously, uh, against this. Um, so we'll see where it goes. We'll see if, if, uh, if people introduce legislation to put some kind of limits on this right now, it's kind of the wild west. All right. Moving on. Let's talk about quad router. Oh, Android. Yeah. So quad router is a, uh, a new, uh, Android vulnerability. Um,

technically it's a set of four vulnerabilities. Right. And they're there for, they're for the quad name and quad router. Um, uh, checkpoint, uh, software disclosed this recently. Um, and it affects a whole bunch of Android devices who are using one of Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.

So hundreds of millions device of devices are potentially at risk. And I think now, now there, this will be patched. Well, three of them are already patched. There's one remaining, one big one remaining. Right. And I think really what this speaks to is, you know, one of the great things about the Android ecosystem is the diversity of the Android ecosystem. And one of the terrible things about the Android ecosystem is the diversity of the Android ecosystem, because when Google releases

a patch, then it's up to the manufacturers to distribute that patch. And of course, you know, as we know on the Android side, people are tend to be much slower at updating their devices. The manufacturers are much slower at, uh, patching their devices. Um, and of course I'm comparing it to Apple who controls, you know, the whole kit and caboodle.

Yeah. When you look at adoption on a new version of iOS, it's ridiculous. Or even Mac OS 10, how fast that they're adopted, because it is just built into, it's all the same, you know, it's so easy for them to push it out to everybody. Android, not so much. Right. And Apple has the ability to just pester the heck out of you. Uh, when, if, if there is a, if there is a critical security flaw and there have been some critical security flaws on iOS recently. Um, and I noticed, you know, being an iPhone user, I noticed that Apple was just like, you want to update, you want to update, you really want to

update, right? And I'm like, yes, let's think about updating. Let's do it now. You know, have some candy, little girl, have some candy. Right, exactly. But you know, they, they're in control of the whole stack. So, um, you know, they have that advantage. Obviously there are some other advantages of a diverse ecosystem that Android enjoys, but rapid patching is not one of them. So if you are an Android user, please, uh, check this out. It's easy to look up, see if your device is affected. Uh, hopefully your

manufacturer will have, uh, the patches available quickly and you can secure your device. Yes. Because Google is not patching the fourth bug for a little bit, but Qualcomm has sent the patch to all the manufacturers. So if you don't have a patch from your manufacturer, it's their fault. There's nobody to blame, but them.

That's right. That's right. All right. Moving on. A group of researchers presenting at DEF CON showed how they were able to overwhelm or deceive Tesla's sophisticated sensors to make a car hit an object. It would normally detect in its path. Normally the car will not move. However, when we jam the sensors, it moves, says researcher Chen Yan. It hit me. He added to laughter from the audience. Uh, you know, people getting run over by Tesla's is always funny to the DEF CON crowd.

Well, and you know, there was a story, uh, I want to say in the past couple of months where there was a Tesla that ran into a truck that had basically, I believe the test bone T-boned the trailer portion of an 18 wheeler. Yeah. Cause it was crossing the road and the trailer kind of matched the sky.

Exactly. Exactly. There wasn't enough contrast or whatever the, whatever the situation was, it was the perfect set of conditions that fooled the Tesla into not seeing it. Also remember that the guy who was driving, I use that word term loosely because he wasn't driving the car. His hands were not on the wheel and he was watching a Harry Potter DVD.

So, so there's that. Yeah. And according to the EULA for Tesla, your hands must remain on the wheel at all times and be, you must be ready to take over that car because otherwise you are, I mean, you are responsible for the actions of that car no matter what. So that's right. You got to keep your hands on the wheel. That came out of the, the China accident last week. So, so basically these guys came up with a way of overwhelming the sensors, um, really kind of jamming them, uh, overwhelming them

with noise so that the sensors really couldn't see the signal. Um, and so they got fooled into thinking there was nothing in front of them and would run into things. That's pretty much it. And this is going to be something that Tesla is going to have to work on. Um, but they did, uh, send their research to Tesla and Tesla was very thankful for it and said, we are going to work on ways of mitigating this risk. And, uh, so apparently the sky is not falling, they say. No, no. And I think it's important to keep this in perspective. You know, if, if, if, uh, self-driving cars, you know, run over and kill

10,000 people a year or, or, you know, are responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people a year, that's 20,000 less than what we do now, you know, about 30,000 people die in automobile accidents, uh, every year anyway. So I think we need to get rid of the notion that these cars are going to be perfect. Um, and when it comes to fatalities, but they're going to be a whole lot better than where we are today. I think what it comes down to is who do we get to blame when that

happens? Well, and that's a good point. Yep. That's a good point. Uh, speaking of blame though, let's talk about Volkswagen. Uh, those, these guys just can't catch a break. I tell you a team of researchers from a university of Birmingham and the German engineering firm Casper and Oswald plan to reveal two distinct vulnerabilities. They say affect the keyless entry systems of an estimated nearly

100 million cars, including mine and possibly including mine too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the Volkswagen has a keyless entry system like every car out there today. Now to their credit, that, that keyless entry system does use a form of encryption, but it's a very old form of encryption.

This, this, this, it's about 18 years old. So, you know, that's a long time. It's, it's, it's, the encryption can now vote. That's good. There you go. It's, so it's functionally obsolete. The, the people who provided the encryption have long since deprecated it and said, you know, you shouldn't use this anymore, but Volkswagen, uh, used it for a long time on a lot of vehicles. And so these researchers have figured out a pretty straightforward way to crack it. Yeah. It's, it's one of these

radio attacks where you can stand outside of it. And basically first you have to get the key fob to talk to the car. Then you capture that data and then you run that data against the, the keys that you can, basically that they pulled out of Volkswagen already, and then they can play it back and basically open the car. Now, what I'm curious is this might be because these, some of these cars are older.

