182: Trump for 500, Alex

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by FreshBooks. Go to freshbooks.com slash grumpy. Enter grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about a section to get your first month of unrestricted use absolutely free with no credit card required. The newly redesigned FreshBooks makes it unbelievably simple to create invoices and see how much you're owed at a glance. And with their PayPal for business integration, you can pay as little as 50 cents to get paid and skip the entire PayPal percentage.

Schemo Scamo Rama. I use it every week and completely love it. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks episode 182. I'm Jason DeFillippo here with my co-host. I'm Brian Schulmeister. Hello, all my bad hombres and nasty women. Oh, you little dirty devil, you. Well, that was fun last night. I saw even you were getting upset on on the book of the face about the debate.

It actually caused me to start drinking. I had that's the only way to do it. OK, so and I'm such a lightweight that I had I had seven, seven beers. I had seven little somethings. And hold on, you you haven't been you haven't drank alcohol in like two, three months now, right?

It's been a while. It has been a while. And it's it got to the point where I'm just like I looked at Bam Bam and I'm just like, honey, I need me a beer. I bought some Lagunitas little something, which is good. I like this. Yeah, it's tough. They're very potent.

I actually woke up with a buzz this morning after seven beers. That's ridiculous. And if you know me, you know me that that is ridiculous. Well, I knew something was up because you are so resolutely anti-political online. And all of a sudden you were ranting and raging like I usually do.

No. Yeah, there was nothing about last night that that was good about anything. We had a petulant child going up against Robotron. All I got to say, Jason, is this one was actually better than the previous one.

So I've seen all of them. I've watched them all. Actually, I thought this one was worse because his his little back talk every time she would just he was like a petulant little fucking child. It's it's like our show when we're mad at each other. Oh, they don't they don't let each other. Wait, wait. Yeah. Hold on.

Wrong. What a douche. No, the thing that got me the most was just, yeah, that that little bit here and there. And it's just like horrible woman, horrible woman. Has anybody thought about saying that slander?

He was he was outright saying that she had been convicted of crimes. I mean, I'll flat out tell you he's he's lowered the bar so far that the fact that he doesn't like spit at her is considered a victory. That's that's how bad we've gotten in this political process with this idiot running. Anyways, OK, OK, my last my last the only the last thing I have to say about it is that she deserves all the credit in the world for not just turning to him saying, shut the fuck up, Donald.

Look, you know, yeah, I agree. The Saturday Night Live sketches that they're doing are so internally spot on for her. Like, just just relax. He won. You he just handed you the election. Just chill. And so we probably pissed off a lot of people already with the political stuff because I know we have.

I know. And honestly, to my credit, I don't like either one of them. We're just stuck with one. So you got to you got to pick the lesser of two weevils. Yes or no. I think that's a logical fallacy. One is just what is ridiculously worse than the other.

Yes. Right. But I don't like either one. I don't know. I don't like either one. But only one should actually be president. The other one should at this point be in a mental home. There can be only one. There can be only one. So we pissed off enough people. I will go ahead and piss off some more. Yes, let's do it. I'd like to thank you, Jason, for being a little bit patient.

I am a bit late to our scheduled recording because I took my son to get his first round of vaccines today. Look at you. Like a responsible fucking citizen. Fuck you, Jenny McCarthy. You douchebags. Fuck you, Jenny McCarthy. Fuck all of you that don't get the vaccines.

He got three today. Took him like a champ. A little bit of crying. But he manned up real quick. And yeah, good on him. I'm proud of my little boy. Sack up, little man. That's right. And he practically shot him in the sack. Man, they shoot pretty high on the leg. Oh. Anyways, poor guy.

That'll give him some grit. Yep, exactly. So I don't really have much else in terms of follow up. I did run across a new proposed word this week that I quite like and is very appropriate for our show. Nomophobia. Okay. Go through it because I have my own definition of this word.

Nomophobia, and this has nothing to do with Trump, is a proposed name for the phobia of being out of mobile phone contact. So there's some quotes about this as it's being proposed under its own Wikipedia page already. With the changes of technologies, new challenges are coming up on a daily basis.

New kinds of phobias have emerged. These so-called technophobias. Since the first mobile phone in the market in 1983, it has become one of the mainstreams in the majority of societies. And there is a study that claims that cell phones are possibly the biggest non-drug addiction of the 21st century.

And that college students may spend up to nine hours every day on their phones. That can lead to dependence on such technologies as a driver of modern life, an example of a paradox of technology, one that is both freeing and enslaving. Okay. I don't have a problem with the definition, what they're trying to do.

I have a problem with the name. Because nomophobia sounds like, I got nomophobias. That is a lack of phobia. Yeah, I can see how it would be a problem with certain accents. Yeah, nomophobia. Mopho?

Come on. Anyways, that was actually going to be my proposed title for the show. But I think we have about five other ones that are in contention right now. Yes, yes. We have a race. Fortunately, we have a democracy. Yes. Of two. Of two. Wrong.

Wrong. In the news. Our first story today comes from Swell Schultz, friend of the show. This comes from, I believe, the website form, if I'm not mistaken.

But his comment is, if only Philip K. Dick had lived to see this. And this is the Uber's ad-toting drones are heckling drivers stuck in traffic. This is a funny one, I think. If I couldn't hate Uber more. I think it's fucking hilarious.

I'm like, you know what? These guys break every rule that's possible out there. But the deal is, this is down in Mexico City where they don't have drone rules. So they are within the law of doing this, which I think is awesome. If I could have, sorry, advertising with drones on the freeway is a fantastic idea.

They're stuck in their car. It is genius. Yes, it is genius. I would like to see some of the fine Mexican citizens shooting these out of the air with their Banderas and pistolas. Like Antonio Banderas? Like Antonio Banderas. You know how there's the t-shirt guns?

They're just going to shoot Antonio Banderas. Shove Antonio Banderas into a tube and fire him out. That's all I'm saying. I'm a fan of him. But apparently it's their biggest market. So that's why they can do it. Okay, well, good enough.

Well, and the lack of rules. Lack of rules because, well, that's probably why it's their biggest market because they can do whatever the fuck they want. Yeah, a wall ain't going to stop those drones. They fly over them. True that. And speaking of Uber, you want one of them shiny new Model Xs that have the self-driving features that are coming in a couple years?

Yep. Yeah, well, you won't be able to use it to drive for Uber. Okay. Yes, this is an interesting one because... So they're throwing a hissy... They're trying to do, like, walled societies with actual physical items. Well, this is restricting what I can do with a piece of property that I bought from you.

Yes. This is the problem that I think everybody's scratching their head going, say, what? I buy from you a self-driving car, and you say, well, I can use it to make money if I only use your service. Right. And that makes no sense because I paid for it.

It is my property. Now, if I am leasing it, I could see that. But I am not leasing it. I have purchased it. How are they going to... That's the thing. How are they going to enforce this? Nobody knows. And they don't know either. Well, they're going to use all the cameras on the Tesla to scan for that stupid Uber symbol on your own car.

And if it finds it, then it shuts itself down. Yeah, the Wi-Fi in the car, we'll see. It'll just... It'll put a... In your host file on the car, it will take Uber.com and put it to localhost. So it can't actually reach it.

Nice. So it says, this is the new thing. Please note also... Wait. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine. But doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible...

Permissible. Man, I can't even read today. This is what happens when you go get vaccinated. Permissible on the Tesla network, details of which will be released next year. Uber declined comment on Tesla's prohibition against third-party ride hailing and a spokesperson for Lyft did not return our email.

Fuck you, Lyft. I hate you. It's likely that issues surrounding insurance and accident liability factored into Tesla's wording on the issue. Asked whether Tesla would provide indemnity for users involved in a crash that happens while the car is driving itself, Musk responded, no, I think it would be up to the individual's insurance.

If it's something endemic to our design, certainly we would take responsibility for that. You know, that makes some degree of sense. We've talked about in previous episodes of the show about the weirdness surrounding insurance and accident liability issues with ride-sharing services and autonomous vehicles, and you double them up together.

It's definitely a gray area right now, but I think they are somewhat jumping the gun, making this announcement for a car that isn't going to be here for a couple of years yet. And I don't think... They're saying 10 years. Even they're saying 10 years. And you shouldn't make that announcement with the Tesla network, which doesn't even exist yet. So, anyways.

