184: Peak Segal

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. I'm Jason DeFillippo here with my co-host.

I'm Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? I'm doing okay. It's a little late here. It's late. I have a glass of wine. I didn't even know this was theoretically possible, but then again, we do live in a third world nation again. I had no power all day long because the power company just decided we're going to fix some things, so we're going to shut you down.

Well, isn't that because you had that whole thing blow not too long ago that blew out all your power outlets and stuff? Well, one would assume, but I thought they fixed it that time. I had already lost power for a day, two days then. So, anyways. Yeah, good times. Woohoo, grid.

Yeah, I have three Modelo Especiales left from watching the Cubs game yesterday out of my six-pack. All right. Congratulations, Jason. Your sports ball team won. They did. They did. And here's something that's interesting. This is an interesting side effect of what happened after they won and watching 21 hours of baseball over the past couple days.

I started to get really annoyed at the condescending people who were making fun of sports ball on Twitter. I'm like, right? That's how I felt about you. I'm sure. I'm sure. Sports, there's fun. Sean Bonner was killing me with that because he was just being blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, dude, if you get into it, it's actually fun. Yeah, it's interesting to watch. You pick your team. You get into it. It's social. It's better than sitting at home tweeting. I actually, his tweets were the ones that made me just close Facebook or Twitter and just say, fuck it, I'm going to bed.

Yeah. One thing I like about sports, unless you're certain people like Norm MacDonald who live tweets golf games. In general, people don't live tweet sporting events because it's not cool to do that. Sports are fun. Fine. Pick a team, Jason. Get into it next year. It's a good time.

Yeah. And I found myself like by the time I was done, it was like, you know, a 21 hour just re indoctrination of the game. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, the strategy and the shift and all this other stuff that I'd totally forgotten about. And it's all this, you know, interesting strategy that goes into it. I was just like, oh, this is actually kind of fun.

It is kind of more chess than you think. Yeah, there's a lot involved. And I mean, don't get, you know, too carried away because that that final game is that's a game for the agents. Most of them are not that damn exciting. Oh, God, no, no, no. I was a damn exciting game. I was talking about the rest of them. But, yeah, that was the the single best baseball game probably ever played in my lifetime.

So it's all downhill from here. So maybe I'll just go to soccer. Yeah. Hey, you know, you got the European Cup this summer. You got World Cup starting up in two years. You got qualifiers happening already. USA is playing Mexico. Big game coming up this weekend. Good times, Jason. I'm going to get you into this.

Yeah. Now I just got to pay for cable. Oh, well, there's that. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But I see in the show notes that it says talk a little bit about who we are and why we're here for the show for a minute or two. And our show has absolutely nothing to do with sports, which is what we spent the first five minutes talking about. Yes, that's true.

That is true. This is not a sports show. It dawned on me we haven't actually introduced ourselves to the audience for quite some time, like over 100 episodes, I believe. So, hi, my name's Jason. I'm an ex-web developer for 22 years. No, I am Brian Schulmeister.

I'm sadly still a web developer for 22 years. That's pretty much us in a nutshell. There you go. Now, we've got a lot of experience in the field. Jason has transitioned to become a full-time podcaster slash media entrepreneur. I am still one foot in the web-er-dever, which is now more like social media marketing thing.

I'm music industry. Jason's more movie industry. We're both grumpy. We're both tech savvy. And we both think that everything's gone horribly wrong. Yes, my area of expertise was mostly back-end, and I think I've done – yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I've done a couple hundred websites easily, if I lost count a very long time ago. But, yes, I was mostly movie-focused, movie marketing, and then went to San Francisco and became one of those startup douches for a couple years and finally have gotten out of it.

Thank bejeebus. Yep, and I'm kind of in that transitionary period where I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I just had a kid, so I'm basically on daddy daycare, paternity leave, so I've got some time to figure it out. Yes, take your time and do it right and get the hell out as fast as you can, but – Well, hey, I'm doing a podcast 184 episodes in, and, hey, there's a tiny trickle of money coming in from this now.

A tiny trickle. Yes. So, we found a video this week from Prince I – I guess it's – Yeah, it's Prince I. Prince I. It sounds like somebody on – what's the Californians? I'm Prince I.

It's got 18 million views on it, and it's called Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? If you want to know what this show has kind of been about in a nutshell, a lot of what we talk about can be summed up in this video, but not as poetry-laden. It's more expletive-laden than – Yeah, our version of this is less smooth, jam, freestyle, more punk rock.

We do not have popped collars either. No, we do not pop our collars. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but it was a great video. I really enjoyed it. I love the fact that it's seen 18 million views so far, and, yeah, this really does kind of encapsulate our grumpiness about what has happened to us with our technology, because, you know, we came in the wild, wild west, and we actually thought this stuff would make a difference.

It did, not in the way that we'd hoped. That's true, and forget the irony that it's a video about unplugging, and it's on YouTube that's been viewed 18 million times. And you've just learned about it from a podcast. Yes, indeed. Which you may have found out about from us tweeting.

So now that you know a little bit about us, we need to know a little bit about you. We have a very fast seven-question user survey. It takes less than seven seconds. And it's at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash survey. We would really appreciate it if you would just pop over, fill it out, and it will make our lives so much easier when people ask us, who the hell listens to your show?

Because we have no idea. Yeah, it will help. We, as we've said, we are starting to hope to make a little bit of income from here, and it helps to be able to tell people a little thing or two about the folks that listen, which is you guys. And it means the ads will be less annoying because it might actually have something of interest to you, of which we also try to tell you about anyways throughout the show for free.

So it'd be nice if we got a couple ducats every now and then for telling you about the same stuff that we tell you about for free. Absolutely. All right. So go fill that out. Pretty pleased with sugar on top. Now moving on. In the news.

Right out of the gate, we have a story that we've kind of talked about. This comes back to the sports ball that we kind of talked about a little bit at the beginning of the show. And remember, kids, this isn't a sports ball show. No, sports ball is just the subject. It is not the actual or actually it's just a bit player in the story.

Yes, AT&T and DirecTV colluded in an illegal plot that kept Dodgers games off the air, alleges a DOJ lawsuit. Oh, doggy. Oh, doggy. The sports ball component of this being I have complaints for three years now that I cannot go out to a bar to watch a goddamn Dodgers game.

They're my team. I like them. I like sitting in a bar and having a beer and watching their games. I cannot do that because the only thing, the only place that carries them is Time Warner Cable. Now Spectrum because things are changing, which they're not. And this is basically we now we find out that there were this.

We could have had Dodgers games on on everyone everywhere. DirecTV is what every bar has because the NFL packages and things like that. I could have been watching for three years, but DirecTV decided to collude with other people to try to get the price down, which it never did. So then they never bought it. If you think for a second that the invisible Adam Smith's invisible hand is doing what it promises to do and there's a free marketplace out there and you're not getting fucked by people, fuck you.

Read the story. There you have it in a nutshell. Yeah. What a load of shit. I mean, this really does piss me off. I mean, this is proof positive that this whole idea of just the market will sort itself out and it gives us better options, better pricing, better whatever.

That's not how it works in the real world. The market screws you. That's what it does. Pretty much, yes. And speaking of getting screwed and cable, since I'm quote unquote technically kind of a cord cutter, kind of cable prices have risen at more than double the rate of inflation for 20 years.

