186: Back with a Vengeance

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, the tech news show for adults. I'm Jason DeFillippo here with my cohort, compadre, and co-host. Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? Doing great. Doing great. First off, I want to say thank you to everybody who has filled out our survey. We're almost there. We still need your help. Please. It takes like less than 30 seconds. Just grumpyoldgeeks.com slash survey and seven questions. Most of them are drop down. You don't even have to think. Point and click and choose and you're on your way.

If we can knock this out, then we can stop begging you for it, which we would really like to do. We're almost there. We're more than halfway. Excellent. Well, more than halfway. All right. That's better than most podcasters. Trust me. Good to know. All right. So we have a couple items of follow up. Last week, I talked about how Disney had petitioned the FAA for the right to fly drones over their theme parks with certain restrictions.

We now have a preview video of what their proposed show would be for Christmas as since they have gotten approval. And I've got to say, fireworks, you're you're you guys are you're going to be looking for a job pretty soon. You're out. No doubt. This is a pretty badass show. It's pretty intense.

Yeah. No, I was impressed. I was seriously impressed when I saw this. Mm hmm. So we got a video in our show notes. You should go take a look at it. It looks pretty cool. I am definitely going to be stopping at Disneyland over over the Christmas break at some point. So I'm looking forward to seeing this in person. It's pretty cool.

So this is Disneyland, not Disney World. They have. Well, this is a this is a preview of the one that they're getting ready for Disney World, but they are going to do them at both parks. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely got to go and report back because this thing looks badass. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty groovy.

We also talked a little bit about universal basic income last week, and I have a feeling we're going to be talking about it a lot. A Canadian province, Ontario, which is home to Ottawa and Toronto as well, has is going to basically give it a go. They are going to do a pilot program, which every citizen will get one thousand three hundred and twenty dollars per month income boost to overcome poverty.

One in five children live in poverty in Canada, according to UNICEF, in a recent poll of some fifteen hundred Canadians found that two thirds of those polled were open to the idea of basic income because they're damn socialist pigs. Right. Well, I was amazed that one in five kids live in poverty in Canada.

That was that was a stunning statistic, I thought. Yeah, I thought so as well, because when I go, I'm used to seeing, you know, the big city when you get out there. Hipsters and beer is pretty much what you get in Toronto. Yeah. So the province is going to run a pilot project. It will begin in 2017.

And it's going to basically what they're basically saying, let's let's give it a go. Let's calculate costs. Let's see what happens. So good on you. As far as I know, this is the first place in the world that's actually giving it a real try. I mean, other than, you know, things like the Dole in England, which have existed, but they're not really universal basic income per se.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the first one where the money hits the road. Exactly. So that would be very cool. I can't wait to see how it how it turns out. Yeah. And I got a little rule 41 follow up. Oh, boy. Yeah. Looks like it's it's on its way to passing.

So, right. Yeah. This is the the rule that will be signed into law December 1st that allows a judge to grant a warrant to search multi computers, multiple computers anywhere instead of just requiring warrants for each computer. So this is that's not good.

No, it's not. It's ridiculous. And it was the whole thing about this is it was basically the federal rule of criminal procedures was amended by an unelected advisory committee and then signed into law basically by the Supreme Court. But it hasn't gone through Congress or any other elected body unless I mean, I guess you can kind of count the Supreme.

No, right. Supreme Court is they're appointed. They're not elected. No, appointed. Yeah, they're appointed. So, yeah, no elected official will have actually touched this. So there are people that are out there fighting it and being met with amazing resistance. So we'll see how this one pans out.

I could take a guess. Yeah, I can take a guess, too. In the news.

It's been a long time since I've used Firefox. That used to be my my browser du jour, but not anymore. I'm always been on Chrome. I was shocked. I know, you know, obviously, this has been happening, but I was shocked when I saw the press. It was the first release that Firefox had launched their 50th version.

Yep. Wow. I remember one. I remember one, too. I remember beta, you know, long, long ago in a browser far, far away. I just found it shocking that they're already on 50. But, you know, they used to be big announcements.

Now they just push out, which you put in the show notes that Chrome is on 54. I had no idea. Yeah, because they all went to this really fast release cycle. So they just they want to they want to push out versions as fast as possible now. Understandable. Thank you. I appreciate it. Except when you screw things up, then I hate you.