They're futurists. They're thinking about the future. And they are. And their stock has gone up, so I'm not complaining. Ah, fuck you and your goddamn Uber stock. Last time... Uber stock? Uber stock? Oh, sorry. Tesla stock. Jesus. Whatever.

Last time I went and bought stock that you recommended, I have lost a couple thousand dollars, so I'm not even thinking about your stock recommendations. I must have sold the day after you bought. That's probably the best way to go. I think you sold the day before you recommended it to me.

Probably. So, going back to the drone story, I was going to... I originally had this in Idiot or Moron of the Week, but it seemed too good not to put it here since we're talking about drones. The Cleveland Indians, who are on their way to the World Series, they knocked out... No, they're not. They're not. They're not.

Well... You don't know anything about sports ball, Jason. I know enough. I know enough. Cubs! Go Cubbies! You don't know that the Cleveland Indians have clinched and are going to the World Series. They finished off the Toronto Blue Jays, so they will be meeting either the Cubs or the Dodgers.

So, but anyways... Oh, they're going to meet the Cubs because, you know, your fallback with... Well, here's the deal. Your fallback if the Dodgers was the Blue Jays. So, if the Blue Jays lost, the Dodgers are going to... Yeah, no. How bad did the Dodgers lose last night, by the way?

Series still tied 2-2, Jason. I know, but how bad did they lose last night? Almost as bad as the Cubs lost the night before. Not nearly as bad, though. So, the Cleveland Indians pitcher, Trevor Brower, who had been scheduled to pitch in Game 2 against the Blue Jays, had to have his start pushed back to Game 3 because he injured his hand.

And actually, he ended up being pulled out of that game, I think, two to three innings in because he started to bleed. And with all sports, you cannot be out bleeding anymore because of, you know, the AIDS and things like that. Oh, the AIDS. The AIDS ball. You know how he injured his hand? Messing with a drone.

Ah, see? He didn't... He'd never listened to this show. I could have told him. I could have told him that it's dangerous. Yes. Jason has had similar injuries. No, that fucker hurt. Yeah. And speaking of technology that will hurt you, the Samsung Note 7.

These are now officially not allowed on the motherfucking planes. And these are not allowed on the motherfucking podcast anymore. There's no... This is the last story we're ever going to talk about the Note 7. Yeah. It is moved beyond, please don't bring them to... You can now be fined or prosecuted. Anyone violating the ban may be subject to criminal prosecution in addition to fines.

If you attempt to evade the ban by packing your phone in checked luggage, you are increasing the risk of a catastrophic accident. Just get rid of these damn things, people. Yeah. I mean, at this point, they can be a museum piece because I don't know how Samsung's going to come back from this. It's a tough putt for them.

This is Samsung. If you've got Samsung stock, get rid of it. They got some nice TVs, but I think they're officially going to have to be done with the phone business. Yeah. No, there were a couple... I saw a couple polls that were very unscientific, but saying that people were about...

40% of Samsung customers were not likely to buy Samsung again after this incident. You know... Yeah, I wouldn't either. I mean, I'm sorry. I love my iPhone, but if all of a sudden there was a problem with the 6s and 7s where they blew up all the time, I think I'd be done with iPhones.

Yeah, there's an interesting story that I heard on Security Now this week that talks about the mechanics of these batteries and why they're exploding. Yeah, we talked a bit about that on the show. No, no, no. I just heard this yesterday. So this is a new one. It just talks about the physics of the batteries and how they use the two sides of the battery.

And there used to be physical limitations on the battery to make sure that they couldn't explode. But the pressure on battery providers to get as much juice out of it as they can, they took away those physical limitations for them to not explode. Right.

And so these lithium crystals actually build up inside of the battery and bridge the gap and then release all the energy and that's when they go boom, boom. So apparently most battery providers now have gotten rid of that safety mechanism.

So it's just a matter of time, I think. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So we talked a bit about it, but it just sucks because I actually really wanted to get this phone. So too bad. I guess I'm sticking with iPhone and your razor.

I still have my razor and it's in Thai. That's the best part. I can only text message in Thai. Awesome. That's that's super useful. I know. And speaking of not super useful things, Google News has made themselves a bit of news by announcing that they're going to add fact checking.

Sort of late and a dollar short, buddies. Day late, dollar short and not terribly useful because they have announced that they will add a new fact check tag to Google News, but it'll only apply to stories from select outfits following a specific protocol to label them as such.

And there are a very tiny, small amount of publications that have made this list so far. So basically, it's kind of useless. Yeah, there's fewer than 10 sites right now. There are there are over 100 websites that are fact checking websites that are are knowledgeable, but they don't go to this this claim review schema markup, which, you know, it seems like there should be an API for this kind of thing.

It's like, OK, go to my site, throw in a URL and it will come back. Yay or nay or meh. It's like myth busted. Yes, exactly. Plausible myth. Plausible. I hate plausible. I like myth busted. Myth confirmed.

Myth plausible was that that pussy ass thing that they added in like season three where they didn't do all their homework. I hate myth plausible and the thing that we would need in the real world because things aren't often so black and white, Jason. Fuck the real world. We're in a we're in a simulation anyway.

And there's another article from The Verge. We'll get to that one later. There's another article from The Verge that talks about where why isn't it on Facebook and basically because that will ruin your drunken uncle's arguments. Well, oh, God, no. Facebook would never, never want this. Facebook is not in the business of having this.

Facebook is in the business of getting people to do 7000 long comment chains and getting really upset with each other. So Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Yeah, that's all they want. All Facebook wants is you to be sitting there staring at their screen for hours and hours at a time. They don't care if what they put in your face is true.

That's why they fired all the humans. Let me quickly leapfrog your next story and go right into my next one, because that's exactly what it's about. Facebook has now rolled out recommendations, which will take on Yelp. And then they are also putting in a bunch of other things like they've revamped the events bookmark in the section.

So basically, you're going to get dedicated recommendations that will pop up that will then get you to go to an event page where you can then purchase tickets to automatically all through Facebook. So you never, ever, ever, ever have to leave Facebook. Of course not. But I don't want recommendations from I don't know on Facebook.

Also, this is annoying as fuck to me, Facebook, because right now, anytime I've checked in anywhere, I've been checking in, like, say, when I go to see what watch the Dodgers beat the Cubs, the very next day I get you checked into blah, blah, blah, rate it. I'm like, fuck off. Leave me alone. Yeah. Even Amazon still annoys me with that.

I get like 10 emails a day about, hey, you bought this six months ago on Amazon. Would you please rate it? I'm like, fuck no. Yeah, exactly. OK, so your story that I leapfrogged. Yeah, you leapfrogged it, so I deleted it. Moving on. All right.

I read another really dumb article. Hang on. Before we go on, my friend Nicole Lee actually wrote the Facebook friend recommendation one. So shout out to Nicole. Love you, girl. Yeah, good article. Yeah, she used to be my writer over at Metblogs. Love her to death. So I'm glad she's still doing good.

Nice. The iPhone 7's missing headphone jack has turned out just fine. This is an article on Recode.net. I would argue that, sure, nobody has lost their mind about it. The iPhone 7's selling just fine. Did it really turn out just fine, though? I don't know. It's fine with the phone.

The audio quality is, I will say, slightly better. But the real pain in the ass is if you're all in on their ecostructure, because now I have to carry around two pairs. What the hell's an ecostructure? Is that like a house made out of grain? Oh, God. Here we go with the individual words. You're like Trump.

You are Trump. No wonder you queued into that so much on the debates, because that's what you do to be all fucking show. Well, if you're making up fucking words. When I pronounce the word wrong, Jason goes wrong from the corner. Sorry. Sorry. If you're making up fucking words, then I am allowed to chime in.

He's stalking around behind me right now on my Skype window. I can hear with Danny Elfman creepy music coming up. I am. I am. I am penetrating your mirror, too, right now as you sit there and you can't even feel it. Anyways, my point being is I now have to carry two pairs of headphones with me everywhere I go if I want to be able to use my laptop or my old iPads anywhere.

And then I have to have the other pair that works with my phones or the stupid little app adapter that you have. It's frigging lame. Well, I imagine since we're going to talk in a few seconds about the new laptops that are coming out, that there will be dual headphone jacks. One would hope on these things, one which will use the lightning connector so you can just use that or the traditional one.