I'm of two minds on this, though, because what cable TV provides to us is a thousand times more than what it did 20 years ago as well. Yes. But is that a good thing? How many times have you turned on Telemundo besides watching a little bit of soccer here and there?

Actually, that's the wrong channel to pick because quite often. That's what you're watching. Yeah. No, I mean, it shouldn't have risen that much, but I do also see the side of it in that you are getting a thousand times more than what you were getting 20 years ago.

You know, so I see the price increase somewhat commensurate with the extra services being being given to you by them as well. It's not to me. It's not an apples to apples thing. This is an apples to oranges. Yes, but also remember that there is the non-invisible hand of the fisting marketplace going on behind the scenes because you're paying for ESPN whether you want it or not in all the bundling that goes along with it.

But that seems to be on the wane at this point. Well, yes, but no. I mean, we've talked about this a couple of times and we had a few stories last week that basically said that, you know, these people have cottoned on to the whole unbundling thing and the cutting the cord thing and are now making it harder and harder and harder and more and more expensive.

Cutting the cord is not as cheap as it used to be as they've started to raise individual prices on apps and things like that. And once again, all you people are doing, I come from the music industry. That's my background. If you just started listening to this, all you are doing is your metallic-ing this thing and you are driving people to go to Sweden to get your stuff.

This is true in some ways. I did find a new package this week for my cable provider that lets me just do apps for local channels and HBO and it's cheaper than the HBO app. It's actually undercutting HBO for app access, which I thought was very interesting. That is interesting.

I'd like to see the legal on that deal. Yeah, no doubt about it. All right, so let's stop complaining for two seconds. Well, actually, let's complain, but let's complain about something. Have you heard our show before? That's all we do. I know. Apple is once again messed with our emojis and particularly our sexting emojis.

First, they got, well, unless you're really weird, this one didn't apply to sexting, but first they got rid of the regular gun and had to replace it with a toy gun because God forbid we can't have an emoji of a gun. Yeah. But now they've taken away our beloved peach that looked like a butt and now it's just a peach.

Have they removed the eggplant yet? No, the eggplant will always be there. So there's one last bastion of emoji porn. Yeah, well, to be fair, I think they've added more phallic ones. We've got a burrito now. I suppose technically the taco could be the female version.

I was going to say, you got to go with the taco on that one. Got to go with the taco, the perfect taco. All right. I've never used the peach emoji for butt, but now I'm kind of sad that I never got to use it. Well, I think you've still got until, unless you've updated already.

Yeah, you know me. Yeah, that peach butt has flown. Butt has left the building. Story of my life. Story of your life, Chase. Now, one thing that you and I haven't done for a very long time is we have not worked for companies. We have been independent contractors and much to our dismay half the time.

But when I read this story, I was really happy that I haven't been working for a company for a long time. This is called I Heart My Beloved Employer. Companies are turning to employees to promote them on social media. And I railed about this probably 100 episodes ago, the last time that we introduced ourselves, because I had a group of like four or five friends that all got new jobs right at the same time.

And all of a sudden, all their social media became bullshit posts about their stupid new job. Like, I give a crap. Yeah. Because none of us do. Yeah. So that is, I guess now it's not just a kind of like, boy, it'd be great if you did this.

It's like, you need to do this. We expect to see five to ten tweets per week. But at least they're getting some extra cash on the side for it. It's not just you have to toe the party line. And now that's how it always starts. And then it becomes, well, you didn't do it. So you're fired. Yeah. It's part of it's part of your review.

Once they look at your review sheet and they're like, hmm, you've only had 4.2 tweets per week. We don't. The company does not approve. Management does not approve of your tweeting patterns. You may you may you may pack up your things and move along. Yeah.

Go get a job with Twitter. Nobody there tweets. There's nobody there to tweet anymore after the layoffs. That is so true. Instagram is trying to finally solve some of their problems. We've heard from day one, Instagram being a purely visual type social network in case you're not on it, which means you might be young and you've already left it because it's only old people on Instagram these days.

But we've all heard a lot of stories about how it's kind of like really brought a lot of different fashion companies that never really existed before have done very, very well on Instagram. And in a rare well, we'll give you the cautionary lesson fashion people right now. They will take this away from you and they will screw you at some point because we've seen Facebook kill people and businesses that way time and time again.

Right now, they're in the process, though, of making it easier for you. So you are suckered more and more into them. They are finally adding. Well, for for select people, they're starting rolling this out, the ability to basically do an image map on your Instagram, an image.

It's pretty much an image map. Yeah. Kind of what we were coding back in 1994, an image map on your post, which will allow direct clicks to your store to be able to sell things rather than the complete inability to link to anything as Instagram has been since day one. So, yeah.

And this is only like 21 companies that are in the beta program. And it's a very limited beta at this point. So don't expect to see it for a bit. The fact that you can't buy directly from the Instagram app, you have to. Well, it's kind of a web view in the app that pops you either to a web page for the product or it'll actually bounce you to another app.

Yeah. To then buy it. Well, there's a lot of stuff to sort out there, right? Like a lot of rights and who's going to do what and who you have to be on and all that sort of stuff. It's going to be a mess. I mean, all you really need to do is add links into your commenting area. Let those links work.

Not going to happen. Not going to ever happen. Not in a million years. That's one of the nicest things about Instagram is the fact that you get one link and one link only. That's it. There could be only one. Yes, indeed. So Airbnb, one of our favorite companies in the world.

You've never listened to the show before. Here's my opinion of Airbnb. Fuck you. That's Brian's opinion on most of everything. But I second that this week because Airbnb has rolled out the Community Commitment. Oh, really?

Yes. Here it is. I agree to treat everyone in the Airbnb community, regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age with respect and without judgment or bias.

Hey, Airbnb, I live in Santa Monica. I own property in Santa Monica. You are not respecting me at all when you don't pay Santa Monica taxes. So fuck you. Well, they didn't say anything about that in the Community Commitment. I am in the Airbnb community, goddammit.

Respect my authority. Well, you're not part of the community because you're not either renting from them or renting out your apartment. So to you, they say, piss off, Brian. We don't care. So this is a nothing statement, right? I mean, this is just this is what everybody's supposed to be like anyways.

This is bullshit forced civility that means absolutely nothing because what they're doing is they're twisting your arm. No, no, no. Let me finish. Let me finish. By all means. So if you do not sign this, well, this is went active November 1st. And if you do not agree to the Community Commitment, you're out.

You cannot rent a place on Airbnb and you cannot rent your place on Airbnb. You are cut off from the community whatsoever, gone, poof, out. And what we found, of course, on the Internet, that everybody tells the truth. And if you check a box, you're always over 18 and you can always go see the boobies legally.

And you're always going to be nice to everybody by agreeing to this bullshit community commitment. Yeah. I mean, this is dumb. I but I you know, they had to throw this in because a bunch of, you know, a couple of white people got pissed off about writing to a couple of people that weren't white. Right. So more than likely now you have to have.

No, there were a few stories. I just sometimes it gets tiring, putting in Airbnb a shit story. So, you know, sometimes we have an embargo on Airbnb and Uber. Well, you know, yeah, there's only so many Uber and Airbnb or crap stories we can put in every week. So so that has happened.

So, of course, this is what they have to do now. Now, I don't do Airbnb. Do you always see the people that you're renting from? I've only done it once and I have. But that was that weird experience where where you basically ended up in like a gay orgy. No, you didn't end up.