What I was under the impression of is that these new keys and key fobs have chips in the actual keys that need to be in proximity to the vehicle for it to start. So maybe this is just because these are maybe older cars that are vulnerable. Like maybe they can get into it because they say new wireless hack can unlock the cars, but can you still steal them that you, I think you'd probably have to do something else. That's right. I don't believe this hack is any good for starting the car. I think this

just gets you inside the car. Um, and let's, you know, again, keep it in perspective that we used to be able to get inside our cars with coat hangers. So, you know, it's not like the, it's not like your automobile has ever been a very secure place anyway. Um, but, um, as in bricks, bricks will still work to get into the car as well. That's right. I think what this offers is a way to be very discreet about getting into a car. If you can remotely unlock a car, just walk up, open the door, no one's

going to look, look at twice at you. All right, moving on. We were talking about, um, uh, ransomware and, uh, F secure is a well-known company in the cybersecurity realm. They recently published a study of ransomware and they, they made the suggestion that you should try to negotiate with the people who are, uh, who've, who've ransomed your stuff. Uh, this is a little bit of a contrary

take. Most people these days are saying, uh, if you get hit by ransomware, you're just done. Don't, don't pay it. Um, you know, just cut your losses, you know, go to your backup and you should have a backup. Um, and don't try, don't even talk to the, to the, uh, ransomers because quite often they'll just take your money and they won't even bother unlocking your stuff. It's a, it's a, it's a crapshoot. It's a roll of the dice. It is. And with the point that F secure is making is that

basically you have nothing to lose. Well, right, but you have nothing to lose by negotiating. So if they come to you and they say, we want, you know, $500 to unlock your stuff and you go to them and you say, you know, I'll give you 20 bucks. Um, they might say, okay. Now, typically what happens in these, these sort of things is you give them the 20 bucks and then they say, would you believe a hundred bucks? And it just goes on like that. And then you end up not getting your stuff. So,

um, you know, this is an interesting, uh, sort of contrarian view. I guess if you've got the time, you know, why not try it if you've got the time and it's easier for you to, to maybe lose a little bit of money than just go to your backup. Uh, I was going to say, how, how, how's this for like a negotiating tactic? You write back to them and say, Hey, look, I've got a backup. It's going to take me two hours to, to restore from my backup. I don't feel like doing it. I'll give you the

hundred bucks. Give me my stuff back. Otherwise go F yourself, you know? Yeah. And see if that works. I think where you start to get, where it starts to get trickier with, with some of those, um, you know, value propositions is if you are a large organization, if you are a hospital. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and every minute counts. Um, uh, every minute is more important than perhaps thousands of dollars. Um, then we're, then we've got a little bit of a different value

proposition there. So that's just thinking more for the home user in that case. Yeah. I think, I think you're right for the home user. You're probably best off just cutting your losses and going to a backup. Uh, it's when you're a big organization that I think things might change. And I think that's who F secure was really, uh, targeting this message towards, but it's interesting in that it is not what everyone else is saying. Yeah, no, that's definitely been the, the party line is don't negotiate. Don't negotiate with the terrorists. Uh, moving

on a story from motherboard about, um, hackers, uh, making the first ever ransomware for smart thermostats. Uh, you knew it's coming, you know, it's coming. I was just going to say, you know, it was inevitable. Um, and so basically what these bad guys can do is if you have a smart thermostat in your home, um, they haven't said what particular brand that they hacked because they've gone to the manufacturer to help them plug the hole.

But, um, you know, imagine you go away on vacation for a couple of weeks and you leave your house locked up and you have your thermostat set at some sort of reasonable level. So when you come home, it's either, you know, not too hot or not too cold. And while you're away, the bad guys take hold of your thermostat and they say, you're away for a couple of weeks and it's winter time. We're going to shut off your thermostat and your pipes are going to freeze. Yeah. Or we're good. It's summertime. We're going to shut off your thermostat and your dog's going to die, you know, cause it's

going to be too hot or something. Your dog's already dead because the self-feeding bowl has been shut down by the DDoS on the feeding server. Right. Right. Well, there's that. Fluffy's already dead. He doesn't care. That's right. That's right. If they, if they were ethical hackers, they would just turn the AC up the full blast and keep them cold. So the house didn't smell when you came home and you just have a really bad AC bill. Right. Exactly. Yes. Your electric bill, which is cheaper. The, the ransomware for the thermostat or the, uh, the large AC bill. But, um, so, you know, it's a,

it's a yet another device that, uh, yet another demonstration of the vulnerability of the IOT. And, um, you know, I think people will say, well, big deal. You know, they, they shut down my thermostat. I'll just run to run to the hardware store and buy a new one. Well, there are certainly situations where that might not be possible, um, and bad things could happen.

Well, the other thing about being able to hack into the thermostat is then you can see when people are home, when they're not just from the programming on the smart thermostat. So it's a, it's a vector into when somebody's home and not, but it's also a place to even stash malware that can infect the network, like reinfect the network. So if, if you, you do own the machines in the house and then they clean them off, you just have this little, this handy piece of malware just stuck in the back that can go out and reinfect over the, the wifi network. There's so many

different ways that you can exploit, uh, once you're in the home, there's so many different things you can do to exploit. The ransomware is just, I think a pretty good, you know, just proof of concept. Yeah. No, it's, it's a great point, Jason, that, uh, you know, every, as, as every single one of these devices becomes a computer, that computer, um, can do all those bad things. And you need to remember that it's a computer. It's, you know, we used to have these, these, uh, these devices that

had one job to do like a thermostat, you know, which used to be an actual, used to be a mechanical device, you know, with mercury inside that would, that would expand and contract with the temperature. And now that they're digital and now that they've got real computers inside, that computer can be a haven for, uh, these bad things to get into your network. So, yeah.

Yep. Okay. And to round out the things of things on the internet that maybe shouldn't be on the internet, the Wii Vibe 4 Plus Vibrator. Uh, this has been making the rounds and it's just too funny because, you know, yes, people can actually see what's going on with your vibrator because the, the Bluetooth connection between the vibrator and the smartphone app is insecure. Uh, so you can actually see when people are getting funky with it. Uh, cause it is. So just to back up, let's

describe, you know, what, what this device is. This is a, this is a, uh, you know, a personal massage device. Yeah. No, it's a vibrator. It's not. Thank you. Yeah. No, it is the Wii Vibe 4 Plus Vibrator. Uh, and by the way, they've sold 2 million of these things. So this is, there's a pretty good footprint out there for, uh, attack surfaces, as they would say. That's right. And so this device connects to your phone. And so you can control, you know, control the device from your phone. But as

you said, the, the Bluetooth, uh, connection between the device and your phone is, uh, not encrypted, is in the clear. So. And the app is sending intercepted. Yes. And the app is sending data back to the, uh, command and control server, as it were for your vibrator, telling it, uh, what the temperature is and how often it changes speeds. So it's tracking your, uh, your, your, your happy, happy, fun time. And people, people can, people can see what's going on with it. So if you have

one of these devices, uh, I don't know, maybe, maybe we need to get like a little Faraday cage for it to keep it private. Yes, I'm sure. Yeah. And I think it's easy to laugh at this sort of thing, but you know, this is just another one of those things that, you know, you and me, and especially if someone were a public servant or a politician or a, you know, there's all kinds of scenarios where you can see where, you know, I, I, I don't want anyone to know what my schedule is

for any of these sorts of private, private things that I do with, uh, with things in the privacy of my own home. And, um, so it's easy to laugh at, but you can, you can see scenarios where this could actually become, become a thing. Yes, it can. Yes, it can. And especially since, like I said, there are 2 million of them out there. That's not a small, small number. No, no, it's not. Nope.