So I can use my super expensive headphones that I use for the podcast so I can listen to Jason yelling at me while I'm trying to make a point. Well, no, we'll get to that in a second. But why don't you get the ear snodders? Because the ear snodders are working on anything. I fuck the ear snodders. I'm waiting for them to come out. I'm going to buy them. The problem is, again, like I said, my bike rides.

Those things won't last a single bike ride. Yeah, they will. Because you already found the link to find the string that attaches the two. So, you know, it's string scotch tape to carry your $150, you know, headphones.

That's how it works. I'll go back to MacGyver. Yeah. And the funny thing is, I've been pricing out Bluetooth earbuds or whatever the fuck they call them, the ginormous things you have to stick in your head. And I don't know how people run with these things because they have to fall out every three seconds.

And they all have strings on them so you don't lose them, you know. And then I'm thinking, oh, I'm not going to spend 50 bucks on a pair of these when I'm just going to get the Apple ones when they come out anyway because they've got the little, you know, stroke to change volume thing, whatever.

So I'm waiting on them, but we're not there yet. We have not reached the future of ear snot yet. No, not yet. It's not quite there. It's not snotty and sticky enough. It is not. You know, I cannot believe somebody has not done something about Mary Parity with the new Apple earbud things yet.

We'll see. It's coming. It's coming. No pun intended. So the FCC has fined T-Mobile for abusing the definition of unlimited data. I put this one in here just for you, Brian, because I know how much you love the fact that there is no such thing as unlimited data.

And the FCC has agreed with you. Yeah, I'm right. Hear that, world? I am right. I've been screaming about this since day one on the podcast. We've gotten rid of unlimited data. All the commercials. My wife hates me because anytime there's a mobile commercial or anything like that on TV, I'm like, I Trump.

Wrong. That's a lie. Because it is. They still do ads saying unlimited data. And then all the small print basically tells you it's not fucking unlimited. Here's the funny thing about T-Mobile, though. Do you know what the threshold of unlimited data is on these packages? No.

17 gigabytes. That's nothing. A month. That's nothing. 17 gig on a phone a month? For kids that are watching all their TV shows and streaming everything, and they're on it nine hours a day, remember, Jason? And they're streaming their HD videos?

That's nothing. You go try and do 17 gig on a phone. It's tough. It's tough. I've tried. I guarantee you'll find a 14-year-old that does it, like, twice a month. Whatever. That's not even one that's found porn yet. We should go get a T-Mobile phone and just, like, put Pornhub on loop for a month and see how much data we pull down.

That would end it. Yes. So they got fined $7.5 million. The total settlement was $48 million. $7.5 million is a fine. And $35.5 million is doled out to customers in consumer benefits, which are just minor discounts and hardware and stuff.

On shit that you don't want to. Exactly. It's bullshit. Yeah. This is just about as useful as the fucking Ticketmaster rewards that we got from the class action lawsuit, none of which are usable. And, you know, it's one of these things where it's like, just have them change the goddamn wording and don't fine them.

Because all these fines, all it's going to do is raise the price of the service. You know? I want to know if the FCC puts an embargo on raising prices after these fines, because they really should. That should be the legal ramifications of, hey, we're going to fine you $100 million.

And the one thing you can't do, you pieces of shit, is raise prices on your customers. Yeah. Yep. You cannot pass it on. You know where it comes from? Your CEO bonuses. You pieces of shit. Never going to happen. But in a perfect world, in my world, if I was Trump, God, if you dye your hair blonder.

Anyways, moving on. OK, so I know sports ball, not really your thing, although you're going to pretend it is for this episode. Are you aware of the fact that the NFL has a deal with Microsoft Surface for tablets? That's all they're allowed to use on the sidelines, coaches and things like that.

Yes, I do. OK, well, some of the coaches, not not big fans. I really only included this story for the for the GIF or the GIF, as idiots want you to call it. You say GIF on this show again. I'm cutting you off. I did say it's what I call it. There is an animated GIF that I'd urge everybody to take a look at.

It's Bill Belichick basically destroying a surface because he was not happy about it. Oh, no. Now we have surface gate. Exactly. He should have just deflated the surface and it would be back to us. It would be at least in, you know, with his teams. For the purposes of the show, leave the sports jokes to me.

Well, you didn't have one. So that's well, neither did you. Fuck off. Moving on. All right. So as I mentioned, Apple is announcing new Macs on October 27th. It's the first major update to the MacBook Pro, which makes sense because I just bought one. Yes.

Go ahead. I don't know. I thought you might have. They're all going to have retina displays, force touch track pads. They're going to do the fancy new keyboards that aren't really keyboards. So it's another thing to break. That's going to cost lots of money to replace. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They don't mention anything about the audio adapters, which I am curious about.

There aren't any because you know why? There are two USB-C ports and there are Thunderbolt 3 ports. There is no audio port. So you're fucked. Well, you're not fucked. So are you. You don't have to buy one. You bought some expensive headphones as well.

So everything I do goes through USB. So I just need a USB-C hub. I'm done. I don't actually use my, my headphones go through my $2,000 rack mounted audio interface. So all I need is a $25 USB to USB-C adapter and I'm done.

Fantastic. The only thing, the only thing that does, I'm curious to see, I've seen one side of the unit. I haven't seen the other side. I'll be curious to see if they do have HDMI. They did get rid of the power port. So there is no, the mag power, that's gone.

Which sucks because that is one of the greatest things to have if you have, you know, people and you have a kid running around your house soon, as soon as it starts to walk and runs away from you trying to stick vaccines in his sack. The MagSafe power adapter is awesome.

I love the fact that that thing exists, but they have gotten rid of that because now you have to charge with USB-C. That's why there are two ports because one of those ports is for charging your unit. The other one is for all of the different devices you have to plug in. So we'll see.

This is going to be, I'm not looking for, the future does not look right. This is where I make my regular prediction about Jason and what he's going to do because he's going to announce for the next couple shows that he's not going to buy one of these and then about four shows from now, it'll be on order.

I can't. I can't buy one. There's no way in hell I can buy one. I'm still paying off the last one and mine works fine. This is a perfect time to say you should go to patreon.com slash GOG. Well then say it, biatch. I just did. So we've talked in the past about Tidal.

We haven't really done much in the streaming news recently. Is Tidal still around? Tidal is still around and still getting exclusives from basically rap and hip hop artists. Tidal has basically positioned itself to base to, that's their main thing. I just know Pandora rebranded their paid service this week.

That's all they did was they just rebranded it. I'm like, I already pay for it. I don't care what you call it now. It was like Pandora one to Pandora prime or some shit like that. But I'm like, who cares? I already paid you as long as the music's there. Now Amazon is still, they're trying to push their own service that nobody really pays too much attention to.

That might change when we talk about the echo later. Amazon music unlimited, which is a $10, $8 and $4 a month, different tiers. What's the difference? Garth. Well, Garth Brooks. I will pay $10 to not have Garth Brooks on my music library.

So apparently I have to go for the no country tier. No, I'm not entirely sure what the tier differences are. I will let you know more shortly because I'll be taking a deeper look at it. But what they have done is they've signed on the exclusive Garth Brooks streaming provider.

He has not streamed yet. I think we talked in past shows about his ill-fated attempt to make his own MP3 store about 10 years after people stopped using MP3. Yeah, yeah. He kind of failed at that one. So he made his own, which is now he's given up. Yeah, yeah. I was, you know, a bit late on that.

But he has decided to move into the exclusive to Amazon, which I guess, given his audience, isn't necessarily too bad of an idea. So good on him. Whatever. Who cares? But I do hope that Amazon does not position themselves as the country music alternative for streaming. I'm not going to use it, so it doesn't matter.

But it's probably free right now with all your Prime stuff. No, it's not. That's probably the $4. That must be the $4 tier. The $4 tier is that you can play it on. You can get Amazon Music Unlimited for your Echo, but only for one device.

So if I wanted to have it and play it only in my kitchen, it'd be great. But I don't. That's so stupid. Stupid and useless and tone deaf to how technology actually works these days. Especially since they're selling the new Echo in a six pack.

It's like, we'll get to that very shortly. But yeah, the fact that they're tying it to a device for $3.99 is so stupid. I looked at it, I'm like, okay, so I'm a Prime member, I have an Echo, like one of the high-end Echos, and you want me to buy your music subscription.