Wasn't that weird, but it was definitely weird because there were people in and out of the place that we rented all night long. And it was very, very strange. And yeah, you know, it's one of those things where the guy wasn't supposed to be renting his place. But yeah, and it was in this weird community high rise on Michigan Avenue.

And there were other people in the building that would just come and go. And we're just like, oh, yeah, we have between the three of us. We had, you know, maybe fifteen thousand dollars worth of camera gear there that we couldn't even leave behind because we didn't know who the hell was coming and going. Yeah, well, you know, get a hotel.

Yeah, there was the maybe there was a room. Don't steal my shit commitment from Airbnb. Then maybe we'd be we'd feel better about it. But that didn't exist back then. I can I can go in there and be trans whatever. But that doesn't mean nobody's going to steal my Nikon. Yeah.

All right. So now let's crap on Google. OK, we have followed Google Fiber on the show for quite a while. We are quite pleased about this. We were interested in it. They were going to basically Google Fiber was going to bring high speed internet access all over the country, installing new fiber optic networks, basically getting our third world infrastructure up to the par of, say, places like, I don't know, Hong Kong or all the other places that have much, much faster Internet service than we do.

Botswana. But any place that gets the Google balloons, I don't know. So this was going to come and it was sounds like it was going to be awesome. And they basically started off with a lot of East Coast cities. You had heard from somebody that the speed was just phenomenal. Yeah, yeah.

The speed is phenomenal. And we did cover this a couple of weeks ago when they started to roll this back because they're they're moving from because fiber optic is exorbitantly expensive to put in. And the new Wi-Fi standards that are coming out, they're so much cheaper. And then you don't have to lay any pipe.

So they were they pulled back from this a little bit ago. But now they're really going after it. And they the head of the program is even gone now. Well, when the head of the program steps down, it's basically a dead program. So it's pretty much gone. Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll see, you know, Google Wi-Fi coming to to a place near you soon, because that's what they were looking at replacing it with their Google 5G.

They're fine with me as long as it's fast. Get something in there, people. Well, I don't even know if they can do 5G because there's no five in the alphabet. And they they're going to have to buy a number pad for alphabet before they can move into 5G. They might have to reshuffle their entire corporate structure with a new company of which alphabet is only a part of.

Yes, it'll be called number num lock. That'll be the new the new company. Welcome to just go with it should go with QWERTY. Uber is going to partner with GM and get a car rental program going for drivers, which I we we talked about this a while ago.

It's skated on indentured servitude to me. It didn't skate. That's what we called it. No. OK, here. Here's a couple hundred. Here's a car. Give us a couple hundred dollars a week first. And then when you're done with that, then you can go make some money for yourself.

Yeah. So the interesting thing about this story is that GM is an investor in Lyft for 500, the tune of 500 million dollars. So with them partnering with Uber, it's like, are they hedging their bets or is that feels weird? Yeah, very weird.

I don't get it. Why do you why would you invest in one company and then go into business with the basically competitor? It makes no sense at all. But this entire program makes no sense. You have to be a moron to sign up for this. Well, there's some people that are just broken. They're grasping at straws who don't have a job and think, hey, you know, I see the thing where they're making one hundred thousand dollars a year driving Uber.

What's two hundred and fifteen or one hundred eighty bucks a week? Yeah, I can make that back in a day. Let's do the math on that. Then profit. Yeah. No. Yeah. It's pretty much the same thing as it was last time. But now they're just going with GM and it's a small 90 day trial in San Francisco.

We'll see. By the way, yeah. If you live in San Francisco, if you can afford to live in San Francisco, you're not doing this. Yeah, you are definitely you're probably living in Oakland and then taking BART into San Francisco to pick up your rental car and then driving around. Exactly. So Jason and I are both recent converts to the Amazon Echo, which if you get involved in certain levels, heavily relies on if this, then that programming and IFTTT has been around for a while.

And Microsoft has finally launched their own alternative or basically has been around for a bit. But now it's open to everyone and it's called Microsoft Flow. You can only use it once a month for about a few more days. Jason will always go for those jokes. Of course I will.

Yeah, I have not looked at it yet. Generally, I would always just kind of ignore anything that Microsoft has released and kind of just laugh it off and not pay attention. But Microsoft's been hitting it out of the park recently. So far, so good. And, you know, I wonder if Flo from Alice, you know, the Kiss My Grits lady is their spokesperson.

That would be a good one. Is she still even around? I don't know. We'll have to Google that later. Yeah. See, maybe she's Abe Vigoted out by now. I guess we I guess we should Bing it. Bing. They're only supporting 58 apps right now next to IFTTT's 366.

Yeah. So but they're more geared towards the enterprise, not Voyager, not DS9, the enterprise. So yeah, but given our opinions on the IOT, the Internet of Things, I'd be more likely to use enterprise level anything in my house anyways, because that might at least have the ability to, I don't know, change a password.

Could be. But if it doesn't support your hues or your whatever lights you got. Yeah. Yep. Then it doesn't really matter. It's all it's all VHS Betamax right now. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, that's true. I have not got into programming for my Echo yet because I don't have anything to to ift to.

Yeah, neither do I really. I have one programmable socket. That's about it. So don't talk about your wife that way. She is far from programmable. Yeah, you and I use Slack for this show.

I also use Slack for two other clients now since you turned me on to it. I enjoy it. It is for certain things better. Probably the best business method of communication. It certainly beats email and I am trying to combine those. Everything's in one place. You can do a lot.

Although I have you actually used I am in like five years. Yeah, I actually still use I am with like five people, which is shocking. Which which flavor do you use? I'm still using Adium. But I mean, who are you connecting to? What's the service you're connecting to? Oh, they're still on.

I think Microsoft and AOL. I thought AOL shut down. I can't believe that. No, no. AOL still Yahoo shut down. They shut down theirs and Google G talk shut there. Well, whatever Google's used to be now goes through Google talk, which is going through hangouts.

So it's a cluster. I have to try to connect to anyone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, what's still around that's surprising? ICQ is still around. I know, but nobody uses it. Yeah, we should bring it back. No, I'd rather you use IRC. OK, well, you know, automatic uses IRC. So, oh, there you go.

Interesting. Well, Slack is around. You and I have been using it. And again, on the level of we've we've had more Microsoft news this year alone than for years. Right. Like Microsoft is really making a concerted effort to get involved in new things. Like we said, they're clarifying that good Microsoft news, good Microsoft news.

Yeah. They're usually in our security segment where we crap on them every time. They're apparently getting much better. So they are rolling out their own version of basically a Slack type thing, as Facebook has as well. I think Facebook is called Workplace. I haven't looked at that one yet, and I haven't seen the Microsoft one yet either.

I don't know what the the Microsoft one hasn't even rolled out yet. But Slack apparently decided instead to ignore completely the fact that Facebook is trying to take over the space and did this really bizarre, poorly thought out PR move to take out an entire page in the New York Times with a smarmy kind of jerk asshole post about to Microsoft.

An open letter, basically, to Microsoft. Okay. Did you read it? No, I did not read it. Can you sum it up? Let's just let's just I'll just sum it up with one quote at the end for its big conclusion. Slack declares that the secret ingredient that they made that Microsoft will never understand in great enterprise software is love.