Yes. Then it's a problem. Yeah. And Firefox has launched a super private browser basically for iOS and I believe also Android as well. Which I think it's just iOS. It's just iOS. Okay. It's called Focus. It blocks social and analytics trackers as well as ads by default.

Every page loads with an erase button tagged to the top right corner whenever you feel inclined to clear your browsing history. It's not that all of this stuff does not exist in most browsers, but it's by default and the ease of which you can maintain your privacy. That is the big difference.

Yes, I installed it and I tested it. And the first thing I this is my my default test. I go to the New York Times. I read an article. I wait for a little pop up to show how many articles I have left that month. Then I hit erase, went back to the New York Times. It still said I had nine articles left.

So you can now read the New York Times for free. Yes. So, you know, with all these privacy additions, there are the downsides, which is, you know, people not getting paid, people not getting paid as per usual. Speaking of people not getting paid. Oh, there's a lot of people in in what I am still doing for a living that are going to have some real problems with their clients in the next month or so.

Facebook said, oopsies, our metrics. Yeah, I'm sorry. We screwed those up. You're going to see a fifty five or thirty three to fifty five percent drop in the metric on how many people can see a publisher's content on its page. That's significant.

That is one percent significant. Yes. I mean, this is I've been saying all along that all these metrics are complete and utter bullcrap. And what we're finding out is they kind of are. Yeah. And what I love is it's like, no, our methodology was sound.

We just came up with the wrong numbers. Yeah. How could you say your methodology was sound when you're coming up with the wrong numbers? This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as, you know, basically almost all advertising budgets now are allotted for online usage, not anywhere else.

And we're really just discovering that that all the tracking and all of that is all false. So good times. Yeah. Thanks, Facebook. Thanks, Facebook. How's that autoplay on video working for you? Bite you in the ass yet? Oh, yes, it has. Good for you. Oh, did it do that?

I wonder why Pinterest is deciding to do the exact same thing now. Nobody friggin learns. Yep. Well, speaking of getting bit in the ass, soon you'll be able to go to a Japanese robot park that has dinosaurs and get bit by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Have they not seen the movie?

They must not. They must not have seen the movie. These are these are big dinosaur robots. They are human operated, which kind of just makes them big electronic puppets. But yeah, nobody's ever shown up to work drunk in charge of things like maybe a train.

But what if the guy has a little too much sake and comes in and operates the T-Rex and eats a child? I've got it. I will say it looks pretty cool. The video is amazing. You have to go watch the video. I was just like, because when I thought I'm like, it's a bunch of guys in suits.

But no, there's nobody in the suits. They're actually autonomous. They're autonomous vehicles. We now have autonomous dinosaurs. Apparently, Jurassic Park was never released in Japan, and they are not getting Westworld on the same schedule that we are. But they grew up with Godzilla. Come on.

That's not a robot. Godzilla was not a robot. That's flesh and blood, man. Well, never mind. Moving on. We've talked about CRISPR before, and I was going to put this in a different segment, but it's a nice role. Always the rat. Anyways, it's the gene editing tool.

It's basically the idiot's guide to gene editing that millennials will soon be doing on their iPhones. Oh, great. Yeah. Well, Chinese scientists have actually used it on a real person up until now. It's only been on lab animals. This was reported in Nature. U.S.-based researchers have been dying to do this, obviously, but we worry about creating Godzilla.

China just went ahead and did it. So they have tried to treat a patient with non-small cell lung cancer as part of a clinical trial. If this works, this is going to open up a whole new world of Star Trek-ian type medicine. Right, bones? All right. Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney.

In Google news, Google Maps is on track to be a $5 billion business in the next three years. All right. It's pretty interesting for a mapping company that basically gives everything away, but they've started rolling out things you can pay for, like promoted pins, and they're going to go up against, you know, sites like Yelp and Angie's List and Grubhub, I guess.

But yeah, this is very interesting. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, I know that Google is profitable in their search business, right? Yes. Well, search ads are going to be a thing of the past soon, so I'm glad that they are pivoting their map product to at least have some income for the 8 million people that work there.