You know what? If it was $3.99 for all of the music, I would do it in a heartbeat. But if it's just for that device, no. It's so stupid. It's useless. Because I'm not going to move it from room to room to room, because the Echo, when you unplug it and plug it back in, takes four minutes to reboot.

So there's no reason to do that. Well, I mean, it just shows that Amazon has been extremely tone deaf in how they've tried to move into these different avenues. Nice one, by the way. Yeah, I dropped it earlier. They're fantastic at what they are.

They are the biggest store in the world. They are driving everybody else out of business, but they continue to fail in both hardware and software offerings. And the reason why is stuff like this. What they could have done is unbelievable. With their Prime membership and the different software things and their hardware things that they all have, if they would have rolled them out smart in a smart way, well thought out in a way that makes total sense, they would have taken over the entire world already.

There would be no reason to have anything other than Amazon, but they keep fucking everything up. See, here's the they're not failing on everything with hardware. They're 50 50 at this point. Now, yes, the phone. Nice one, Bezos. The the tablets.

Yeah, no. The Fire Stick. Nice piece of hardware. Works really well. Then we get to the Kindle. The Kindle is the market leader in e-books. They killed it with the Kindle. So they've at least done that well. And the Echo is pretty damn good.

And that was a market leader. Nobody had that before. So they're 50 50, I think, on hardware. You have to. Yeah, I mean, we can joke about the phone, which was honestly, I wish I had got one when there was like, you know, two cents just so I had it. And the art in the the museum of failed technology.

But he still had to buy a subscription for it. So screw that. But yeah, I think they're they're they're doing OK. But yeah, when it comes to music, not not well. You know, it's not so much.

They're streaming TV stuff. Not so much. Oh, the streaming TV stuff is amazing. We'll get to that soon, too. They're like I said, they're they're middle of the road on success rate. I but if you need toilet paper in in less than 12 hours, they are definitely the go to.

But yeah, in this other this other, you know, area there. I just leave it to Apple at this point. But we'll see. We'll see how this goes. Well, and one company that is doing extremely well and not screwing it up at all.

Sadly, Domino's Pizza. Yeah. There have been numerous stories about how bad their actual product was. I mean, they've even they basically did an entire advertising campaign saying, hey, our pizza doesn't suck as bad anymore. That was a real advertising campaign.

Remember that video with all the snot on your pizza? That as well. But I got to tell you, they have killed it and their stock is rising and people are buying it, particularly millennials, more and more and more. Why? Because they made it fucking easy. They pushed out every technological stop to make sure that you can order.

They followed every trend. They have been there immediately. You can tweet a pizza emoji using some of the various bots on different messaging platforms. And yes, you get a pizza. You can order it through your Amazon Echo. You can text them to order pizzas.

They have made it beyond simple. And this has worked. What it proves, stupid people want stuff to be easy and will get shitty, crappy product just because it's easy. Yeah. Just because you're lazy means you get a shitty pizza. I remember the one app we made fun of, which was the one click to pizza where you had to hold it down for 15 seconds and then your pizza would be on the way.

Yep. The problem is at the end of that transaction, you get a fucking Domino's pizza. That's the unbelievable thing. I would like to see a heat map of the United States or the world, actually, since they are international, where this is working.

I mean, we know in Australia they have the pizza robot down in New Zealand. They have pizza drones. But there's still, the problem is at the end of this process, you're getting a Domino's pizza. I know. I don't care how easy it is.

It still tastes like ass. Yeah. It's like, hey, we've got, hey, we've got the best Ebola delivery service in the world. Would you like some Ebola today? And their stock is going up. I could tweet an Ebola symbol and I get it right away. Yeah.

I don't, I don't quite understand this world anymore.

So, you're racing against the clock to wrap up three projects, prepping for a meeting later in the afternoon, all while trying to tackle a mountain of paperwork. Welcome to life as a freelancer. Challenging? Yes. But our friends at FreshBooks believe the rewards are so worth it. The working world has changed.

With the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities for the self-employed. To meet this need, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work.

Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly. The all-new FreshBooks is not only ridiculously easy to use, it's also packed full of powerful features. Create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds.

Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster. See when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to the listeners of the Grumpy Old Geeks.

To claim it, just go to freshbooks.com slash grumpy and enter grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about us section. Trust me everyone, I use FreshBooks every week and it has made my life unbelievably simpler.

And I do actually get paid almost instantly when I send an invoice. So definitely go check it out. FreshBooks.com slash grumpy. Enter grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about us section. So when you get paid, we get paid.

Security? Ha! Uh-oh. Harold Thomas Martin III is in trouble. Does he look anything like Christian Slater? Oh my god, no. He looks like Chet from Weird Science after he was cursed.

Oh, awesome. I finally saw a picture of this guy and I'm like, oh, oh, shit. Sidebar, Chet from Weird Science is probably my favorite 80s character of all time. Oh, yeah. And what was the actor's name again?

Oh god, he ended up in Aliens as a badass. I can't remember his name. He wasn't a badass in Aliens. He was the, oh my god, we're fucked, man. It's over, dude. Game over. Game over, man. I can't believe I can't remember his name, but... He was also in Twister, right?

Twister and Big Love. Yes. Yep, there you go. Look at all that. I know. Sucks. That does suck. We'll give a shout out at the end of the story after we Google it. After we IMDB it. I feel bad as a movie buff at this one. Bill Paxton. Sorry, never mind.

I didn't even have to Google it. It finally came to me. Bill Paxton. I love Bill Paxton. So Bill Paxton has apparently stolen 50 fucking terabytes. of data from the NSA. I'm just saying, if you happen to have an unlimited bandwidth of telephone deal, you're not going to be able to get all that.

Nope. It's going to take you a couple months. It's going to cost you a lot of money, because that's going to go way over your unlimited bandwidth. Yes, that is. And just the hard drives. Jesus. I mean, this guy was... I mean, when they were saying that he was a quote-unquote hoarder before, I'm thinking like, okay, you know, a couple hard drives here and there.

No, he had shit stored everywhere. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's insane. The interesting thing now is they're trying to tie him to the Shadow Brokers leak with the malware that is being auctioned off for Bitcoin that nobody is bidding on. Yes.

They can't. They haven't been able to put those two together yet. So this is an ongoing story. It's very funny. But the fact that he got 50 terabytes and does look like chat is very scary. We'll see how this goes. Yeah. We've talked about Stingrays a bunch in the past.

These are the little kind of briefcase size boxes that basically emulate a cell phone tower. So you can basically make all the cell phones in the area connect to you and grab all that delicious little bits of data. Delicious. They are heavily illegal. You are basically not supposed to be able to use one without a warrant.

And being, you know, basically what they found out, the ACLU has looked into this. They are using them heavily, heavily. Stingrays are being used on a daily basis by both state and local law enforcement around the country, investigating normal criminal activity, not terrorism investigations, which, again, is only supposed to be used for.

So, you know, any hope that you ever had of your cell phone conversations or texts or anything's being private is not so. Yeah, time to go back to the carrier pigeons, people. Exactly. And then last week we talked a bit about GeoFedia, which was the API thing going on that, or no, that was one of the companies using the API that was basically tracking and social media monitoring programs to track people.

And people got super outraged and Facebook immediately said, well, we're never going to use it. We're going to block all of this. Except for the fact that they were actually paying customers that use it that caught somebody who had broken into Mark Zuckerberg's office with it. Right. Now, here's the deal with that.

They were customers, but they also had first right of refusal on new customers for GeoFedia to find out where their data was going. And GeoFedia broke that trust and started selling it to different law enforcement agencies without telling Facebook. So that's why Facebook pulled their license for them.

Oh, so it wasn't moral outrage. It was more, hey, we paid you for some stuff and you're not delivering. It's like, hey, if you're going to resell, we want some cheddar. We want some cheddar under the table, motherfucker. Yeah. So that's really where it comes down to.

And also because it embarrassed Facebook. If these guys never would have gotten caught, then it wouldn't have been a big deal. And I think that's the same with everybody on that list. They're like, oh, you dumb motherfuckers. You got caught. Now we have to disavow you.

You know, that's pretty much what it is. I don't think that anybody was under any assumption that they were using this stuff for the greater good or marketing. I think that everybody knew what was going on. But once these guys got caught, they had an out saying, oh, we didn't know.