Okay. It's a fucking stupid ass letter. Okay. You look at it and you go, what the fuck were you people thinking? I'll give you a little secret here.

And I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm going in my mind it's going to be true. Okay. Slack was Slack is founded by Stuart Butterfield, who came from Flickr. He was one of the co-founders of Flickr. Yes. And he's kind of a dick, you know?

Well, yeah. I used to. I knew him back in the day and he's kind of a dick. So this does not surprise me in one bit whatsoever. Oh, it's going to be called Microsoft Teams. So there you go. But yeah, this is hilarious. I mean, this is just really, really funny.

So I enjoyed the letter. We have the article to The Verge that talks about it linked in our show notes, which also goes on to briefly discuss the iRoll open letter that RDO wrote to Apple, which was also fantastic. Except who laughed last on that one?

How are you doing, RDO? How's that going for you? Next year, look for Microsoft Slack. Pretty much, yeah. Anyways, there is, right after the iPhone 7 has come out, unsurprisingly, there's a lot of rumors already about the iPhone 8.

But apparently this time around, it's a game changer. Well, this comes from Scoble, so I'm not going to jump out and go put my money down on the. Yeah, they're saying it's got all sorts of handy dandy features coming to it. But it's a stretch.

It's a stretch. Yeah, I don't see all of these things just happening in one year. There's no way. We would have seen versions of diff. Come on. Photograms on top of the real world, a next generation 3D sensor, batteries and antennas hitting around the edges of the screen, a headset with eye sensors, next generation OLED screen.

Come on. Give me a break. There's no way all of this stuff is coming in the next phone. Yeah. You know what, Scoble? Send me a picture of you with it in the shower like you did the Google Glass, and maybe I'll believe you. But at this point... Let's not recreate that sad moment in tech history.

I know. I can't believe he's still got a job after that. And honestly, look, Robert's a nice guy. I knew him. I've known him for 20 years, 10 years or something like that. But he's a nice guy. He means well. But sometimes he can kind of go astray.

Yeah. Here's the thing. Don't drink in glass, people. Don't drink in glass. And the Obama administration has allocated $2.2 million to teach former co-workers to fly drones. Hey, Obama, how about this former web developer? I was going to say, can I get some money for podcasters to learn how to fly drones?

Because I'm in. How about we start with some people that are in the tech world that are struggling to make a living these days? And this whole thing is going to train 64 people. That's a lot of you could basically just divvy up that money if you're living in. Sorry, to bumfuck Virginia.

South West Virginia. Yeah. If you basically just divvied up that money amongst those people, they don't need to work again. I used to live there. I know. Yeah. Jason's Jason's been there. That's enough money to basically just not work ever again. No, you can get your get your moonshine on and don't need a drone for it.

Although, you know what? With the money that you make, you could go buy a drone. Learn to fly it in your backyard and have the first moonshine drone delivery service in the United States. Now that, that's an idea. I'm thinking outside the box. I'm pivoting on this goddamn idea.

That's what I'm doing here. Excellent. And another huge part of our show is we love Betteridge's Law of Headlines. Yes, we do. Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. And because online journalism is so shit, I had to throw this one in the show notes because there was still some question at one point.

But I knew, I knew what the chances were given the title of the headline. And this comes from your beloved Slate. I know. Was a Trump server communicating with Russia? No. No. So we're done. The Intercept dedicated a metric shit ton of words to basically say it's an email spam server sending out emails for Trump's hotels.

I will say, it's interesting purely in the fact that I have not seen in mainstream media such a deep dive on what DNS is, how mail servers work, et cetera, et cetera. Like, how can anybody be interested? No, it was ridiculous.

Yeah. So that's why I put the TLDR in our show notes because I'm like, I'm not going to excerpt this motherfucker. It's like, okay. Betteridge, thank you. Yeah. Security?

Ha! All right. So Brian had to go change some nappies, so we're going to sneak this one in. I'm here with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. How's it going, Dave? It's going pretty good. I have to admit I'm fighting a bit of a cold this week, so I have sort of a husky voice this week.

But we will soldier on and get through it. And hopefully in the middle of this I will not try to hawk up a lung or something like that. Or jump into some Barry White. We know your penchant for singing on the show. That's true. That's true.

We had fun on Halloween this year. If you haven't checked out our Halloween show, it's worth it just for the amount of humiliation that I'm willing to bear for the sake of the show. Welcome to podcasting. That's right, exactly. All right. So Dave, you got your top three stories for the week for us? Top three stories for this week.

First story is about, well, Google, Adobe, and Microsoft. Walk into a bar. Walk into a bar. Yeah. Right. So Google's threat analysis group discovered some vulnerabilities in both Adobe Flash and Windows, which allowed some attacks in Chrome.

Google has a standard policy where if there's an attack that is – there's an active attack that's being exploited in the wild, Google will wait seven days before releasing the information about the attack. If it's not something that's being used, they'll give you longer, like up to 60 days.

But in this case, Google released the information. Microsoft is none too happy about Google releasing the information because Microsoft does not have a patch yet available to it. Now, well, actually, we just heard today that Microsoft is planning on having a patch available on Tuesday.

The other part about this story is that evidently the – Adobe did put a patch out. And if you apply that patch to Adobe Flash, again, why are you still using Flash? Yes. If you apply that, that greatly reduces your vulnerability to the Microsoft exploit.

So, you know, the bottom line is update your Flash right away if you're still using it. Come Tuesday, there should be something for Windows where you can patch that. But I think the interesting part of this that I wanted to discuss with you was this notion of, you know, whether or not Google should be holding back on releasing a vulnerability like this for Microsoft's sake.

Or is it better for them to put the pressure on for the users to get a patch quicker? I could see both sides to this argument. Yeah, we discussed this at length last – I think it was last year before Christmas when that happened originally.

Because Microsoft was really not in the mood to be putting out a patch. And Google's like, time's ticking. We're going to release this thing. Because that was the 90-day one when there was no public exploit available. Right. And this one where there is a public exploit, it's – you can pick either side of this.

Because Google, they're being bullies trying to twist Microsoft's arm to get a patch out, which is fine, I think. But if there is an unreasonable amount of time, because between when the patch needs to come out and when Google's going to release the vulnerability, if Microsoft physically can't get a patch out in time because, A, maybe it might be too hard, maybe it's going to take a while to figure out how to fix this thing, or it's out of their patch release cycle, then Google needs to, like, you know, lay off a bit.

Because what they've just done is given everybody a roadmap to this exploit. And as we know, not everybody updates at the same time. So all the people that are lagging behind are going to – or can possibly get burnt by it. So I think there's a give and take on that.

And I do think it is a little bit irresponsible of Google to just say, hey, we're going – we have our rules. We can't break our rules. Of course you can. You wrote the fucking rules. You can break them. This is not – this is not Moses coming down from the mount with the tablets.

You wrote the rules. So change the rules if it's going to keep people safer. That's – I mean, that's my side of it. Yeah, it seems to me like there could at least be some kind of an appeal process where, you know, Google goes to Microsoft. They say, look, the clock is ticking. You've got seven days. Microsoft says, we'll get back to you.

And then they get back to them and they say, look, seven days isn't going to happen. But, you know, would you believe 14? And then maybe Google could say, all right, that's reasonable. And away we go. You know, but I tend to agree with you that being hard and fast on this really doesn't serve the community.