To have map ads. Yeah, map ads. Promoted pins. Yes, pay to play. That's the new business model. All right. Oh my God. See, this is the thing. We always talk about, oh, you want a service, you pay for it. Well, you know, somehow somebody's got to get paid.

And Google Maps is, I am fine with that because it is one of the greatest inventions, I think, of the internet era. I've always said that. I'll give you that. It is the most useful. So I enjoy it a lot. Now, Dropbox. Also useful. Also useful. But I was interested in this interview that was done with the CEO, Dennis Woodside, who ran through some of the numbers, speaking of paying for things.

Apparently, Dropbox has 8 million business clients. Now, this is business level accounts, not personal. 200,000 of whom pay for it. So I ran, for him, he says, these numbers clearly point to this being the company's future.

I ran the numbers. That's 2.5% of people that would actually pay for a service they're getting for free. So that's a good number that points to a future. Again, this goes back to how we started this podcast. What? It's freemium, babe.

It's freemium. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get it. Well, for contrast, Spotify is getting a 30% run rate on their paid versus free. That's much better than 2.5. Yep. And I mean, I am a paying Dropbox user. I spend $14 a month on Dropbox.

And I love it. As am I. Yeah. It's very useful. I even have the $9.95 package. And then I do the $3.95 rollback protection. So in case some idiot comes into my share of Dropboxes and starts deleting stuff, I can just go to the website and roll it back.

And it has on occasion saved my bacon. So I am happy that they let me pay them to give me a good service. So if you use Dropbox, pay them. Yes, I agree. So the U.S. Copyright Office is in a quandary right now.

They cannot figure out to do about the future of DMCA takedowns. That is a problem. You've got service providers on one side. You've got the MPAA, RIA, and the other copyright goons on the other side. And everybody's fighting about it.

So they're opening it up to somebody to tell them what to do. Oh, great. Yeah. Okay. Because they just have no clue now. They're just, they're like, everybody shut up. Tell us what to do. So this will be playing out for quite a bit.

But hopefully, the one thing that I want to come out of this is people who file erroneous DMCA takedown notices, like the MPAA and the RIA, and Universal and Paramount and everybody on the damn planet who has a studio, I want these people to have to pay when they screw up.

Yeah. I mean, I think there should be fines for erroneous algorithms. Yeah. That's a huge problem. And these people should get fined for it. I agree. I agree. So I'm with you on that. But, you know, if you bill on the one side, then you've also got to find these people who are, you know, legitimately being taken down.

So I think that there should be penalties for that as well. Yeah. Well, you've got to have balance. Must have balance, Daniel-san. I agree. So something else you'll agree about, Comcast is suspending their data caps, but only in Maine. Why is that? If you like lobster, head on up.

Scared of Bernie Sanders? Is that the deal? Must be. They're saying it's, what was it there? It's to bring about the other policies they have in the Northeast, apparently. Which have data caps. So, well, here's the thing about Comcast.

They've subsumed so many local cable carriers. Right. I think that they probably have agreements in place with some of the old people that they've bought. And they're like, you know, there's not that many people up there. And, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like 12 people in Maine can now download a few more torrents.

Download all your porn. Go for it. Yeah. It's cold and crappy up there most of the time. And all you get to eat is lobster. So here. Have some porn on us. Yeah. Pretty much. And we've talked about the bandwidth providers doing that lovely thing where they, what do they call it?

Zero rating. Certain services. So like T-Mobile did. It's like, hey, come and get all the free music you want when you use our service. Yeah. And then other services have to pay for it. Well, the FCC finally is realizing that it is anti-competitive. What? Yeah. Oh, wait.

This does. Oh, oh, oh. Net neutrality. Now we get it. Oh, it's like. Wow. Took them a while. Took them a while. But. Well, just just in time for it to all go away. We'll see what happens. But yeah, they finally came out saying that, yeah, it's not good.

Yeah. Okay. I have not heard of Juno. Have you? I saw the movie. It wasn't that great. This is not a movie. This is another Uber-esque driver ride hail service. Is it only in Alaska? It's. That would be. That would make sense. Apparently, no, it's New York more than anywhere else.

But they are taking a different. They're known as being the driver friendly service. But even they admit that we're basically going to fire all your asses as soon as we can have our autonomous vehicles. So I don't really see how that's driver friendly. The way that they're attempting to do that is what they are going to do.