And people wonder why we're grumpy, because that's the way the world works. Yeah, no, it's like, just because you have the data doesn't mean you should sell the data to the Popo. Speaking of which. Ah, let's get to more Popo news.

Today in Popo. Facial recognition programs. Yes, we've heard a lot about these. And, you know, one would reasonably assume I'm not a criminal. I shouldn't be in a database. Well, what state do you live in? I live in a state. One of the 50.

Well, 26 of them. Every single DMV photo is in the government's facial recognition program now. We've actually covered the guy that got caught for social security check fraud a couple weeks ago from his DMV photo, because he got he went in and said, hey, I'm this guy.

And they said, well, no, you're on our on our list is this guy. And he's like, oh, poop and got busted. But, yes, the DMV is the main one, because everybody needs a driver's license. So it's a prime target. Yes.

So the whole idea behind the facial recognition program is, and again, it's privacy concerns and it's all of this sort of thing, is you should not be in there unless you are a criminal. Unfortunately, almost they're estimating basically almost half of U.S.

adults are in this database now, whether you've done anything or not. Well, you know, the founding fathers didn't really understand how facial recognition would come to be a force going 144 million database entries ago was not really on their mind when they they built our constitution.

So I think these guys are trying to jump through loopholes and use the cheap tools to bag the bad guys and get their numbers up. Tie in voter registration to the system. We already scanned. Have a have a facial scanner at the voting booth and let's be done with it and stop pretending like people can't go vote either.

We're already stealing their identities and putting them into systems illegally. Let's let something good come from it. We'll see if the voter registration facial system recognizes the color brown or orange or cheeto orange. That that was racist.

You should not be saying things like that. I don't know who this guy is. That's not good. Yeah. So on the hacked email side of things, I love this last story and it comes from the New York magazine. I don't generally read the New York magazine.

It's about Larry Lessig. Larry Lessig was caught up in this the email hacks that came out from WikiLeaks, right? Yep. And there's an email that came out and said, I fucking hate that guy. Like, I'd like to kick the shit out of him on Twitter, but I know that's dumb and which is, you know, OK, that's great.

You're you're allowed to think that about Larry Lessig. There are many times I'd like to have said that about Larry Lessig and I've been in his house. So his response was and and this is this is his quote. I'm a big believer in leaks for the public interest.

That's why I support Snowden and why I believe the president should pardon him. But I can't for the life of me see the public good in a leak like this, at least one that reveals no crime or violation of any important public policy. We all deserve privacy. The burdens of public service are insane enough without the perpetual threat that every thought shared with a friend becomes Twitter fodder.

Nina, I'm sorry, Nira. Nira has only served in the public and public interest sector. Her work has always and only been devoted to advancing her vision of the public good. It is not right that she should bear the burden of this sort of breach.

Hat fucking tip to Larry Lessig for taking the higher ground. No argument there. Damn, dude. That was hot. I would like to say I have a book for this week's, but let me tell you what happens when you go all digital and you no longer buy a physical book.

If I had bought this book physically, Death Sand, Remembrance of Earth's Past, which I'll talk about. You'd be much stronger because you had to carry it from the store. Pretty much. I will talk about it next week. I had no idea that this was like five times longer than the other two books combined.

I think it's 866 pages or something ridiculous like that. I started like last week, finally, as I was still reading this book and it was obviously not getting anywhere near close to wrapping up. I finally did the little tap on where you can see how far along in the book you are.

I was only halfway done. Yep. This thing, if I would have seen it in a bookstore, I probably would not have picked it up because it's like it's it's three times Dune. This is the longest book I think I've ever read in my life. It's still going. So hopefully the new book unit is a Dune unit.

This is a three Dune unit book. Yeah, this is a three Dune. 3D. Goddamn. So, yeah, I had no idea it was this long. And I know you're like I kept putting it in the show notes and then I'm like, I still haven't finished it. I still haven't finished it. So it's so funny.

I went out to dinner with my brother on Tuesday and he was like, I finished the Dark Forest and I thought he meant the whole Dark Forest trilogy. Yeah. And he's like, yeah, this this book had some pacing problems and it was really long. And then I'm just like and he's like, yeah, I didn't see that ending coming and all this stuff.

And I'm like, OK. And then I realized he's like and then I'm only 20 percent into the next one. I'm like, oh, oh, you're just talking about the second book. You got a ways to go. Wait till you get to the third book, dude. Talk about pacing problems and long and and not seeing the ending coming.

Yeah. I don't want to hear a damn thing. I put like two weeks into this now. No, it doesn't matter. It did. You're not going to see the ending coming. It's the same as book, too. It's it's it is what it is. So hopefully before this podcast wraps up at some point in the near future, you'll get to it.

Yeah. It's my my mission is to be ready for this next week. We'll see. OK, so this week I've got Hawk Occupation Skateboarder by Tony Hawk. I get to interview Tony on Tuesdays, so I'm going through all his old books. And this book is from 2001 and just goes through his early career.

It's very fun as a skateboarder and a fan of Tony Hawk since I was, what, 11 years old. It's fun to read, and I'm so, so nervous about talking to him on the podcast, so it'll be interesting.

And the next book is The Black Ice by Michael Connelly. It's funny. I Harry Bosch, which is this is what I'm getting to with the Amazon stuff. There's Bosch, which is a series on Amazon, one of the Amazon originals. Love it. It's up to season two.

Fantastic. It's it's an it's a different version of what's in the books, because the guy in the books, I mean, they're talking about pagers in the books. OK, so it happens a long time before now. But a lot of the same stuff is overlapping and things like that, except for the technology.

I read the first book ages ago from a recommendation from David, Dr. I'm sorry, Dr. Teeter yells at me when I don't call him that. And Chen, friends of the show, and I'd forgotten about it. It was a great book, but I didn't go didn't know it was a series and realize now that is a 15 part series.

And I've been trying to find books to kind of break up the other series, which is only a seven part series of for the Dark Tower. So next week, I'm going back to the Dark Tower before I go back into any more of the Harry Bosch 15 part series.

But it's good. It's a really good book. It's one of those, you know, gumshoe L.A. detective novels that are just it's well written and it's really fun. And I love them. I love those kind of gumshoe old school books. Gotcha. OK, well, you get back to reading, reading that.

And then next week, we can have a chat chit chat about Dark Tower book three. Yes. And my neck book that I read needs to be a point one dune.

I'm not a gamer. This game is not going to sway me. I'm not too into VR either. You're not a gamer. This is not going to sway me. Who would have thought you weren't a gamer? Because every episode you said, I'm not a gamer. I'm not a gamer. Except you did play Plants vs. Zombies.

Yeah, once. And I did a brief experiment with that one other game. Can't remember what it was called. Game of War, something like that. Anyways, there's this article in Wired about PlayStation. Well, PlayStation is coming out with their own VR platform. Good on them. And this game is obviously only going to be released in Japan.

One would assume. I just like the title. Let's play Summer Lesson. PlayStation VR is most unexpectedly creepy game. Basically, you tutor a high school girl who is dressed up in the traditional Japanese erotic school girl sailor uniform. I don't think when they designed that outfit, it was the Japanese erotic school girl uniform.

I don't think that's what they called it. Well, yeah. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, Jason. I think it might have been Japanese erotica. Oh, boy. Here we go. Hey, you started it. Anyway. No, no, I did not.

Well, what is it still? What's the legal age in Japan now? 15 still? I don't know. I, I, I, they mentioned, well, they talk about, they talk about this in the Wired article. The fact that everybody, everywhere else in the world, this is creepy. But in Japan, it's kind of, ah, business as usual.

Okay. Well, it's, it's still pretty creepy. Uh, the fun. I'm sticking with creepy. Of course you are. Uh, anyway. So it reminded me of the diamond age by Neil Stevenson, uh, where you're teaching, you're teaching a young girl, the lessons of life.

Uh, albeit not creepy. Um, there's the difference. This is a big difference. And it made me think about, you know, the effect of VR in, on education coming, going forward. And there is a huge opportunity there. And as, as, as technology, technologically, as technology, uh, advances, we always start with the creepy porn stuff and then we move into actual usage of it.