It doesn't serve the customers. It really doesn't serve the customers. Because how about, you know, somebody uses that Microsoft exploit to hack your Google account. How about that? You ever think of that? Yeah. How about them apples? Yeah. Yeah, Google.

How about this? Don't be a bully. Try that. Try that slogan since the other one is obviously out the window. But, yeah. How do you really feel, Jason? I just – you know, and well, if this was a government agency, it might be different. If everybody had to play by the same rules and it was, you know, mandated by the government, well, that's a different story.

This is a rival company, so therein lies a little bit more of the rub. So I want to see Microsoft open up the same type of organization on their side and start publishing Google exploits if they don't lay off. So get into a little arms race between the two?

Yep. Mutually assured hacking, I guess. Everybody loses. Yeah. Especially the people who like to use Windows. God help you. All right. All right. Well, moving on, our second article this week is from Graham Cluley's website, and this is called Beware.

This Android Banking Trojan intercepts SMS messages and bypasses to SV. It may be targeting your bank already. This is – we put this in here because this is an active, particularly evil attack on Android devices.

This is a banking Trojan, so they're trying to steal your stuff, steal your money, and it's hitting a lot of banks. It's targeting Bank of America, American Express, Chase, Discover, and on and on and on all around the world. Who discovered this exploit in Android?

That's a good question. It's basically an unpronounceable name. Nicholas Cristados of Avast? Yes. He's explaining. Okay. I'm just – a little bit of me is tickled here because this might just be exploit karma for Google.

Well, yeah. So here's how you get it. So let's follow along here because this is this is the usual thing. Oh, hack my numbers. Upon downloading the malware, which usually disguises itself as adult video players found on third party websites.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Well, there's your problem. Right. Exactly. So problem number one, behavioral. You have you have asked for this, but it's clever. It asks for administrative privileges while it's hiding its own icon from the home screen.

So in the example they gave on Clueless site, it looks like it's asking for administrative access for the Google Play service, which, you know, a reasonable person might say, oh, well, yes, I want that. Because at the moment, I'm what I'm really trying to do. And I'm really in a hurry because I really want to watch this porn.

Yep. Right. So. So I'm going to of course, I'm going to grant permission. And with that, you know, they've got you. But what's interesting, too, is that this thing can once it's got your Android device in its grips, it could intercept SMS messages and, you know, bypass, you know, two factor to get in and get your stuff.

Well, do you at least get to see some porn? You know, I don't think you do. I think the insult to injury is that, no, there's there's no porn. Oh, man, these hackers nowadays. I know. There is no there's no happy ending in hacking. Honor. Oh, Jason. I was going to say honor among thieves, but all right, we'll go with yours.

That's fine. That's fine. And then finally this week, a fun one goes along with something we've talked about a lot. This is from Wired. The article is this evil office printer hijacks your cell phone connection. This is a researcher named Julian Oliver who built a proof of concept printer, just a regular old off the shelf HP printer.

But he put in a little extra hardware that functions the same way as kind of one of those Stingray devices functions where it looks for cell phones, intercepts them and can send text messages to them.

What's fun about this is that if you reply to the text message, your reply is then printed out on the printer. Nice. So that's kind of so that's kind of fun. And, you know, what this with this gentleman is doing is he's just trying to prove that devices that are close by, you know, in your network, mild mannered devices that you don't think twice about something like the the friendly little printer that's sitting off in the corner.

It's really easy for someone with malintent to put a little extra hardware inside of that thing and basically own your cell phone. What's interesting to me about this is that it sort of points out what we've talked about before, which is the the weakness of some of the self cellular protocols, where I think we've talked about before in the show that it is the tower that does the negotiating for the security of the connection.

So if the tower says, hey, let's encrypt all of this, the phone says, great, encryption is great. But if the tower says, hey, you know what, we're going to do all this in the clear, then the phone says, great, then clear is great. So what this printer does is says, hey, you know what, we're going to connect in the clear and, you know, away you go.

So it's a proof of concept. It works. But to me, what it's really pointing out is that there are some security holes in the cellular specifications. Definitely, definitely. I think this guy might have a good future at tailored access operations for the NSA.

That's pretty much their thing, isn't it? Get something like this in Wired. I'd say that's a pretty good job application, a pretty good resume to put out there, right? Yeah. He's probably getting offers. And, of course, you know, if anybody built one of these things for real, it would be very, very illegal and, you know, violate the Wiretap Act and all sorts of FCC regulations.

So keep that in mind if you're thinking about making something like this yourself. Yep, definitely. So I want to talk about two quick podcasts. Yep. Security Now, episode 584. You know, I've got a love-hate relationship with Steve Gibson.

When he's right, he's really right. But I had to stop listening to the show a long time ago because there were a lot of times when he was really wrong. And I would just get really mad when I was driving. And it's not when he's talking about his area of expertise, but when he's talking about anything that happens on the web and web applications.

Generally is where he really kind of goes astray and has senior moments. Oh, interesting. This week, since I was a web developer, like, you know, a back-end web developer, it was, for me, it was, I'm just like, no, that's not how you do it. This is, now if you want to hack it, this is how you do it.

But we digress. But this week on the show, he and Leo were talking about some really unbelievably crafty exploits. And at the end of it, they both kind of like had their head in their hands going, yeah, you know what? We're just kind of screwed. So I'm glad that on episode 584, they finally come around to the way the grumpy old geeks have been treating security.

There's nothing you can do. Yeah, you know, but that's an interesting point. I mean, I've been talking to, there's an interesting pushback on that in the security industry right now. There are a couple of companies who are trying to be sort of contrarian about it. They describe it as being learned helplessness, learned helplessness, you know, where we all sort of throw our hands up and we say, oh, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when.

And, you know, if you haven't been hacked, if you don't think you haven't been hacked, it's just that you don't know you've been hacked and all those sorts of things. And while there is a lot of truth to that, there are companies now who are saying, you know, no, it doesn't have to be that way. And, you know, maybe if we can take a different approach to it, you know, we can actually fight this stuff.

That's an uphill battle. But it's just been interesting to me to hear this contrarian view. I don't know how much of it is marketing and PR stuff. You know, believe us and not the other guy, because everybody has something to sell. But there's definitely been a trend in that notion in the past few months, I'd say.

Yeah. Well, when the complexity of some of these hacks comes to light and it's just like, oh, we've actually found holes in the architecture of how chips work that you can't patch because it's integral to how they work. Right. And then you really kind of are up the creek without a paddle. No, I think it's a matter of scale.

You know, it's like my wife and I, we were talking about, you know, sort of locking down our computers, you know, when our son became a teenager. And I was like, look, you know, honey, here's the thing. We may be smarter than him, but we are not smarter than him and all of his friends. Right.

You know, he will crowdsource a solution. If he wants to get something on the Internet, he will crowdsource a solution. And I think it's similar with the bad guys versus the good guys. The good guys are so outnumbered. Oh, yeah. You know, the stakes are better for the bad guys because there's so much money involved.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. The good guys have to be right every single time. The bad guys only have to be right once. Indeed. And the other podcast I started listening to is Risky.biz. This is a, it's another cybersecurity podcast, but these guys go deep into the weeds. If you want to learn how some of these hacks are done down to, you know, the nitty gritty level, check them out.

It's, they've been around since 2007, got a ton of episodes. They're in the 400s. So there's a lot to go back and listen to if you want. Yeah, both, both good shows. Definitely worth checking out. Yep. All right. Brian is coming back with, with fresh nappies. So we're going to, we're going to call it a day here.