And this is, I think, in my opinion, probably more to sway drivers to come over from Uber or Lyft instead of anything else. They are basically saying, we're going to give you stock options. You're going to get part of our equity structure. You will become a shareholder of our future enterprise once we fire you.

I remember these guys. We actually have covered them on the show before. Yes. I do remember these guys. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. To which I say, I mean, there is no foreseeable way that I can see that there are options being able to make up for their loss in the salary. But that's what they're saying.

This is how we're going to take care of you guys. Yeah. Good luck with that. Have fun. It's like coming to work at McDonald's for five years and they say, we're going to give you part of the business. Here's 10 packets of ketchup. Now go on your way. Except for the fact that it wouldn't be McDonald's because McDonald's would already exist.

It would be a tiny burger chain that has five outlets. Ah, yes. Yeah. We're going to take over all of this business market share. Yeah. Joe's taco shack. Come flip tacos for us. Although I don't think you flip a taco, but. Well, joke's there, but I'm going to pass on that one.

Okay, great. And this comes from the New York Times, which is very interesting. The biggest spike in traffic deaths in 50 years is here. And they're saying, oh, blame the apps. People keep dicking with their phone. Look, I've all from the day that Waze launched on this show, I've been saying, why are we allowing this nudge, nudge, wink, wink?

We're not using our phone while we're driving crap. It doesn't just tell you directions. It's gamified. You're putting things in. You're chatting. You're typing things while you're fucking driving. You're supposed to tell them where the cops are, you know? Yeah. And we all just kind of ignore that and pretend that that aspect isn't there.

Oh, we didn't ignore it. Look, look at the first 10 episodes of Grumpy Old Geeks. We called them out on that three and a half years ago. We called them out on it. Yeah, but nobody else is paying attention to us, Jason. Of course not. Of course not. But what they're looking is to fast track self-driving cars to kind of start mitigating the fact that people are not paying attention to anything anymore.

Like I said, this kind of stuff is what flipped me to I'm all on board. Let's get rid of human drivers because people obviously cannot handle this anymore. We are too dumb and too incapable of putting down our devices and too incapable of following basic human decency and rules anymore.

So fuck it. Let's go. Ding, ding, ding. Brian changed his mind. Everybody drink. That's right. Okay. Moving on to the elephant in the internet this week. Yep. Well, here we go. Facebook news is a real problem.

Fake news is an even bigger problem. The fact that this came from BuzzFeed, this report makes my head spin so much that it hurts because BuzzFeed was probably the worst at this. This is how they started their company, but now they actually do news. Hey, BuzzFeed's Facebook news sucks. Yes.

Here's the listicle. A BuzzFeed news analyst analysis found that top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from the 19 major news outlets combined. Yep. Of the 20 top performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton.

Two of the biggest false stories were a story claiming that Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming that the Pope had endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of BuzzFeed's article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump's interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American refugees, thank Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.

I saw that one. That was pretty funny. I figured that was fake, but yeah, um, this is a, this is a big, big, big, big, big issue. Uh, journalism was an issue to in and of itself to begin with, uh, how, uh, anyways. Yeah, I, I, we have, we have many stories linked in the show notes.

It is being reported everywhere, so we don't need to beat it to death. We will not get too into it, I suppose. Um, yes, uh, the thing that I find interesting is there's just quote unquote, the renegade Facebook, Facebook, uh, task force that is roaming the halls of Facebook, having secret meetings, trying to come up with evidence to, uh, you know, present on a golden platter to the Zuck and saying, my Lord, you were wrong.

Please reverse your position. Fix the news. Good luck with that. Uh, I did ask, you know, again, the, the genesis of this podcast was, uh, how the hell do you make money off the internet? Well, we, uh, this guy, Paul Horner has been making a lot of money the past few months.

He's been making $10,000 a month creating fake viral news, and he's done a big interview on it, uh, for the Washington post. It's a, it's an interesting read that makes you weep for humanity. And one assumes that Paul Horner has no soul. Oh, definitely. I also recommend going to read, trust me, I'm lying by Ryan holiday, how he outlines how a lot of this stuff can get done.