Um, we're getting to the point where we could start having the diamond age. You know, where you can go to school in VR. We, it, it, it might actually, we're not quite there, but imagine how much better it would be for those, uh, you know, homeschooled Amish kids out in the middle of nowhere who don't have any interaction with people to put on their VR goggles and go kind of interact with other people, even though they're still stuck in their kitchen and have to go churn butter

at the end of the day that, you know, it, it opens up a new realm of possibility for education while still giving people the chance to interact with other humans, albeit digitally and virtually. I will say, Jason, that I am extremely impressed.

This is probably the first time in the history of the universe that when one story you have managed to insult both Japanese and Amish people. You know, I thought I was going to get a compliment, but fuck you. I'm pretty impressed. Oh, thanks.

Yeah. Okay. Fuck the Amish. They, they're, they have puppy mills. I hate them. Uh, but the thing about, well, to be fair, they're probably not listening to the show. That's true. That's true. Unless they're on their, their little sabbatical, but they're not on when they're on their sabbatical, they're out getting drunk and doing math.

They're rumspringing. Yes. They're out doing math and getting laid. So they don't care about the grumpy old geeks. Um, and you know, just, just following up on Diamond Age, I still think that that is the best book Neil Stevenson has done. I know Snow Crash is, you know, his pinnacle for everybody that thinks that, you know, that was the, the coming of age of what VR could be, but I still think Diamond Age is better just because it actually has hope in what we can do with teaching people from, uh, you

know, a distance as it were. So let's move into the Amazon Echo because, uh, yeah. Otherwise you're just going to keep making fun of me. Pretty much. No guarantee. I won't anyways. Uh, well you requested that I talk about the Amazon Echo.

So if you do kiss my ass, um, uh, uh, uh, by the way, my, my personal, my personal favorite Neil Stevenson is definitely seven eaves. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Loved it. So not my favorite.

Okay. Anyway, so the echo. Yeah. Well, you started, uh, the echo. It is awesome. Uh, friend of the show, Jeff Donaldson. Uh, they accidentally apparently sent him two in the mail and he sent me one. So, uh, I'm going to start out by saying I didn't pay for this.

So my review is slightly skewed. The Amazon, the, the, the top tier Amazon Echo costs $180. And for $180 at this point, I would not be upset if I paid, paid that much for it. Even though I got mine for free.

Um, I use it every morning. I go downstairs. It's on, it's in my kitchen and that's where I, in my kitchen, like, you know, it's in a place where it can play music to the entire downstairs. And, um, so it goes to the living room and everywhere, not upstairs, but, uh, it's great.

I go down in the morning and I say, I'm not, I can't even say it that loud because it might start playing. I have it read me the news. I set up all my news briefs. Uh, so it reads me the news while I'm getting the dog food ready. And then I change over to, depending on how early I'm up, I'll either go to WLS in Chicago for talk radio.

And if I'm up later, I'll go to KROQ and I just say, uh, Alexa play KROQ and it will, it will go and find the radio station from the services that I'm signed up for and play me live Kevin and bean, or it'll play WLS, you know, right there.

It's also tied into my Pandora account. So I have all my Pandora stations set up and I just say, Pandora play this channel and it will play it for me. It's super handy. And every now and again, I'll say, Alexa, did the Cubs win? And she'll say, yes.

And then sometimes she'll say no, but, uh, either way it's, it's for what it, for what it costs and the sound quality on it, the sound quality is what really amazed me. It, um, it's got an amazing speaker on that thing. I, I, I was, I was blown away because I came from a house with that.

I had six Sonos speakers, the, uh, the play ones. I had six play ones in my house and, uh, it really covered the whole house. This is lighter than a play one because the play ones are heavy as hell. Um, right. The sound quality is on par though.

It's got a really nice bass response, a really nice trouble response. The music sounds really, really good. So like for 180 year, yeah, $179, it is well worth the money. And I also haven't really gotten too deep into the shopping list stuff, but it will tie into my shopping list.

I'm starting to get into the, if this, then that stuff. And, uh, my Todoist, uh, integration. Cause I used to do this for my, um, you know, tasks for work, but most of the time I just use a note cards. So haven't really got into that, but, um, it does, it does a ton of stuff.

And for the price, I think it's really cool. So that's why, you know, you asked me if you should use this over the Google home. I haven't seen the Google home yet. This has had a couple of years on the, or like a year, year and a half on the market now where they in every week I get emails about all the new stuff that they're adding to it.

I think this is a more mature product. I think the price point for, um, the differential based on Google home, which isn't even, you know, available yet, but it's gonna be like 149, the 179 price point. I think it's well worth it. Absolutely.

All right, cool. Uh, you pretty much sold me on this. I'll probably be ordering one. I'm just looking, I'm looking around through it. It's, uh, especially now with having the kid, I would like to be able, uh, you know, it's got the optional, you can buy the, the Alexa enabled power plugs so I can basically turn lights on and off in my kid's room using it, which would be fantastic.

Um, the idea of just being able to play some classical music when I'm changing diapers and crap like that. Literally, um, this looks convenient to me. So, you know, maybe I'll, I, I think I'll give it a go. I might as well. You know, I don't want to wait for the Google stuff and you make a really good point. This is a mature product compared to what Google's going to be.

Um, I like a lot of the extras that already exist, the tie in. I'm looking at like the Wemo switch, um, which would be great for powering up again, even in the photos they show it like a kid's room. It's exactly what I would want it and use it for. So, all right. I think you, you sold me on this. Okay. Yeah. Check it out.

And I also ordered the, uh, Amazon echo dot that just came out. The second generation one for, uh, a second room for my bedroom upstairs. It, the speaker is just a little tiny speaker. There's like, it's good for an alarm clock and stuff like that. But, um, it has a mini plug out so I can plug it into a set of speakers and I have a little tiny I home speaker that I'm going to plug it into.

And I think it'll be cool to have that, like, you know, have it set up with, uh, hopefully like maybe if this, then that to play like at five in the morning, wake up and play WLS to wake me up and listen to some talk radio. And while I wake up instead of trying to, you know, drag my ass out of bed.

So all in all, I, I am impressed with it. I'm not as creeped out as I originally thought I would be by it because it does listen. It does listen all the time. Here's the one. Oh, this is the one caveat with the echo that I still haven't figured out how to turn off.

Um, when I'm playing with the dog and I tell her to back up, it will skip back 30 seconds on whatever song is playing. If I'm playing Pandora or anything that's streaming, it will, it will skip back and I cannot find a way to turn that off. Right.

Which is really annoying when you're trying to train a dog to back up. Yeah, that's weird. I mean, I thought I'd always assume that you would have to preface it with the, with the name, with whatever you named your, your device. So did I, so did I, that was the only creepy one that there are actual commands that can be triggered without saying Alexa echo or whatever you, or Amazon.

Those are the only three options we have. Not, not a fan of that. Not a fan. Yeah, but here's the, here's, here's the deal. Doesn't matter. Still get it. It's awesome. Um, the other app that I got this week was carrot weather. It's kind of a replacement for dark sky.

Uh, it's got, it's got a, uh, a bunch of different things. Different features that work on the watch, but carrot we talked about before, which was kind of an AI platform, like a, uh, you know, one of the, it's kind of like an Alexa type of thing where it's a, a little AI helper, you know?

So they spun out their company into different, uh, uh, uh, verticals that that's the word I was looking for verticals, um, in carrot weather. It's three 99 for the app. But if you have a watch, you have to drop another $2 and 49 cents for a full year of access.

Um, because it does do some cool stuff on the watch and I, I really like it because every time I open it up and ask for the weather, it's, it says, hello meat bag and tells me very funny stuff about the weather and you can do some fun stuff with it.

But I think for the most part, the weather is exactly the same as dark sky. I think they're using the same services, so I'm going to do a little research for next week. So don't buy it just yet. Um, if you're thinking about it, because I want to find out if this is the same exact data as dark sky because dark sky still has a much better visualization engine.

So if you're looking at storms coming in or just the general weather, dark sky wins hands down over visualization. It's so beautiful. And generally for me has been, since I'm in a place with weather, it works. You're in a place that is pre-weather because you're waiting.

You're, you're, you're the front line of weather. I am never going to spend another cent on a weather app ever. No, you shouldn't. You absolutely shouldn't. That it's ridiculous. You should definitely not. So, um, if you've, if you've used it before and you have any, uh, Intel on it, give me, drop me a line, Jason at grumpy old geeks.com.