Smelling like a fresh baby wipe. Yep. Go take some NyQuil, man. And we'll talk to you next week. All right. Good talking to you.

It's that time of year again, Brian. Oh, is it? Yes, it is. We're coming up on the holidays. So every year about this time, I like to go back and re-listen to Lamb by Christopher Moore. I, this is one of my, not one of, well, it's always hard to pick.

Okay. Top five books of all time. This is definitely up there. Absolutely. We agree on this. We cover it every 50 or so episodes coming around on the year mark. Yes, it is absolutely one of the best books ever written. Even our friend Dave Bittner approves of it, has one of the best books ever written.

And I like the, I've read the paper version first on your recommendation. And then after that, I went and got the audio version because it's read by Fisher Stevens, who does an incredible job of reading this book. It is so much fun. And going back and listening to it again this week because I was sick.

And if I did nod off in a NyQuil haze of oblivion and I missed a little bit, it didn't really matter because I've read it. I think I've read this book at least 12 or 13 times. It's a, yeah, it's a fantastic book. If you're, if you're very religious, you're going to hate it.

Otherwise, everybody else I think will really highly enjoy this book. I don't know. I've had religious friends read it and they thought it was hilarious. I said highly religious. Okay. You don't have a sense of humor about it. They're not listening to this show then. Let's just say, you know, the subtitle is The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

Yes. Yes. And the Sermon on the Mount. Well, there's some mounting. That's all we're going to say. It's good stuff. It's a good book. And yeah, every year around this time, they roll out a different special edition. This one's very nice looking. This is actually an old one. This is the old special edition, but it's the one that I recommend.

It's the imitation leather one. It's the one I always give for a gift. So a lot of my friends have this book from my, my Christmas giving. So if you're looking for a good Christmas gift for somebody with a really good sense of humor, there you go. Yep. Fantastic book. Can't recommend it enough. Before we move on though, when is, when do you think we're going to do it?

I think we need to use the power of this show to get Christopher, Christopher Moore off of his ass and write the sequel that needs to be written because he's written sequels to every one of his other books, except his best one. It's a little hard to write a sequel because there's a definite end to the story.

Ah, no, there's not. Well, no, remember the end, but we're not going to spoil the ending for you. But there is a giant opening for a sequel, but I actually, I do not want a sequel to this. I think this exists in a perfect little bubble of exactly what it is.

So I, I, you may spearhead that charge. I will not retweet. Oh, you bastard. For all that matters. Yeah. Um, so I also, I got a, a gift. Uh, it's my, and my wife's fifth anniversary, uh, today actually. And, uh, she got me a cookbook, which I found somewhat ironic because that just means I have to do more work for her, but it, but it is Anthony Bourdain's, uh, book.

I'm, we're huge fans of Anthony Bourdain here. We love his TV shows, uh, all of that sort of stuff. This is the Anthony Bourdain appetites cookbook cover art by Ralph Steadman. Uh, there is a Kindle version of this. Get the hardcover. It's beautifully shot, uh, beautiful photography, beautiful illustrations.

Um, this is not your go-to day-to-day cookbook. Uh, this is Anthony Bourdain being Anthony Bourdain is hilarious to read. Um, you know, you're not going to be pulling this out to, to cook all the time. You're going to pull it out just to look at how pretty it is and, you know, get the, some basics on what you want to do.

Um, I'm not going to step on it. Uh, I highly recommend that you go get this. Uh, link is in our show notes. Use our link. Gives us a couple bucks. Be nice. Um, the chapter on desserts. Worth the price of admission alone. Yeah, I heard about that. I'm going to go to the local bookstore, which I have because I have a bookstore and go pick it up this weekend.

Yeah, it's fantastic. And it is beautiful. Um, he does no wrong in my opinion. So it's good stuff. Software apps and gadgets. Another thing that we do a lot on the show is we talk about our workflows for various things.

I know Jason has completely changed his entire workflow for the, doing the grumpy old geeks podcast. Believe it or not, this actually takes work people. I know it sounds like we're just fucking around, but, uh, this actually involves, this actually involves a significant amount of work. Uh, I still use Instapaper.

Um, when I find links throughout the week and I'm in the middle of working or doing other projects, I have a nice little, you know, read later button in my bookmarks that I just hit. Boom, saves it to Instapaper. I go back later. Then I drop it in the program that we actually use for our show notes, et cetera, et cetera.

Now we've even added Reddit. I'm sure Jason will talk about that at great length again. Uh, but Instapaper has, uh, been basically charging for monthly subscriptions for the premium service, uh, for a while. They are getting rid of that. It is now a, an ad free, free service. Yeah.

Once Marco sold it to, uh, forget the company. That's the company that owns dig now. Uh, they took it over, they kept monetizing it, adding onto it, making it better. And, uh, then charging. And, uh, I switched to pin board because I, it's, it's like a one-time fee or I think I'm grandfathered in on a one-time fee.

Either way, it's, it's kind of like delicious used to be and Instapaper just, I, there's a thing with Instapaper where you keep adding articles and then you never read them and then you get that anxiety of, Oh, I got to read all of these. And then you just never do. And then you, every, then you don't want to open Instapaper.

So I, I dumped it years ago just for my, my brain is not wired quite that way. Yeah. I see. Uh, yeah. I have a more rational thing where I don't, uh, you know, pin 70,000 articles in one sitting and then I don't stress out about it. I pin like five and then I could just go look at them.

Okay. Uh, yeah, we work differently. Yes, we do. So yeah, it's free for now, uh, cause Pinterest owns it and they have buckets of money until they don't. And then Pinterest will get, or, uh, Instapaper will get sold to somebody else and then the fees will come back.

So enjoy it while you can people. Yep. And another thing that we say a lot of times on this show is, uh, okay, you know, you don't take money and you don't take ads and you're just going to do this for what? And how's that going to work out for you? Oh, and Pinterest, by the way, your entire business model is built on, built on stealing other people's intellectual property.

How's that going to work out? Well, Instapapers is kind of too, so they go hand in hand. Yes. Uh, uh, we're fans of one password here. Big time. Yes, we are. Uh, the CEO, Jeff Shiner has posted a video that's kind of cool of, uh, the new touch bar, uh, integration with one password for touch ID.

And it's neat. Yeah, I saw that. It is neat. Again, we need the section Jason thinks it's neat. It is. It's neat. Um, I'm not going to buy a Mac with a touch ID. So I don't know if I'll ever get to use it, but I like the way that you can, uh, just touch different, uh, vaults and switch between them.

It's nice. Cause I have multiple vaults for different jobs that I work on. So it's definitely pretty neat. It is pretty neat. And I will, again, one password, uh, is the grumpy old geeks de facto, uh, program that we use. We both use it. We both love it.

Uh, one of the reasons that we stick with it is they are the ones that have evolved. Cause there are a lot of competing programs that do the same sort of thing. These guys are always kind of out there with the new tech right there, right away. I'm noticing more and more one password integrations with mobile apps, which is fantastic.

I mean, it's just getting easier and easier all around the world. So yeah. Good on you. Yeah. Love you. One password. Uh, next up, I have a physical game. Have you heard of werewolf? The game, we call that sex, Jason. No, no, no, no.