People are, uh, enjoying the internet of things. Yes, they are. Okay. On that note, we're going to call it a day, Dave. Thank you very much for joining us and everybody check out the Cyber Wire podcast. Oh, shizzle. All right. Thanks a lot, Jason. Always a good time. I'll talk to you next week. At the library. It's a strange segment because most people don't read yet. It's one of our most

popular segments because we have smart listeners. Well, it's 50, 50. I get a lot of people that say I couldn't give two shits about what books you read because those are the people that don't read, but the people that do are very excited about it. Well, and the best part is the people that do read are going to be listeners who will be listening to us for a lot longer. You people that don't read are going to die. You're going to die? That's what our researchers at Yale University have used, uh, have discovered using data on over, uh, close to 4,000 people over 50 years of age,

participating in a larger health study. People who read books regularly are likely to live longer than those who do not read at all. Wow. So now do they, do they, do they count, uh, dicking around on Facebook and the internet? Because technically you're reading all day when you're online. They don't count dicking around on the internet and Facebook, but they do count newspapers and periodicals. Okay. So if you're reading long form articles, like the ones that we talk about on the show, you're going to be doing okay. And if you're just reading Jason's tweets, not so much.

You hear that people tweets kill. Yeah. So it's actually a real hard science that is showing that people that read, uh, do tend to live longer. Now, of course, book readers tend to be college educated in higher income groups. Therefore they're able to pay for better healthcare. They take care of themselves better. They're learning things about how to take care of themselves better, et cetera, et cetera. It's a, it's a rolling effect. None of that actually applies to me.

So I'm not a college graduate. I'm not higher, higher. I don't have higher education. Yeah. Me don't have higher education. Uh, and I have crappy health insurance. So. All right. Well, we've got a, we've got a running study of two. We'll see which one of us dies first, Jason. Cause we both read.

We do both read. All right. Yes. We'll see. We'll see how this one plays out. Whoever dies with the most stuff wins as they say, I guess. But, uh, I finally, finally got through necessary evil by Ian Tregellis, which is the milkweed, uh, season or series conclusion. Hallelujah. Although the fact that you just said finally got through concerns me, that means you probably didn't like it. Here's the problem I had with it. Yes. You know, you talk about formulaic books,

like some of the other stuff we were like Brandon Sanderson stuff. And, um, this to me was the same way. And I think I went from number two to number three, way too fast. And I did, I needed some time in between. So every time I started it, I got like, you know, uh, maybe 20% in and stopped and then had to, and then just, I'm like, okay, I'll go back to it later. I'll go back to it later. And then when I went back to it, I had to go reread that beginning 20% again. And then I'm just like, Oh, I'm sick of

it again. Um, I finally, yeah, I just powered through it. Um, but once I got to like, you know, a quarter of the way through it, I just, I had that little barrier to get through and then it picked back up for me and I really got back into it and I actually really liked it. I was, I was, it was a satisfying ending to a nice short series. I was, if there was a milkweed four, I definitely would not read it. I'm done with it. I'm done with the world. I'm done with the entire thing. Um, I think you

did a very good job with it. I thought it was well-written and I thought the story was solid. It's just, man, it dragged at the beginning, but it was wisely enough. I mean, he has stated that he's done with that series. He knows it's, it reached its completion point and there's no reason to go back, which I applaud. Yes. Yes. It's yes. Milkweed is deadweed. You know what? I think, I think we've learned a takeaway from our experiences without the library over the past couple of years.

Um, binge reading does not work like binge watching. No, it doesn't. You really need time in between these series. Honestly. Yeah. Cause that's what I was experiencing with the, uh, the laundry files. I burned through four of them in a row and it was too much and I was starting to get burned out. So, um, so, but this doesn't happen to you with Dune when you read it every year for the umpteenth time and you read those back to back and there's like 17 of them. So yeah, but that's different because I'm revisiting, right? Like I think if I read the entire Dune

series for the first time, just straight through in a row, I would probably burn out on it just the same. That's true. That's true. You know? Yeah. You know, I'm, that's why I'm kind of like, you know, trepidatious about the gunslinger series. It's like, I know I'm going to have to suffer through the first one. The first one sucks. Just do it and get it over with. But, but this time around, instead of like reading them all in a row, take breaks between them, read one, go read a couple other books, come back, read the next one. I think that it's really helpful. There, yeah. You just can't binge books. It doesn't work.

No, there's another series that I was, uh, that David Teeter turned me onto, which is the, uh, the Mauritius command, or I'm sorry, the, um, uh, the Mauritian series. It was, it's the, it's the one that a master and commander was based on. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I was, I was starting to get into that, but unfortunately, um, audible decided that it doesn't, uh, they, they changed everything up and I can't get it anymore. But, uh, there, those are really good

books. And I read the first three back to back, you know? Um, so I read master and commander post captain and the HMS surprise back to back, which are, they're, they're all fantastic books. But after that, I could not get to number four, you know? Okay. And especially when you think about the fact that there are 21 books in the series, um, I just couldn't do it. Couldn't do

it. Right. So I think definitely in the future, we, we need to really like, even if, you know, we need to have each other's back. It's like, Oh, I'm going to read this. Like, no, no, no. You know, we need to have a book intervention to say, yeah, I agree. I used to, the way I used to always do it as I was always, uh, I would always switch back and forth between I'll read a nonfiction book, a fiction book, a nonfiction book, a fiction book. I might have to go back to that.