I'm curious what your, your take on it is. Um, media candy. One thing I never thought I would ever see is a day with new queen.

Well, ish it's queen ish. Yeah. Well, but still it's a new song from queen that was never released. Wow. It's a different version of an existing queen song. Yeah. But it's still cool. Come on.

All right. I like the original. See the original. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it, but I'm just not like, it's not my favorite queen song. It's a hard rockin version of we will rock you. However, this would never work as your, again, uh, at sports ball events where this is why I don't like the song.

That's why I've been to bulls games and that's like the worst thing is like, it's like, oh God, get a new song people. Um, but this one is kind of like cheesy rockin and I like the cheesy rockin version of queen.

It's pretty good. I didn't mind it. No, it was a good listen. It was a very good listen. And this is part of a box set that's coming out called queen on air. Uh, it comes out next month. Uh, these are the BBC sessions that they recorded that never saw the light of day.

And I do, I, I do hope there's a heavy metal version of fat bottom girls on there somewhere. That would be awesome. So I sent it to Vinacore and hopefully, I'm sorry, MXV for fans of the show. Uh, and hopefully he'll buy the vinyl version. So I'll just go to his house and listen to it. Right.

But then I went to, I went down the, the queen hole as it, as it was and, uh, spent my morning watching queen on YouTube. And I watched the entirety of the Hungarian rhapsody, uh, their concert in Budapest. Yeah. I'm sorry, Budapest. Budapest.

Uh, really good. Really good. This is when, uh, when Freddie was still like super healthy. I think it was 1986. Right. And, uh, just, uh, just an amazing show. And what got me like, just, I'm watching this. I'm like, man, they just, they were rock stars, but they didn't give a fuck.

They're like wearing gym shorts in Adidas out there. Not Karen, like dirty shoes, dirty socks. And, and, you know, tidy, whitey gym shorts. And the one thing that, uh, I remember hating the most about going to rock concerts is the, the assholes with girlfriends who had put them on their shoulders.

I'm just looking at the crowd and there, there's girls. Stupid. What? Stupid people with girlfriends. There's stupid people with girlfriends. I'm sorry. Did you ever put your girlfriend on your shoulders at a concert? No, we were usually in the mosh pit together.

See, there you go. That's my point. Uh, if she, if she gets you to put her on your shoulders so she can see the show and you can't, and then you get punched in the back because your girlfriend's blocking the view from everybody behind you. You're just a sucker. Okay. Okay.

Let's move on to Alex Trebek. Yes. Get this done with Alex Trebek. You're a, you're a fan boy of Jeopardy. I, I enjoy the Jeopardy. So what did you think of his, uh, calling that, that girl a loser? I thought it was the funniest thing he's done on air ever. It was hilarious. I was dying.

Okay. I figured you would be funny. These people, nerdcore people need to lighten the fuck up. I think they pretty much did, but the, the song that they wrote about it was pretty funny. It was okay. I, I, I, I'm team Trebek. The fact that they pointed out the fact that this is the first time that anybody cared about us since 2005.

Come on. That was pretty funny. They, they know, they know what they're in for. Nerdcore. What a horrible genre. It is pretty bad. I don't like, I don't like rap and generally don't like nerds that much. So do you wrong?

Do you really want a white guy with a gigantic beard rapping about Narnia? Uh, no, I don't even want to read Narnia. So then we're done with nerdcore. No, no, no. I, I, I told you I'm not a fan of nerdcore. I just thought it was lame that he called them losers.

I thought it was funny. Of course you do. It was hilarious. Anyways, uh, speaking of funny SNL is I, I haven't watched SNL regularly for years. I don't think I ever will again, because why bother when, you know, the choice bits get put up on the tube of you.

Um, so obviously Baldwin's been killing it as Trump, but did you see the SNL skit of they, they made fun of Honda's humanoid robot demos? I saw it. It was hilarious. I didn't think it was funny at all. I think it's not so much funny as it's practically realistic.

That's the thing. They kind of nailed it. I didn't, I didn't care for it. I thought it was boring. It's like, uh, okay. Robot doesn't work. That's about it. It's quite, quite funny to me. Okay. Moving on. All right. Harry Shearer is filing a $125 million lawsuit over this is spinal tap.

And this is also where I start to get depressed about the world again. Uh, let's not, we'll not get too into it. I, there's a link in the show notes if you want to read through it, but you start to understand the bullshit that Hollywood does to hide numbers and profits, um, bundling movies with other movies that have nothing to do with it, that lost money.

So they could claim that less money was made. So they don't have to pay the people that actually made the money. Yep. Good times. Uh, so how much money did he make off of it? Uh, I have no idea what he's made total, but I do know that they have claimed that since nine, what is this?

Well, they claim that in between 1984 and 2006 total income from music sales was $98. Okay. $98 total. Yes. Is what, uh, what, what he's deserves to get for creating this in the first place.

So, well, at least it wasn't $11. Ah, it goes, uh, this one, this, this check goes up to 11. Yeah. Yeah. Ah, so there you go. Uh, CBS is joining YouTube streaming TV service. So YouTube is getting into the whole TV realm as well.

Shocking. This is set to launch in early 2017. Apparently they're going around making deals with a bunch of different networks to pick up choice programming. Uh, no word as to whether this will include the new star Trek. I'm guessing it won't because CBS wants you to buy their crappy app. Yeah. You know, the more of these things fragment, the more I go to Sweden.

I'm sorry. I'm going, I'm going to see Bjorn in Sweden because it's like, it's so hard to find stuff. Yeah. They make it so hard to find anything these days. I mean, even with the sports ball right now, I can never tell what goddamn channel, what game's going to be on. It's a pain in the ass. It's just, uh, you got to make it simple people.

Yeah. And my Hulu subscription, I bought the $12 a month, uh, Hulu subscription. I thought there was going to be a bunch of stuff on there. There are like three shows that I watch on there. That's it. I've heard Hulu is horrible. Like there's just not much on it. If you, if you, if you, if you, if you don't give a crap what you watch and when you watch it, then Hulu is great.

But if you're kind of picky about the shows that you watch, you're screwed by any of these services. Yeah. The only, the, the upside, the only things I really care. Okay. Um, not gonna lie. That's coming next. Uh, Gotham. Gotham's on there. So I get to watch that, uh, at midnight, which I have, I'm such a huge fan of.

I love at midnight. I, you know, Chris Hardwick, he's a terrible standup comic, but man, he's, he a great host. Um, and the Chicago PD and Chicago fire. That's, that's it. That's all that's on there that I watch. I try and find other stuff. They have every season of survivor except the one that's on now.

Yeah. Cause Hulu is, gets things later. They're supposed to have it a day after they have a Gotham the day after, but they don't have the stuff that I want to watch. So I'm, I'm really considering just saying, screw it and getting rid of it. Yeah. Yep. It's 12 bucks a month.

And it's like, eh, it's not really worth it. If they had, if they had all the stuff that they said they had great, the movies suck. But, uh, what doesn't suck is Goliath on Amazon prime video. Um, this is, this is, it's a eight part series, nice and short, Billy Bob Thornton plays Billy McBride, a burned out and washed up attorney.

Um, who lives in a, this is the reason I thought you should watch it is because the hotel that he lives in is right at the corner of PCH and, uh, ocean there, like right. You know, when I used to leave your house and then go have to hang a left on the PCH to get onto PCH where it started there.

Yeah. That's where the hotel is. That's where they shoot the show. And I'm like, does Venice need any more, sorry, Santa Monica at that point, do they need any more traffic there? Period. No, no, we do not. Thankfully, I've never actually seen them out shooting. I just see people shooting their YouTube videos.

I am so amazed that they got this thing actually shot because that is one of the worst intersections in the world. And they shot so much of that show there and, uh, down by the, the pier. I'm like, could you pick a worse spot to set your series in?

It's nuts. Yeah, that's rough. So, uh, yeah, but not a huge Billy Bob fan. So I don't know. You didn't like him in Fargo? Eh, no, I couldn't get through Fargo. I watched five episodes and never went back to it. Ah, well, here's the deal.