Um, yes, he has had a change of heart, fortunately, and it seems to be a good guy now. Well, I was, we'll see if Paul Horner does. It's, uh, he, he basically says here's exact quotes from him. Uh, again, he's been making $10,000 a month, putting up these ads, uh, uh, and fake, fake news stories.

Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact checks anything anymore. I mean, that's how Trump got elected. He says no wide ranging interview. He also said that Trump fans were especially gullible. His followers don't fact check anything and kept put, he kept pushing the envelope, seeing how far he could take the joke until someone called him out.

He said he was never called out and they kept falling for the propagating and falling for the stories and propagating them over and over and over again. Ah, you know what this reminds me of the weekly world news. You remember the weekly world news?

Bat boy, we got bat boy out of the weekly world news. This is the resurgence. Yes. This is the resurgence of the weekly world news with a much, much higher subscription rate. Yeah. As I was reading these, I was thinking about it and what this is, it's he's hacking, well, all these people are hacking social proof at an industrial scale.

You know, when somebody posts something on Facebook, you're relying on, on social proof to say, oh, this person probably knows more than I do. So I'm going to go along with it without actually having to put in the work. Um, and it's, you know, it's, it's genius. It's flat out genius. It should be illegal because you know, yes.

Uh, um, yeah. And you know, we've talked about the, you know, the, the feed for a long time and, uh, the argument that we don't pay for Facebook. So you don't get to choose where the feed is, is, you know, sending you, uh, it's, it's starting to grow thin for me because we do pay and we pay with our attention and now we've paid with something else.

So, but, um, I, I, I a hundred percent agree with you there. The argument that we don't pay is a load of crap. There's no way that this is a gazillion dollar company. Uh, if nobody's paying, uh, we're paying with our information we're paying with, and we just paid in the real world pretty, pretty big. Um, I saw a quote this week though, from Jason Hirshhorn from the, from media redev and he has the great, the greatest thing about the algorithmic feed.

And he says, what if your phone company decided which calls you got? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah. I, that's, that's a large part of it for sure. So we've got, we've got tons of links in the show notes here for, so grumpy old geeks.com slash one 86 to cover all of this stuff, even social proof, if you'd like to go into it.

And I've also thrown in a, uh, just in case you were wondering about libel laws and the internet, uh, there's a very handy guide from the EFF, uh, on online defamation law, which kind of specs out, uh, what, you know, what it takes to get sued for saying these things online.

And, uh, I don't know. I think a lot of the stuff that these guys were doing actually ticks all the boxes. So I, I do too, but you know, it's, then you get into the weirder, messier areas. Like all, a lot of this stuff was coming out of Macedonia. Uh, is it, how do you go after them as a government entity?

Does the government entity have the right to go into Facebook and say, you have to do something or Twitter there, they're privately held companies. They are not, you know, this is the same argument that was going around with, with things like Napster. It's like, or, or any of the file sharings, LimeWire, those things that we're just a service, how people use it is up to them.

Well, I don't know if we can hide behind that anymore. Yes. And I saw a thing the other day where, you know, Trump was out talking about federal libel laws and how he wanted to reform it. There's no such thing as a federal libel law. It doesn't exist. It's all state level. So, and also you have to show damages according to the, you know, the, the EFF chart.

And so if, even if Hillary wanted to go after these people for, even if she could, she could, you know, concretely prove that the fake news cost her the election, what's the monetary damage that she could actually put on the presidency? You know, you can't, you can't really do that.

You can put the salary on it. That's it. So it's not even worth hiring a lawyer. No, it's not. So, well, Twitter's going to do their part. Just in time. Just in time. As of Tuesday. Way to go. A week after the election.

Twitter rolled out a bunch of tools to stop online harassment and hate speech. They waited 140 hours before releasing it. Oh, that's very funny. Ding, ding, ding, ding. It's an expansion of users' ability to mute. This is not a new tool, but they've made it a lot easier to use and expanded it a quite deal.

Whether this will actually do much of anything, probably not. What they did do today, I guess, was they kicked off what I believe they're calling alt-right groups from Twitter. They kicked off a lot of them. I know we're not supposed to be too political, and this isn't political, but you cannot say We're reporting the news here.