Um, I, I, I, I still am a nerd, but, uh, so forget that, um, werewolf is one of those fun games that you can play with other nerds that sometimes might need lead to sex. If you're really good at it, I suck at it. So never got, never, uh, uh, the game.

Oh, okay. So, uh, this guy, Corey fields had a great Kickstarter ages ago. I think we covered it on the show a long time ago. We did. We did. They're, they're absolutely beautiful. This is totally not my thing. If it were, I would have ordered two seconds there. They're, they're gorgeously illustrated. Yeah. I have a, I have a deck here.

So I, I, I bought like five of these last time and gave them out as gifts and everybody loves them. Everybody that plays werewolf thinks they're the best deck that you can get. And he's got a second edition out now with new backs on them. They're, they're beautiful. And, uh, I highly recommend it for stocking stuffers for friends.

Cause I'm actually going to go buy a couple more packs and send them out this year. Cause they are absolutely gorgeous. That they're well-designed. Unbelievable. Really nice work. So I've got an updated review for Paziz. That's what my son does every five hours. Right in your face.

Hi dad, Paziz. It's amazing how they know how to do that. There's something about being free. Uh, nothing like it. Um, so I talked about it on the show before and kind of gave it a negative review for their- I saw that they wrote you. Yes, they did.

Um, and I was a little bit confused about what the quote unquote dreamscapes were. I thought they were different graphics that they played while you were Paziz-ing. It's not. It's the actual music behind it. It's the music beds. So they, they use the subscription money to, uh, do new music beds every month and other things like paying salaries and things like that.

Oh, so it's like when I go Paziz at Finn McCool's, there's Irish music playing in the background. Yes, uh, so I am, I'm, I'm on the fence about this still. I, I've gotten to the point now where I put it into my calendar to take a nap every day. Take a Paziz. I take a Paziz every day, uh, at least a 15 to 30 minute Paziz and I love it.

I've always loved it. I've raved about it for years. God, man, aren't you dehydrated? I know. Tell me about it. I need some salt and some Gatorade. I need electrolytes. Uh, I still abhor the subscription model for this. I do not like it.

I would like one-time fees with upgrade fees when they update the product, but yes, please software developers. Come on. It's just stupid. Yeah. The free version of this still has a enough in it that it's great, but it's a, the free version is what I used to pay for. So you're welcome people that I paid for your free version.

Um, I, I still don't like the business model, but I do like all the new dreamscapes as it were because it, it kind of changes up your nap. You get a new song all the time and it used to auto generate the songs. I don't know what the story is now, but they're really nice and it's, it's a nice change.

So if you're into it, definitely go get the free version. If you liked an app, because I still, I love the app. I just hate the business model.

Media candy. I can't believe you didn't put this in the show notes, Jason, because I love this movie, but I know you love it even more, uh, train spotting to official trailer. Number one is out. I didn't know it was out. I've been sick this week, so I'm kind of behind on my, my trolling of the internet, but I am really glad you put it in because I got shivers watching this.

I was not at all excited about there being a sequel to this when it was announced. Uh, the teaser trailers did nothing for me. This trailer is fucking awesome. It's un-fucking-believable. I actually stopped watching it about halfway through because it was giving away too much of the movie.

I'm just like, no, I'm not watching anymore. Oh, come on. It's the movie's not really about the plot. The plot doesn't matter. And I've read the book that it's loosely based on anyways, because he, the guy wrote a sequel to it. Wasn't it a comic book though? No. Oh, that's fight club too.

I'm sorry. Fight club too is the comic book sequel. This is a Welsh and I can't remember what the glue. No, I can't remember what the title was. I read it a long time ago. It's a, again, if you want to try to read these books, be prepared to decipher a Scottish brogue in written form, which is a nightmare, but drink a lot and you might be able to do have some whiskey first and it might read a lot better, but this looks so good.

It looks fantastic. It opens up with Underworld, you know, in the background playing again from the original, which is absolutely fantastic. It, I mean, updated the story to the current age. I mean, they're name checking social media as the new drug.

It's fantastic. Yep. But there's still drugs involved. There's even boobs in the trailer. Nice. Well, it's a red band trailer. Oh, okay. I didn't see that when I, when I started playing it. Yeah. Glad my kids weren't in the room. Oh, wait, I don't have any. Fuck it. And my kid right now, when he sees boob, just thinks lunch.

Yeah. Snack time. Pretty much. So, yeah. And just another note, because we actually didn't have much else in media this week. I just wanted to make note of the fact that something, you know, as this is a brief blip on the horizon, because I'm sure it'll crash and burn.

Vimeo is planning to launch their own subscription streaming service. Oh, what could go wrong with that? They are going up against the iridia-slavish Netflix and Amazon and Hulu with the launch of its own subscription streaming service. But as they're pointing out, they're not trying to get the billions. They're only trying to get the hundreds of thousands.

They are going for the smaller audiences, more interested in cult following type things. So the cerebral stuff, not the stupid shit that you people like. You know what that means? It means they don't have money to pay for content. So it's going to be like a B-movie dumpster fire.

That is exactly what that means. It means they have no money, they can't compete, and we're going to take the cheap shit that we can buy. We're taking the low-hanging fruit. Speaking of which, Vimeo, we're available. No doubt. Give us a camera. We're in. Moron of the week.

We made a solemn proclamation to not discuss a certain story anymore on the show, which just means that, of course, we're talking about it again next week. But on the plus side, we moved it down to moron of the week. It's not in the news anymore. People are not returning their Galaxy Note 7s, the ones that blow up on planes, the ones that, you know, can kill you, et cetera, et cetera.

They're not returning them. So Samsung is creating another incentive, well, I guess a decentive, to make the flawed phones perform even worse. They have released a new software update that will limit the battery charge to 60% of its full capacity. My thought on this being, if you're such a moron that you haven't even noticed that this thing's going to blow up on you, do you think you do software updates?

This is true. The only thing that could make this story better is if Kanye still had one. Oh, God, I wish that one would blow up. Oh, the show would implode on itself at that point. Yes, that's true. Kanye is the patron saint of this segment.

Yes, he is. We should actually, more out of the week, brought to you by Kanye West. Indeed. You know what? Putin's not such a bad guy. Really? I'm pretty OK with Putin right now because he has now made Steven Seagal a citizen of Russia.

Awesome. You can have him. Can you take Trump, too? But yes, Steven Seagal is now a Russian citizen because he and Putin, they nerd out on martial arts, which I don't think. Steven Seagal, I mean, he's certifiably insane, right?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Take him. By all means, enjoy your Seagal. We here in the U.S. hit peak Seagal in the late 80s or early 90s when his fourth movie with three words in it came out.

By the way, peak Seagal is now our show title. OK. I like that a lot. Oh, boy. OK. Well, to not get terribly political, but to try to somewhat connect these stories. Yeah. Putin and Trump sitting in a tree, all that sort of thing.

Normally, I am beyond. There's no doubt about who I'm voting for. I'm with her, et cetera, et cetera. Except for the fact I have to seriously consider voting for Trump now, because after Clinton was here on a short trip over, they went and got In-N-Out Burger.

OK. Like you would, because In-N-Out is clearly a superior burger. It is better than any burger. But apparently, let's see, what was his name again? Who is this man that I cannot stand? Dennis Green. Dennis Green, who is pretty high up in the campaign, has basically said, we should be embarrassed about how much we hype up In-N-Out Burger here in California.