Yeah. And that's, it's kind of what I have to do for work now. Um, although I've stopped kind of reading these nonfiction books because, um, you get burnout on those too. So I'm kind of taking a break from it. That's why I like had a little fiction binge here. I am, I, I, I'm, I'm reading the second book of the three body problem. You're, you're a brave man. I listened to the Adam Savage podcast and everybody agreed that it was better than the first book, like, like drastically better

than the first book. And I'm like, well, that's a, that's a good thing because those guys really liked the first book and I thought it was meh, you know? Right. I'm halfway through it. I'm, I'm not going to give my full conclusion yet. That will be, that will be next week. But for the first half, it is spectacularly better than the first book because the first book is all set up.

You know, this is what happens after, you know, it's, it's like all the hard parts done. This is the meat of the story. Yeah. So I don't have high hopes for the third one because the wrap up is always the slow and look at necessary evil. Um, but the thing about this is I'm really enjoying the second book. Like the first book, I felt like it was a chore. It was a huge chore. The second book, I'm actually really enjoying. And it's just as smart as the first book, but I think he really got his

legs under him on the second book. Okay. So next week I will have my, my full and final conclusion of the, uh, the second book of the three body problem. I'll probably hold off on that a while because part of the reason it's diff it's a difficult read is the cultural barrier and the book I've been working through. Uh, listeners know that I have not had a book for like two weeks now. It also has a cultural barrier to it. Uh, I am in the midst of the mirage by Matt Ruff. Um, I'm going to talk

about it next week. I tried to finish it last night, but I fell asleep on the couch. Uh, you know, I burned through stranger things and I guess I'm just taking a break from books cause I've done a lot of TV and things like, and other media recently. I'm almost done with it. I'm, it was rough. Matt, it was Matt Ruff. Uh, the whole, I mean, halfway through the book, I'm like, why am I reading this? And then finally it clicked with me and I'm loving it. So I'll have a full review next week. If anybody wants to dive into it, I will talk about it next week. The Mirage by Matt Ruff.

And you can buy the hardcover from one cent. Oh yeah, you can. Interesting. Yeah. Think about that. As you know, Brian, I have an iPad pro 9.7 inch, which I adore with my iPad pencil. Um, I had bought the Apple keyboard, that little foldy one that kind of flaps on the front. Good keyboard. Not great. Good

serviceable. I can type pretty fast on it. No Apple pencil holder, which is really stupid. I'm sorry. That's profoundly stupid. Okay. Um, but I've been, I've been keeping my eye on this one from Logitech that came out recently called the Logitech create. It's a backlit keyboard and it uses the smart connector on the iPad itself to power the backlight on the keyboard. So it's not one of those ones that you have to charge. I've had, I've had multiple ones over the years that I've had to

charge with the keyboard and stuff. Um, and, and it's not Bluetooth. It just plugs in and goes. And I had my eye on it. It's 130 bucks. The Apple one was 150. So I'm like, Oh, well it's cheaper, but then I'm stuck with $150 keyboard. I got to get rid of, but then Walt Mossberg came out with a review on recode and raved about it. Okay. And, and it has an iPad or an, uh, pencil,

Apple pencil holder. It's, it's actually a really nice case. I, I, I've got one. The interesting thing was if you go to Amazon where everybody tries to buy everything now, right? Two to three weeks to buy. And I'm like, well, let me see if Apple sells them. Sure enough, local Apple store had them in stock. I did the online buy and pickup, had it within two hours. So if you're looking to get one of these, definitely go to the Apple store cause you're not going to get one from Amazon for a

while. Um, it's a fantastic little case. It's, it's a, I mean, any, any keyboard case is going to add weight to it. Plus you have the pencil inside of it, but it's still, it's still lighter than an air. Yes. Um, it's protected. It's got like this water resistant cover on it. That's really, really nice. It, it, the texture is really like something I like. Um, the keyboard is phenomenal.

It's, you know, it's like a, a clicky keyboard almost. Um, so it's not like that weird bubble keyboard that the other one is. Right. Right. So I've been using this. This is my main go-to machine when I'm doing research for the shows, but I'm also using, uh, Google docs and Google spreadsheets on it now that they support split screen. And I get so much more work done on this iPad than I do on my actual laptop at my desk during the day, because I can go sit, you know,

sit downstairs with the dog or go outside or go to a, um, coffee shop and not have to drag my MacBook pro. I can just take this with me and pair it with my, my phone or use local wifi. This is really like my go-to like hardcore email and document and work machine. Now, if I'm, unless I'm editing audio, I can do almost everything on my iPad. It's ridiculous. That's great. No, it's really

come a long way. And this keyboard really, I, you know, I like it. I like it a lot and it's backlit and has like three layers of backlighting on it, big buttons on it. It does say Logi on the side because Logitech is now Logi. Um, but all in all, and it's got like vents for the speakers because the speakers on this thing are great. If you're watching the movie, these, these four speakers on it, solid all in all. I mean, this iPad pro is, is definitely my favorite iPad of the

bunch, uh, along with the Apple pencil and this keyboard. It is, it is, you know, I think it's, I like it better than having an air. So that's, that's, uh, that's interesting. Yeah. Cause I had errors for years and I like this more just, just because you do have the iOS form factor on it.

It's just, it's easy. It's easy to use and it's cheaper than an air. Right. So, all right, there you go. There you go. It actually might not be cheaper than an air when you count in the accessories. Let me, I was about to say I would like to see price totals. Yeah. I'm going to have to look that up because I've got a, I've got a 64 gig, uh, wifi iPad pro with $130 case and a hundred dollar pencil. So it's probably about the same for next week's show. I want you to tally up, uh,

your total costs for everything that you need with just the iPad pro versus the air. Okay. Yeah. And you know what? I, you know what? I, I bet the, I bet the iPad is actually more expensive. You know why apps? Yep. Because I definitely have had to buy apps for the, uh, the iPad that I already owned for my Mac. Yeah. Oh yeah. Damn it. So much for that theory. Yeah, exactly. Uh, if you listen

to us, we, you know, we're both fans of Morrissey and, uh, the Smiths in general and Morrissey is a well-known rabid vegetarian, meaning he's not a rabbit vegetarian. He's a rabid vegetarian to the point where he won't play venues if they serve meat. Are you kidding me? No, no. He's, he's come out and said that, that he's actually pulled out of some big shows because the, the, the deals that they had with the vendors meant that they couldn't exclude them. So he's like, well, I'm not going to play