You can't say alt-right. These are hate groups. Saying alt-right legitimizes them, and that's bullshit. Do not validate these groups. They're hate groups. That's what you call them. Not alt-right. There is an alt-right, and it also delegitimizes the real alt-right, and they should be pissed off that they're being lumped in with these people.

There you go. All right. There you go. And over at the New York Times again, Farad Manju has a very long, very good article about social media and its global power these days. We're not going to discuss it on the show. It's quite long, but if you have any interest whatsoever in what we have been worried about since we started this show, you should go read it.

There you go. Yeah. I glanced at it, and I'm scanning it. I'm like, okay, episode seven, episode 12, episode 17. I'm like, okay, we covered it. Yes, there's a bit of that. But we're working on how to fix these things, millennial style, thanks to Bono's daughter, Jordan Hewson, who founded Speakable, and she believes that activism should be really easy.

There's a misconception that social activism is difficult. It's just not true. You should just be able to click a button like you order an Uber or buy a dress. Freedom ain't free, lady.

I'm going to go back to episode two of Grumpy Old Geeks, where we came up with the genius idea of supporticons. Do you remember the supporticons? I do remember. Well, I remembered it once you mentioned it again. Yeah. It was basically my epic rant about people that were changing their social media profile icons to show solidarity for either Egypt's uprising, France, bacon, everything that they were doing.

And we're like, well, let's put a movement around it. We'll call it supporticons, where you can register. And then, you know, when people click on your icon, they can donate in your name to the activism choice of whatever you've picked. So we need to bring that back and make some money off of it. Well, we're a bit late because that's really about all she did.

Damn it. Yeah. So I think we might have to. We should have filed a patent. Oh, well. But yeah, well, you know what? If she filed a patent, we can go after it because we have prior art. Episode two, Grumpy Old Geeks. That's right. Yeah. Back to some drone news.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Are you going to be flying in Canada soon? I will be flying to Canada next week. Will you be taking Porter Airlines? I will not, but I love Porter Airlines. Let me give them a shout out really quick. They're very much kind of a local, smaller airline, but they're fantastic.

Really? They're everything that flying should be. It's civilized. Oh, nice. I like that. It's civilized. Well, apparently they have very good pilots because they tried to get out of the way of a drone that was in their way. Unfortunately, two crew members were hurt. So I know where this place is.

I've been to. I have flown out of Billy Bishop Airport before. It's an island right off of Toronto's downtown core. We have a condo that's maybe a mile away from there. You've dodged a bullet, my friend. You've dodged a bullet. Apparently so. I know somebody that didn't dodge a bullet regarding a drone, though. Who's that?

Oh, there's some guy's wife on YouTube. Uh-oh. His name is, uh, Yowg, I believe. Uh, and he had put up, he put up a video, uh, talking about what he did. Um, he, here we go. Use my drone to catch my wife meeting a guy at the local CVS.

She had been getting, getting called in early to work more often in the past couple of weeks. And then I got a call from someone telling me something was going on. I tried to follow her a couple times prior, but both times she went to work. So I'm not sure if she was getting tipped off or if I was just unlucky. So I took the drone up and that worked.

Well, he was definitely unlucky, but. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you know, win some, lose some. I don't know how that works. Good? Bad? Meh. Yeah. No, I've seen a couple, uh, couple stories seeing, seeing if this had the ring of truth to it and, uh, going back in this guy's Reddit history, cause this was, uh, originally posted on Reddit.

Right. And apparently it, uh, it has the ring of truth. Well, I mean, it, you know, I don't see why it wouldn't, especially if you are not terribly familiar with what a drone could be doing and cause you don't like your husband anymore. And you see him droning on about his drone. There you go.

You think that she might hear that following her wherever she was going, but good point. Yeah. Um, so this other story I have, which is a really fun one, it's in Vegas and, uh, they're futuristic streetlights, but they're going to be powered by solar panels and foot traffic.

Yeah. These look really cool. We used to joke about this in San Francisco when we were all walking, cause it was this really squishy sidewalk that we had to walk on. And we're like, why don't they have those, uh, generators underneath to generate power for the buildings that you're walking in front of? Well, apparently somebody has finally got off their butt and made these things.