You know what? Screw you. Yes, fuck you, Dennis Green. You say Shake Shack is better than In-N-Out? What? Are you fucking kidding me? I do not want this man in government. I'm voting for Johnson now. I'm going to go with the Aleppo guy.

Yeah. Anyway, yes. No, yes. In-N-Out Burger is not gourmet, but in the under $7 burger category. It is the best under $7 burger you could ever get. Yes. Because, you know, there's always Umami Burger, which is overhyped.

But still delicious. Umami is $9. Yes, that's what I'm saying. I think it's $12, actually. But I think, yeah, probably $12. There's so many good burgers in LA. This is just wrong. Yes, it's wrong, wrong. Wrongy McRongenstein. Wrongy McRong Burger. Even Anthony Bourdain, who is a award-winning chef who has TV shows about cooking and about food, unlike you, Mr. Political Guy, basically, as soon as he lands at LAX, he goes straight to In-N-Out.

So shut the F up. Oh, fancy! Oh, fancy! Fancy! Oh, fancy! Ever since the West Wing episode in which they, I think it was called the big block of cheese or something like that.

It was the episode where anybody would come in and present their crazy-ass thoughts to presidential staffers because way back in the day, there was a giant block of cheese and everybody in the area could come in and have some cheese and talk about things back in the day. Anyways, they did that episode on the West Wing.

One of the concepts was all of our maps are wrong and we need a new way to present maps of the world because everything is wrong. And basically, everybody that watched this West Wing episode, their minds were absolutely blown because maps are totally wrong. Yes. Great episode. I remember it. All right.

Well, a more accurate world map has won the prestigious Japanese design award. So this is amazing. This map, I love. They would have died to have this one on the West Wing. It is absolutely fantastic and it kind of gives you the reasoning and thought behind the design and it unpacks it quite literally from a 3D design into pulling it out.

And you see how large countries really are compared to each other. And it's unbelievable. I love this stuff. It is called the Authograph and it is very fucking cool. Right? It's awesome. And this is a visual one, so it won't take very long. I put a link in the show notes for Brian because he's a library nerd.

This is a link to magnificent libraries around the world. There's 26 of them and they are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I would love to go hang out for a couple hundred years in all of these. They really are absolutely beautiful. My one complaint about the link that you gave me is not enough information.

Like, just give me a paragraph or two about how this was built, what year it was from, et cetera, et cetera. Now I got to go through and Google every single one. But I love library porn. God, this stuff is gorgeous. Are you kidding me? Love it!

This is one of the things that just crossed my feed this week. Your Instagram? Or Instapaper. This got Instapapered immediately because I was like, how could this not be? It's just titled alone. MIT scientists have developed bomb-sniffing spinach.

Ah. I saw this and I had to go check it out. And I was using an approach known as plant nanobionics. Right there, I'm in. Well, I was just immediately, I was thinking of Mad Magazine Spy vs. Spy.

I'm coming with my bomb. Who would pass? I'm just going to pass this big plant. Well, then Popeye jumps out with his can of spinach and it gets sucked to the bomb. If only I had some sort of olive oil. Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Okay, continue. I mean, this is just, yeah, this is unbelievable. So they have plant nanobiotics, embedded carbon nanotubes in spinach that identify the odors of specific chemicals commonly found in incendiary devices.

So the plant can sense explosives and wirelessly send that information to a handheld device because apparently they also put Wi-Fi in there. What's the battery life of your spinach? This is the internet of things. We now have wired up spinach, apparently. Oh.

So as I'm reading this, I'm just thinking, why fucking spinach? Couldn't you put this in a book? Or at least a turnip. People want to eat spinach. Nobody's going to eat a turnip. You got to go rutabaga. Ugh, beets.

Fuck beets. Never touch another man's rhubarb.

Comment of the week. We've got a new Patreon subscriber. Woo-hoo! Wave the flag. Thank you, Gil Faria, for joining us on the Patreon. Yes, thank you so much. If you like the show, please do join us.

Send us a buck a month. It really helps. Patreon.com slash GOG podcast. Grubby old geeks. What the hell is it again? Something like that. Well, I don't go there. I'm on the show. It's at Patreon.com slash GOG.

There. So, thank you very much for that. We also got tweeted from Moss 6502. FYI, just in case. And this is a link that apparently Microsoft is paying consumers to switch from Apple devices. This is when I went apeshit about finally switching over completely to Apple's infrastructure only to have Microsoft release the bomb-ass laptop.

Or not laptop, desktop. That was delicious. It's beautiful. Yep. Yep. So, I'm going to look into this, actually. If I could actually trade in my laptop, my MacBook at this point, and get that Surface Pro, that'd be amazing. Yeah, I heard the specs on the Surface Pro aren't what we thought they were.

They're not that super high-end, so you might want to wait until Surface Pro 2. We shall see what happens. Okay, well, I hear the little guy yelling in the background, so let's cut to it. TigerShark999 writes on, this comes from iTunes, by the way, a five-star, which we love and recommend.

I must be old because I like this show. Loving the IoT security updates. Fun way to get recaps of the tech week. Thank you, TigerShark999. Yes, thank you so much. And I apologize for the baby crying, but we are recording late. We also got another five-star rating from Brian Clancy, Black Grumpy Geek.

I'm not entirely sure what that implies, but okay. I think he's a Black Grumpy Geek. Okay, a black, okay, great. I enjoy the podcast. My friend and I always have conversations about what technology is slow-feeding us and how the great ideas from TEDx and Kickstarter get slowed by, wait, great ideas from Kickstarter?

Well, there are some good ideas every now and again. They just can't ship them on time. Okay. It gets slowed by corporate greed and the technology buzzwords. Platform, synergy, social media, Mr. Robot. You guys inspire me to get my podcast back on track because you guys let me know it's a market for not being programmed.

There you go. Awesome. Thank you, man. Thank you, and drop us an email when it's back up, and we'll check it out, and thanks for the review. Yes, thanks for all the feedback. Oh, are you going to read these now? Sorry, Jason. Oh, be my guest. Be my guest. Your baby's crying, so you hit the gas. I'm just used to hitting this, Mark, and we've changed it, so who knows.

Thanks for all the feedback. Head over to GrumpyOldGeeks.com and send us your feedback or questions. We can read on the air. Closing shout-outs! A couple quick shout-outs. The Hustle Newsletter. I love this thing. It's written by three guys in San Francisco, and it's a mix of good tech reporting and humor.

Big hat tip to Jordan at The Art of Charm for this one. I read it every day, and it's actually chuckle-tastic. All right, I will sign up for that. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo. All my info is at about.me slash JPD. And I'm Brian Schulmeister, and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFungus, where I occasionally actually tweet.

Thank you for listening, everybody. If you'd like to help support the show, please visit patreon.com slash GOG and sign up. Even as little as a buck a month helps keep us on the air. If you're cheap or broke but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a glowing review and five stars.

And at the very least, please share the show with your friends. 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 our awesome sponsors and stuff we like. We have our new subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash GOGpodcast.

I was a little sick this week, so next week look for a little bit more activity. We're also on Twitter at GOGpodcast and on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks. Please take our super fast user survey at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash survey. It'll take you less than 30 seconds, and it helps us know who the hell all of you are.

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 Stochansky. 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 this song in its entirety.

Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 184.

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