then. So, Hey, points for standing by your beliefs. Yeah. Okay. You know, whatever. Anyways, this is probably why I've never seen Morrissey. He is a teamed up. Well, the interesting thing about this article is it says the Smiths have partnered with people for the ethical treatment of animals. Uh, the Smiths have not been a going concern for 20 some odd years. They hate each other. Yeah. They can't, uh, they can't reach an agreement on anything and they never will. So I think this is more Morrissey has partnered, uh, to release a video game based on the Smith song, the 1950, uh, meet his

murder. Um, actually that'd be 1985, not 1958, 1985. Uh, you know, we're getting older. Remember when 1991 still seems like just yesterday. It does. It does. Yeah. Uh, it's an eight bit game that takes place in browser. This beautiful creature must die is made to look and sound like a vintage arcade game and using the records title track meet his murder as an eight bit score, which is funny and worth listening to in and of itself. Uh, the game is kind of messed up. Uh, users click on chickens, cows, turkeys, and pigs in four quadrants as they descend towards spinning blades

of death while avoiding clicking pumps. Okay. Animal rain increases rapidly as you're doing better with the goal of saving as many as possible. Uh, after mastering the game, players can save animals and, and, and the earth in real life by going vegan.

Oh, okay. Here's, here's the funny thing. Do you remember? I, uh, you, I assume you had an Atari 2600, right? Oh, of course I did. Yeah. Uh, remember Kaboom? Oh yeah. Yeah. This is sounds like, uh, the, the very disturbing version of Kaboom. If you let the chicken through it, you destroy the earth. Yes. Before you were just catching bombs from a criminal. Now you're actually trying to save all of humanity by, uh, not letting the McNuggets be made.

Yes. It's a funny, interesting, uh, game worth about two seconds. Uh, you know. Okay. So it's actually out. You can play it. Oh yeah. It's out right now. Oh, okay. I will. I mean, you know, you can play it for about 10 seconds and then you're like, what am I doing? It's actually just worth it listening to the eight bit version of, uh, meet his murder. Okay. Now meet his murder is my least favorite, probably song of all time with that. Um, it is, um, it is what it actually gets

going though. It's a beautiful, lovely melody. It's a terrible fucking song. Yes, I know. It's very, um, so an eight bit version. So do they have eight bit bleeding sheeps? No, it just goes straight into the music. Okay. Um, and finally I found something for you. Um, that'll just make me drink as well. Pet chats, pet chats, pet chats. So this is a, a built in camera slash communication

device for you and your pet. So looking on your pet throughout the day, uh, click on some video. They've even gamified it. So, you know, the, when a certain light comes on very Pavlovian, excuse me, your dog can click on it and get a little treat that you buy from them, of course.

And they've upped the ante a bit. Uh, they have now the paw call accessory, the paw call. Okay. Which allows your dog to call you. Okay. Yeah. Well, there you go, Jason. Low, low price of almost $400 to get all this stuff. And of course they have a subscription model. So you can continue to get the pet chats, treats, pet chats, sense, pet chats, pads, and other surprises with free

shipping. And by the way, everything is with a Z, not an S throughout the entire site. So yes, I noticed, um, I would like pet chats. I would like it. I would like a device that goes around and pick up, picks up my dog's poop because she poops about the size of a horse.

So if you can get me pet chats, I'm in, but pet chats, I think I'm going to pass on. I, I do have, as I've mentioned before that, um, nest camera. Yes. So I can, I can see and talk to my dog through my nest camera. Well, but you can't get essential oil drops to calm your dog.

I'm sorry. It freaks her the fuck out. When, when I try and talk to her through a device, even if it's sitting right in front of her, she like freaks out and starts bouncing around going, what, what, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? And starts sniffing because she can't smell me. So if the pet sense is like my own man musk that I could squirt at the dog. So she thinks I'm in the room with her. Maybe that's something that you could do. But for the most part, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. But what are you going to do?

Your dog is a Luddite. My dog is definitely a Luddite. She does not, she does not like it when I'm podcasting because I'm not paying attention to her or just everything. And my dog is not going to look at a little screen of me without eating the thing. I guess that's maybe why they have the, uh, pet chats guard, which is a big box that you can enclose your pet chats in. Um, I do think about everything except for the poo. Roomba should get on that. Uh, Pumbaa call it Pumbaa.

Media candy. The Rogue One official real trailer was premiered last night during the Olympics. It was the only thing worth watching about in the Olympics. As far as I was concerned, I loved this trailer.

I'm very excited for this movie. Of course you are. Yes, it was good. Misa, thank you. Fanboy. I am a fan. Who is a Star Wars fanboy? Like you're not. Come on. Uh, man, I tell you what, I, I kind of lost my luster after I went back and watched the new movie for the second time and realized, Oh, it's really not all that. So I love it. And this one looks great and it's completely disconnected story and it's actually supposed to involve actual war. So that'll be good. It'll be good. I, I, you know what? Um, the, the Kung Fu dude, I think he's from,

he's, is he from Ip Man? I don't know. I think, I think that's what he's from. I love that guy. The guy I'm excited about the fact that apparently he may, and this is just a rumor. He may be an Imperial guard that turned. Okay. Well, I don't read the rumors, but I love that guy. And I love that there's Kung Fu because you know what? We lost something when Darth Maul bought it. So maybe he turned into Darth Maul. Interesting. Yeah. Could be, could be, uh, probably not because timeline's

wrong because timeline's completely wrong. There you go. I'm trying here, you know, I'm not that deep into it, but, uh, it looked good. I I'm going to go see it. I'm going to go see it opening day. Maybe it depends on if it's, Oh, it's December. So the kids will be out of school. So maybe not, but either way, I'm definitely going to see it in 3d in a big theater, the way it was meant to be done because that is the one thing that saved the star Wars movie is it was an experience with all the

people in the theater, your community, as you were talking about earlier in the show and the, with the sound and the 3d, I think this is going to be a fun movie to go see in the theater for sure. It'll be an event. Do all of that except for the 3d. Cause I hate 3d dude, star Wars and 3d was excellent. They did a, such a good job with it. And I'm not a, I'm not a huge 3d guy either.