Go, go watch this. Give it a shot. It's pretty good. William hurts in it. I did not need to see William hurts penis, but I have since the show has aired, but, uh, there's a lot of really good other cast members who don't show their penis, which is great. Um, you know, it's really funny as, as you said that I was scrolling through the different prime offerings and I, uh, and I just, uh, you said that and I scrolled over.

I love Dick season one. I am not making this up. It's Kevin Bacon's show. Kevin Bacon is Dick. And as Jason said that I was looking at Kevin Bacon on a horse and it says, I love Dick. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Serendiquity.

Kismet.

As previously mentioned, uh, the second debate, which is the one where Trump was free to roam about, uh, link in the show notes, Danny Elfman wrote a horror movie score specifically for some footage of Trump looming over Hillary.

It's very funny. Um, go watch it. It's still funny. I still have this, uh, Chrome thing going, so it's still the poop emoji looming over Hillary. Nice. Uh, and then I saw the hardtimes.net had a funny story. Uh, AOL reissues classic 50 hours free CD on vinyl.

That's for MXV. Okay. A little story for him. It's quite funny as well. Okay. I have a, an article from Kevin Marks, old friend and a podcaster and the guy that wrote the first Python script that begat podcasting, by the way.

Um, it's called how the web became unreadable and, uh, it's on backchannel.com. He says, I thought my eyesight was beginning to go. It turns out I'm suffering from design. I love this article. I feel the exact same way. I was, there was a couple of nights where I was sitting there trying to read on my iPhone and I was like, I can't read a goddamn thing.

Do I need to go get glasses? No, it's the fucking gray on gray. Everybody uses now. Yep. Bullshit. It is bullshit. I recommend you read this. And then, uh, if you can go find your nearest designer and punch them in the face. Yes. Or lower.

Well, do not punch them in the pussy. That would be a Trumpian move. Mm-hmm. Murder, murder, murder, murder. Okay. And finally, we've talked about this very, this concept a couple times. Uh, it's back. Uh, the Guardian has a nice big article about it.

Is there a world of simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not. In fact, some scientists, kind of stupid scientists say it's almost impossible for it not to be. Okay. But I don't, I don't quite buy that. So, uh, it's a good read. It's a, it's a mind trip.

It's interesting. It's, are we in the matrix? Blah, blah, blah. This all, this goes back to the horse before Descartes. He's the first, the 17th century philosopher, Rene Descartes, who's actually contemplated this very concept as well. Uh, they get really into this basically saying that our ancestors have created a simulation of us and that's all that we are.

And frankly, uh, if our society is to survive and continue on, there's no way that we aren't living in this. But the, the main takeaway from this is two idiot tech billionaires are secretly engaging scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation because we have no fucking other problems to solve. This is what happened when acid becomes free.

It is. Where do I go get some? Comment of the week. We'd like to start off with a big thank you to Jeremy for signing up for Patreon and helping us with kibble and nappies.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Very, very appreciated. Uh, we got a number of comments over at grumpy old geeks.com. The first is from Abdurman Worsami. I think I got that right. Pretty close. Yeah. Close enough. Close enough. Hey guys, I recently subscribed to your podcast.

Streaming Gudo was my first one. I enjoyed it a lot. One of the best tech podcasts I have consumed so far. I love tech, but I am hoping to start my own podcast soon about something else. So to come across your work as inspiring. Cheers. Uh, and apparently he's a journalist. So thank you so much. Thank you. We love journalists.

We love inspiring. Next one comes from Mario. Hello guys. Love the show and your cynical views on tech and the internet. Jason, last week I heard you knocking on pocket casts a bit for the poor interface. Well, I don't disagree with this.

Sadly, there aren't many good podcast app options out there for Android users. I will say that the discovery features of pocket casts were in fact how I stumbled upon the GOG podcast among others. So that makes it worth it in my book. Keep up the great work guys and don't stop what you're doing.

Okay. Yes. Pod pocket casts. Like I said, one of the great things about them is their discovery feature. We have also added to the sidebar of grumpy old geeks.com a link to subscribe in Android. And it goes to a page that shows you all of the currently available apps to sign up or to buy or get for free that are supported by Android.

And then you can join our show from there. So we are, we are trying really hard to get everybody on Android into it, but I'm glad that pocket casts helped you out and that you found the show from it. So that's great. Awesome. We got a wonderfully long and somewhat unhinged comment from that guy from Hawaii.

I understand. I know what I do when I'm in Hawaii. I have a couple of rum cocktails and, you know, maybe ramble on a bit. Thank you so much. I would love to read this, but it's just too damn funny and we can't. So we'll move on. But thanks for sending that in, guy from Hawaii.

Yes. We're going to keep this one close to the vest because it is funny and just for us. Yeah. Good times. But I'm glad that you do like your Apple watch. That's all I'm going to say. I don't hate you for liking the watch. I hate you for living in Hawaii. Okay, this is a four star rating.

Four. Four. I know. Some of that. God, commit. Commit. One or five. Come on. Get on the bandwagon here. This comes from No Nickname Required. Refreshing Tech Podcast. Grumpy Old Geeks is a refreshing change from typical fanboy tech podcasts, particularly for Apple podcasts.

Products. Oh, yeah. Products. Wrong. Wrong. Thank you, Trump. I like the fact they call BS where it belongs in the tech world. It's also nice GOG podcasts outside of Silicon Valley bubble, both physical and evaluation bubble.

And, yes, we are. We're definitely not in Silicon Valley. Well, I was, but Brian never set foot there. Yeah. Glad you like it. Preach. I'm glad you like four stars out of five-ish. Yeah. Wish you liked it a little fucking more.

We've talked about different social networks many, many times. And since Flickr's dead and I got nowhere else to play with people who like cameras and take photos, I did a little researching and I found a new site called YouPick out of Sweden.

And I signed up and I'm having a really good time there and I'm posting, I've only got like 20 photos up right now. But if you want to check it out, there will be a link in the show notes to go join me over there. I, I'm having a good time over there. Everybody seems really cool and are into photography.

It's really cool. They must not be giving away a free t-shirt because you haven't sent me an invite. Nope. Well, they, they like photography and you don't. So you are about the least artistic person I know. So. With photography. And, uh, well, yeah, I'm sorry.

You are a musician. So you are an artiste. Thank you. I forgot about that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I'm just going to give a shout out to all the bad hombres and the nasty women out there. Did you say you're giving a shit out? A shout out. Okay. Or I'll get my shit out too.

Get your shit out to the hombres. That's right. Okay. Go Cubbies. Go Cubbies. You don't even know what that fucking means. You don't even know. No. Yeah. I didn't think so. Nope. No idea. Los Doyers. I know.

As many times as you said that over the, the, the run of this show, I'm at least allowed to say go Cubbies a couple of times, even though I don't care because all of the old people are going to die in my neighborhood. So it's like if they get to the, if they get there, here's the thing.

The old people are going to die either way, but they're going to die sooner. If the Cubs win, they're going to have a heart attack of joy. If the Cubs lose in the world series, they're going to hard to have a heart attack of sadness. There's no, there's a no win like scenario for the Cubs at this point.

It's they're screwed. I agree. So let's go Dodgers. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo. You can check me out at jpd.me where you can find links to all my social media and contact info. If you want to hire me for your podcast editing and producing needs.

And I'm Brian Gilmester and you can follow me on Twitter at Cinder Fungus. Visit patreon.com slash GOG and sign up to help support the show. Even as little as a buck a month helps keep the bandwidth, baby formula and puppy chow flowing. And as we found out, yeah, it doesn't really help.

So throw a little more. Come on, you know, release the cheddar. If you're cheap or broke. He's deplorable. If you're cheap or broke, but still want to support this show, please go to growfieldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a glowing review and five stars, not four.

And at the very least, please share the show with your friends. Growfieldgeeks.com. Not true, not true. Grumpyoldgeeks.com is where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, ask us questions that we can read on the air or find links to awesome sponsors and stuff we like.

Not what I've heard. We're also on Twitter at GOG Podcast and on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks. Wrong. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music or get 10 exclusive tracks when you sponsor us on Patreon.

Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stachansky. You can follow Andy at Twitter.com slash House of Andy. And he's also on SoundCloud at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash Andy where you can listen to- Hold a man, never heard his name. Or you can listen to this song in its entirety.

Show notes- Never heard of it. Show notes for all the links to us. In this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 182. There you go. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and color. All in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel.

Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.