So as you walk, as you put pressure on the sidewalk, it generates electricity. So we'll see how much we have to figure out though that, cause we, we did some back of the napkin calculations and figure out you'd need a hell of a lot more people in San Francisco, always walking back and forth on the same sidewalk to generate enough electricity just to pay for the components.

But we'll see. And it, you know, costs have come down. You can 3d print these things now, I guess. So nice. It's a very interesting article. Definitely go check it out. Yep. And, uh, now this one comes from Seth Miranda from over at the Grime Life. He sent it to me the other day.

I was on the front page of their newspaper, uh, porn viewers hogging free web kiosks in NYC. And, uh, basically, uh, uh, this is why you can't have nice things, New York, you know, these are public kiosks on the street and people are watching porn. That's fantastic.

And they have filters, but, uh, it's, here's the thing. This comes from, uh, one of the, uh, the, uh, the department's assistant commissioner of franchise administration. Um, they included pornography, they included pornography filters, but apparently people are very clever in getting around filters.

Yeah. Well, there you go. Yes. As someone who's made a living doing that, uh, many a time, uh, it is very easy to get around the filter. It is extremely easy. If you even slightly tech savvy. Yep. Okay. That's it for now. We're going to, we're going to wrap this one up. Okay.

This episode of grumpy old geeks is brought to you by fresh books. Now we've talked about fresh books on the show. They've been a sponsor for a while now. And I love fresh books. I'm not just reading off a script here. I adore fresh books. I use them every week for my invoicing.

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We're back again with our good friend Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire to tell us what's scary in the world this week. How's it going, Dave? It's going pretty good. Going pretty good. Feeling chipper this week. But as always, there's lots to talk about. Scare the bejesus out of us. Let's jump in here.

The big breaking news of this story was that some researchers from a company called CryptoWire discovered a secret back door in some phones here in the US that all they do is every three days they send a nice little lightly compressed and encrypted file with all of your phone calls and texting to a server in China.

That's all. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Hello, Shanghai. Your data has literally been shanghaied. Yeah. It's an interesting story. We actually had the researcher. His name is Ryan Johnson. He was on our show this past Tuesday.

So if you're interested in some of the technical details of how he discovered what was going on, you might want to check that out. But for the non-technical people, basically, you know, he went out and this was not a project that started with him going to work or at work. He bought a burner phone.

He was going to be traveling and bought a burner phone and couldn't help himself being a tech guy and started digging into, you know, what was the files that were on this burner Android phone and discovered that deep within the firmware of the phone is some software that sends your data off to a server in Shanghai.

This got his attention and he brought it to his employer's attention and they did some research and the story broke in the New York Times this week, which is the story that we'll link to here. There's just not a whole lot that is known about this yet.

The company who made the phone says that this was inadvertent in that, inadvertent that it's in the United States. In China, this is a feature, not a bug. Um, and, and it's, it's easy to be flippant about that, but, um, there's, we really don't know yet, uh, why they were doing this.

Um, you know, the, uh, the folks at CryptoWire really haven't said, you know, why they think this might be going on. Obviously there are dots that can be connected, but we really haven't had any confirmation as to whether or not, um, you know, this was state sponsored. Um, the only thing that's been said from the manufacturer is that this was for, um, you know, customer service reasons and making sure that, uh, um, you know, the people were getting the service that they required.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel like the contents of my text messages and, and, uh, a log of my telephone calls, um, really is anything that my phone company needs to know about. As Judge Judy would say, this does not have the ring of truth. Yeah. So it's a, it's one of those stories that's still in motion.

Um, we don't know the extent of it. We don't know how many more phones, uh, Android phones might be vulnerable to this. Um, you know, these things tend to grow over time as people start digging in and seeing, uh, you know, what's going on.

The company who manufactured these phones, manufactured or was responsible for this software being in this phone, they work with a lot of phone manufacturers. So, um, yeah, chances are this is going to be, uh, get worse before it gets better. The interesting thing, uh, when I was talking with, uh, Ryan Johnson, who, you know, the guy who discovered this, he, he was really surprised that he was the first person to discover this because he said basically anybody who did a man in the middle, um, just observation between

the phone and, and its network connection over wifi or whatever would see that every three days or so this phone was, you know, sending out a little package to some server in China. Well, if you're doing a man in the middle attack on these phones and you're, you're watching the traffic and somebody is nicely just handing you a packet of data every three days with all the, you know, the text messages and the, all the numbers, why would you tell anybody?