Like I did a good job with it. I just don't like it. I liked my movies in 2d. Yeah. I saw star Trek in 2d and, uh, I maybe I should have seen it in 3d because that might've at least upped the interesting level on it, but what you're going to do, what you're going to do, uh, Mr. Robot this week. Um, a spoiler alert for the next, uh, three to four minutes. If you haven't seen this week's Mr. Robot and care, um, skip it fast forward. It'll probably be more than three minutes cause

Jason likes to go on and on. No, I don't. The only thing I have to say about this episode is a spoiler start now. Fucking Alf. I love Alf. I am a huge nerd boy for Alf. The whole first 15 minutes, including the fake commercials, which they somehow convinced USA network to go ahead and do instead of running real commercials was a postmodern genius. And the fact that all of the voices were original voices, they got all the original people to redo their voices. Yep. Unbelievable. I wasn't

sure what the hell I was watching. Um, this is the first time that they've actually really flipped the script on me and did something super interesting that I couldn't believe that they were doing. Enjoyed it. I completely enjoyed it. And I liked how throughout the episode, like, you know, it, it really, this is, you know, this is episode five, I believe, right? Or six, six, six. Yeah. Six.

Episode five was okay. Episode four was the one that got me back into the show because they really kind of, the writing on that one was good. Episode five was a little bit, man. You knew that he was working on some, you know, shady stuff. Yeah. Episode six. Brilliant. I loved it. I, I, I hate it because it's changing my opinion of the show because they're finally getting to the point where they're writing something new. That's not just a fight club ripoff. It's like, yeah, they're, they're, they're finally

going post fight club. Well, they did realize, as we said last week that, uh, well, we posited a world where we blew up the financial system, but everything is still going on as before, which would never happen. So they got to do something, but they also, you know, they, they're also going into that storyline, like, you know, how people are getting allowances and there's no food in the markets anymore. And so they are bringing that into the fold. Yeah. So very, very slightly. They're giving

it a passing nod. Yeah. She's still got a turkey sandwich regardless, but anyway, I did go to the URL in the fake, uh, what, uh, E Corp online. Yes. Commercial. And it takes me to who is Mr. Robot.com. And I hadn't seen this before and I checked it out and man, this is some stuff that we used to do in the nineties. I know this is when website development was fun. I know innovative and people would spend money on it to do something interesting. I love the site. It it's amazing. It fits exactly what it

should be doing for the show. Uh, as much as you and I can crap on the show here and there for what it is, the things that they are doing, uh, on the side as promotion, the VR thing that he did, which I haven't seen cause I don't have VR, but people I've talked to said it was amazing. This website, all the extra content that they are creating around the show itself, the fact that they're spending the money on it, that they're doing something innovative and interesting. God bless them. Now I totally kudos to them for that. And I don't know if you stayed on

the website long enough, but if you, if you just kind of put it in the background, the old screensaver, the old windows 95 screensaver comes on. Oh, that's great. It was, I mean, it's, I saw that and I was just like, I was hooked. I'm like, this is so well done. The only thing that kind of gave me the creeps is I know how hard that was to make. And I know how many meetings they had to go through and how many approvals they had to go through and the time and effort that went into it. I respect

because they got it to the point where it's still amazing and it works really well. And you know, whoever the team behind that is my hats off to them. If I ever see you, I will buy you a beer, come up to me and I, you did a great job, a fantastic job.

It's, it's fantastic. And it just makes me sad that, that we're not doing things like that anymore because very few people respect it or will pay for it. So that's the thing that is the kind of web development and creativity that, that got me into this industry in the first place. And that's the stuff we used to make. And it was so much fun. At the end of the day, you were proud of what you made. Yep. Now we tweet. Uh, so anyway, honest trailers did a beautiful writeup of the Emmys because they're nominated for a short form Emmy and honest trailers guys are,

I I'm sorry, you guys are amazing. Love you. But they talk about Mr. Robot in their writeup. And I am mad at, mad at myself and you because we did not come up with this. They called Mr. Robot bite club. That's genius. That should have been the title of one of our shows. We did not come up with it though. Yes, I know. Um, what are you going to do?

I'm taking out. Oh, apparently you're going to delete the thing that you're supposed to roll into and go right into me. So I am in real time. I'm keeping, I'm keeping you on your toes. All right. So I found a new podcast. Uh, Malcolm Gladwell is doing one called revisionist history. Uh, we both have our issues with Gladwell and some of his posits and how they've been disproven.

Luckily this podcast has absolutely nothing to do about that. Um, he just finds interesting, forgotten and misinterpreted things and talks about them. I listened to episode two, Saigon 1965, which was fan fricking tastic and got me into it. Also episode three, the big man can't shoot, which is ostensibly about Will Chamberlain and basketball, but it's really about how good ideas never get adopted because people are stubborn a-holes. It's great podcast. I'm really enjoying it.

It is super beyond NPR. Um, it's produced by slate, I guess, but, uh, it is a monopoly is, is the main media company behind it. Yep. It's a, it's NPR esque, including the, you know, music in the background and the pauses and the nice soothing voice, but enjoyable podcast so far.

I've listened to, uh, half the episodes and haven't had a bummer yet. One podcast I found this week is, uh, something I'd never heard of. It's called a phone call from Paul, from Paul Holden grabber. Uh, apparently a, uh, you know, a very smart dude. He did a two partner with a Werner Herzog and, uh, the first one was on volcanoes, North Korea and the internet.

The second one was, uh, books every filmmaker should read. Definitely recommend checking those out. Um, I've never seen a Werner Herzog movie, but I know he's supposedly the genius of film and just this crazy guy. He's amazingly smart. I mean, just listening to the show, he's just a very smart dude. He's a David Lynch with the encyclopedia knowledge. Yes. Yeah. And he's going to live forever because you know what he does? All he does is read. So he is definitely going to read.

And, uh, we talked about the Smith's video game. I'm sorry, the Morrissey video game a second ago. Uh, the stranger things showrunners want an eight bit video game to bridge the gap to season two. I'm in, take my money, please. I, I would love this. Uh, yeah, I mean, again, I'm happy that people are adopting these kinds of, uh, ancillary things. I've got to be honest with you. I went through all of stranger things this week. Um, I loved every second of it. I think that's not what

you said on Facebook by you were like halfway through episode two and you're like, you were kind of mad on it. Yeah. Because people change their mind when they go through the whole arc. Okay, good. I was annoyed halfway through because I was just like, this is so perfectly being targeted at me, which always bugs me, but I watched it all. But I personally consider that my stranger things experience has been, it's complete. I watched the eight episodes. I love them as a single piece. I would be so thrilled if they didn't do a season two, because I think it's perfect

as it is. I think when they bring it back, it's going to lose its luster and what made it special. We'll see. We'll see. They're definitely bringing it back. So of course they are. It's a freaking huge phenomenon. Yeah. It's a juggernaut there. They they've got a, they've got a hit on their hands and when they get a hit, they don't let it go. Um, we'll see if these guys have, have, you know, more, uh, in the tank. Yeah, we'll see. Uh, I, I thought it was great. If you haven't watched it yet, you'll enjoy it. Go for it. Um, it's the eighties is so

spot on. It's unbelievable. It's great. You see, the fun thing that I think they should do is go with this, uh, this kind of thing that they did with true detective where it's like a different in Fargo where it's a different story with different characters. Yes. If they do that, that's fine. If it's some sort of, if it's an anthology, I just, they're not, they're going to bring back the same cast. They're going to continue on the story. I think it's these, this eight episodes in and of itself, perfectly done. Perfect story arc done. Walk away from it. Yeah, it is. It is. They put a bow

on it at the end for sure. And, uh, the score is out today. The volume one score, 36 tracks, some of which are like 15 seconds long, uh, nine 99 on iTunes. If you want to get it, I'm, I just kind of went through it a little bit before the show when we were talking and I think I'm going to pass on it. Or you can just pull up your streaming, uh, service of choice and throw on a Vangelis album. If you can like auto tune it to eight bit Vangelis, eight bit auto tune. Yeah. Uh, so there's a

bit more news from media. I'm just going to run through these really quickly. Um, Sony has seemed to pull the plug on a ghostbusters sequel. This is the remake with all the ladies, uh, apparently unspectacular box office numbers and critical response, which hasn't been great says that they're not going to do that. So have you seen it yet? No. Okay. Uh, for me, I don't even want to see ghostbusters two or three ever again. There's, there's one ghost. Oh, come on. Two is good.

Two is good. Vigo Vigo. Yeah, it was all right. Uh, so then, you know, people were talking about how maybe this, uh, all girl power reboot stuff isn't working except for the fact that an all female oceans 11 spinoff just got a green light. So this will be oceans eight because apparently they couldn't get 11 or 12 women together. Uh, so it would just, it would confuse the franchise if you had ocean, you know, they've already covered those numbers. So you can't really do that. So they,

it was either go big or go small. So they went small. So, so far it's Rihanna, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, which interests me because she's crazy. Uh, Mindy Kaling and Nora Lum, who is, uh, an actress and rapper that I've not heard of are all in talks, including the two people that are finalized are Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. And there's one more person that they're going to rope in. This will be interesting. I recently, you know, they run oceans, the oceans movies on cable

constantly. Anytime it's on, I'll just sit down and watch it. Just recently rewatched the first and second of them. They're great movies. Yeah. They're fantastic. I love them. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm up for this one. I'll go see this, not in a theater probably, but I'll go see it. Uh, and the best thing that has ever happened to music occurred, uh, the other weekend, San Francisco has their festival called the Outlands Festival, uh, which had a bunch of bands that you may or may not like.

The interesting thing was the Muppet band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem played their first ever human music festival. The entire video is online and it is fucking awesome. Really? It is so good. They open up with, uh, you know, the, can you picture that for the Muppet movie? They cover the Beatles. They cover Edward Sharp and the magnetic zeros. Uh, they also end up closing with, with a little help from my friends joined by the Oakland interfaith gospel choir. It's a, I can't recommend

watching this enough. It will warm the cockles of your cold, dead heart. Okay. I will, I'll definitely be watching that. Alrighty here. Black Panther 2016 is suing Warner brothers for misleading suicide squad trailers. This is a guy that basically drove from Scotland to London because apparently they don't

have movie theaters in Scotland to go see the new suicide squad, suicide squad movie. And apparently the movie, uh, did not deliver some of the scenes that were in the trailer. He's upset and he's starting a class action lawsuit against Warner brothers. Uh, to quote William Shatner from that old Saturday at lives cat. It's a movie. People get a life. I, uh, you know, I, I actually wrote an article

back in the nineties about the movie hackers because they, their trailer did not have some of the scenes from the movie and I called it hackers bait and switch. So I can see the, the, the frustration. The problem is you're, you're on your own for driving from Scotland to London to go see a movie.

Just, well, there are movies, there are movie theaters in Scotland and also get over it, write a blog post, kvetch about it, do whatever you want to, but filing a lawsuit stupid or join the other idiots that are, that are trying to get, uh, rotten tomatoes taken down because the, because they're just an aggregator and they aggregated other people's reviews that said the movie wasn't good.

Yeah. You morons. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you're in this segment. Yeah. So Reddit, uh, there was an ask Reddit question. People have visited the U S. Uh, what is your, what the fuck America story? Um, you just mentioned Scotland. I forgot to put this one in the notes, but I still remember it cause it was very funny. Uh, it was like, I'm from Scotland and I was talking to a girl at a, at a hotel and she asked me, does Scotland have any trees?

What? Yeah. Um, here's some other choice bits that Redditors wrote in. Uh, I'm from Canada and went to a CC's pizza in Florida. Holy shit for $5 for all you can eat buffet, which was basically a fast pass to witness a ton of gluttony that was on another level. Um, another person wrote, uh, went into a shop. They had spray on cheese. We've had that since the seventies people.

I don't think the majority of Americans here know how ridiculous that sounds to the rest of the world. Spray on cheese. Um, I visited the U S I'll never understand suburban young kids with huge trucks that clearly did not do not do any manual labor. Yes. True. Well, yes, we don't even understand that one.

Uh, I was complimented on my excellent English by a girl from Ohio. I'm Canadian. She thought we all spoke German. Uh, Trump for the win. Now you're the star Wars guy and I keep throwing in things here for you. And I found the best thing ever. This is a Darth Vader toothpick dispenser where he reaches

in his cloak and pulls out his lightsaber, which is actually a toothpick. It's clever. It's clever. It looks very well made because it has to be because it's, you know, you're dealing with, you know, physical properties of wood. That's what she said. Um, and it's like almost 60 bucks.

That's a lot for a toothpick dispenser considering I don't even have any toothpicks around the house at the moment. We are, we are of the post toothpick generation. So this is not like my grandfather in the mining town in the, in the fifties and sixties where they lived on toothpicks. Um, now it's cool. It's cool though. It's cool. I will not have this any more than I'll have the Darth Vader, um, toast maker that we talked about last week. I am a fan boy, but I do not cover my

house with star Wars items. They are missing out on a massive, uh, subscription opportunity here. I will point out though. Uh, the, it is a beautiful looking dispenser, but they should also sell a subscription to get red toothpicks. Yes. Black and red toothpicks. Yes. Yes. Because you know, his lightsaber is red, not a wood. Darth Vader does not have wood. Oh man. There's the title.

Oh, okay. Uh, last week I talked about scientists discovering a new state of water. Uh, this week we've discovered a new type of fire. Fire. This is funny. I almost put this in the show notes, but I'm glad you picked it up on me. Did you really? I'm hoping for a new type of earth next week so we can complete our earth wind and fire trilogy. Oh, nice one. Yeah. See what I did there?

Uh, researchers at the university of Maryland's A. James Clark school of engineering discovered a new type of fire tornado. They've dubbed the blue whirl since it lacks the distinctive yellow color of traditional flames, which actually will make them useful. Apparently the yellow color of a flame comes from glowing soot particles that weren't able to completely burn away due to insufficient oxygen. A blue flame indicates there's enough oxygen for complete combustion to occur, which means there's less soot and pollutants being released in the process. The theory being they can use this for

things like oil spills in the ocean to burn it out without creating additional debris. Uh, well, you do know the etymology of the blue flamers, right? No. Okay. Well, it's technically lighting a fart on fire. So scientists have discovered what we knew at camp in the seventies. So good for them.

Now Jason, you're the photography guy. I'm not too big on it, but, uh, every now and then there's something that, uh, that speaks to me and catches my eye. And this is one of those things. There's

this, uh, this fellow Frank Callum day, who's a photographer and, uh, he started visiting Bangkok in 2012 and walked by a phone booths and started to, it just caught his eye and he would start to take photographs of them. And he's been doing annual trips to the city ever since. And, uh, basically how they're starting to disappear and being kind of, uh, subsumed into the urban landscape being used as storage spaces, uh, for people selling things on the street, all that sort of thing. Um, just these,

these photos are just beautiful. And the idea of it being a decaying technology is kind of really attractive as well to me, obviously, but, uh, this is a fantastic little project and these photos really kind of speak to me. Okay. This, this is really annoying because you know what? I went to Bangkok in 2009. I probably have a hundred photos of phone booths in Bangkok and I just didn't make a project out of it. And this guy gets all the press. So maybe I should revisit some of my old photos, but I don't plan on going back to Bangkok anytime. But these are, these are, these are gorgeous

shots. Very good job. I can tell he's using a wide angle and some light room to, to fix them. But yeah, it's good. These are good shots. Definitely worth it. I really enjoy it. Are you kidding me? Loving. You can now get a mini fedora for your man bun. Oh no, this is a thing.

There are no words for this whatsoever. Uh, apparently it's happening in Seattle in particular. Go figure. Yes. So there's a little mini fedora sitting on the top of this guy's man bum. Oh my God. I'm looking at the photo right now. And it just makes you want to slap the shit out of him. I have no, I have no fucking words for this. Yeah. Now let's, uh, let's move. I want to be Willie. I do have words. I just came up with some words. I want to be William tell with bad aim.

When I look at this, I want to shoot this off of his head, but just aim about six inches lower. Fair enough. Uh, let's now move our hipster hipster, uh, microscope from Seattle and pivot over to Brooklyn. Okay. Other major epicenter. There is a YouTube show about building Ikea furniture on drugs.

Oh yeah. This has been coming through my Twitter. I have not seen this yet where they drop acid and put Ikea furniture together. Yeah. Various types of drugs. That's the whole, I guess every episode should probably be dedicated to one type of drug. Um, it's, it's some Brooklyn hipster guy named, uh, Hunter fine and Alex Taylor, um, who have just put this together as a show to which I say, isn't that

illegal? I have a shout out to hope solo and team USA who are currently, well, literally currently I'm missing the game right now. It's one, one tie United States, Sweden, uh, doing playing in the Olympic soccer team, uh, particularly to hope solo, who's by far hands down the best female goalie that basically has ever existed. Um, I want to point out the double standard that she gets for basically

being kind of a dick. Uh, she's not a particularly nice person. Um, she says stupid things and she pisses people off and we're totally okay with that with our male athletes that are the best in the world. We're not so okay with it with hope solo, which I think is complete and utter bullshit.

Well, she only gets paid half of what the males get. So, you know, that's why she's pissed off. Yes. Uh, but she's been playing very well in the Olympics. Uh, even though every time that she touches the ball, she gets booed by the entire crowd because hope solo being hope solo on July 22nd, she, uh, Instagrammed a picture of herself covered with, uh, basically a beekeeper's mask and holding a big thing of insect repellent saying, uh, I'm not sharing this. Get your own hashtag Zika proof.

Nice. So I personally like her sense of humor, but, uh, you know, yeah, no, it is, uh, it is right in line with what we do here. So good on you. Hope solo. You are the best in the world and, uh, to hell with all the haters. Yep. Hey to be damned. Haters be damned. Um, I'm going to throw a shout out to myself. Uh, check out up to speed every week on the grumpy old geeks podcast network, because it is a pain in the ass to make. And I hope somebody listens to it. It's 10 minutes of tech news

every day from Monday through Thursday. And, uh, it'll just get you, uh, I, I, here's what I do. I try and not cover the major news stories. I try to cover the stuff that's interesting that you can talk about the people and that make you kind of feel or sound smarter. Everybody else has seen all the other stuff that's out there. So this is, this is trying to get you to be the guy in the room who has the novel knowledge. Let's just say that sound good. Wake up to Jason in the morning. Yeah. And, uh,

if you are wondering about the show titles, that's just, we use the song of the day because Brian came up with that on our first episode and it's stuck because coming up with show titles is hard when you're trying to do it daily. I'm already doing that once a week. God damn it. I can't do it seven times or five or however many times we're doing things. Well, I came up with this week. So fight me.

That's true. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo. You can follow me on Twitter at JP death. And I'm Brian Schilmeister and you can follow me on Twitter at slender. Grumpy old geeks is a partially fan supported show. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to, or can't donate, but still want to support the show, please go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show and also go to grumpy old geeks.com and leave us some

feedback or ask us some questions. We had nothing this week, people. It was a desert out there. So come on, talk to us. Intro music for the show is provided by the band among us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple music, or you can donate through the grumpy old geeks, Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy. And he's also on soundcloud at

grumpy old geeks.com slash Andy show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpy old geeks.com slash 172. The bad breath is strong with this one. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings,

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