Because you're just getting data for free. It's like, Hey, this is a nice perk. Thanks. Well that, yes, there is definitely that aspect of it. And Ryan said that, you know, he, he, although they are the first people to bring it, uh, you know, public that it is quite possible that there were plenty of other people, uh, on, on, on many sides of this issue who may have already known about it.

So this one's still developing. It's developing fast. Uh, I would say if you have an Android burner phone or if you're someone who uses Android burner phones to try to protect yourself when you're traveling overseas, uh, take notice. Um, this is kind of serious.

All right. What else we got? Uh, well, speaking of, uh, of, uh, more backdoor access to your, um, to your data, uh, there is a, uh, story in Wired about, uh, the headline is wickedly clever USB stick installs a backdoor on locked PCs.

Um, basically. Yeah, this is a cool one. This comes from our friend Sammy Kamkar. Yep. Yep. So he's got a proof of concept that he calls poison tap. And this is a little USB dongle that, um, when you plug it into a device, even a device that is locked, uh, basically it goes in and, um, convinces the computer that, that it's an ethernet connection.

And then it starts, uh, doing, uh, all kinds of things to your web browser. It makes the assumption that you probably have at least one open tab on your web browser, which I think these days is probably a pretty safe assumption to make for most people. Um, and then, you know, it, it starts, um, it's, it's pretty clever.

Starts, uh, it does what's called cache poisoning. It goes in and rewrites the, um, the cache on your browser and, and replaces, uh, you know, known websites with its own manipulated versions of websites. Um, It basically spoofs the entire internet and, and, and try and, and starts hitting like the, what the top million websites in Alexa.

That's right. To try and get your cookies out. So that then if you're logged into any of those websites, it can just impersonate you. Yep. Willy nilly. Good times. That's right. That's right. So, um, you know, this one requires physical access. Someone actually has to get to your USB ports to make this happen.

But once they plug in, uh, they pretty much have you and your network. There's a good, good chance of it anyway. Um, one of the things I really liked in this article was, um, uh, the researcher who, uh, who, who came up with it said, um, uh, one of the, the drastic measure you could take is filling your USB ports with glue.

Yeah. He said, he said, I personally haven't found a good convenient way to solve this on my own computer. So, so the guy who, uh, found, found this came up with this, uh, doesn't really have a good solution to it. So we'll see. Oh, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Yeah.

Yeah. I, it's one of those things where you go, wow, this is really clever. And wow, this is really clever. Yeah. Um, for the, both the good and the bad of it. Uh, and then. Yeah. So it's moving on. Yeah. Let's, let's continue on with this backdoor access, uh, issue that we have going on here.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Bring it on. So. Adult friend finder. Uh, the, uh. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. No. I have, I, I heard about it from a friend. Um, and, um. I have 412 million friends who are really interested in this.

That's right. That's actually been the running gag around here, uh, at the Cyber Wire all week is that when we've been doing interviews, every question starts with, so I'm asking for a friend. Um, I'm asking for an adult friend. That's right. That's right. So the adult friend finder network, um, a lot of, uh, adult sites, adult friend finder in particular is one that, uh, you would log on to if you wanted to find, uh, someone to have some adult fun with who may, uh, who, uh, is probably not your spouse.

Um, they got their network hacked and, um, the number of people, uh, exposed has grown to over 412 million accounts. Nice. Pretty soon. Pretty soon. You're talking about real numbers. Yep. Interesting thing about adult friend finder, uh, going back to the old days, they used to run multiple, I mean, they, their network was very large and they used to have sites where you could post your own photos to.

And I used to, uh, used to on times hack those sites because they had, uh, you could basically do cross site scripting injection onto their, their public board and completely take over their site. So the CEO and I got in many a heated email, uh, argument over, he's like, would you please stop that?

I'm like, well, if you're not going to fix it, I'm just going to keep doing it. I could use the traffic. You, you have enough. Share some. So I would redirect all of his sites over to my site and then melt my server and then they'd fix it and, and repeat lather, rinse, repeat. I'm sorry. Oil up, rinse, repeat.

Lube up. Yes. That, that is how Jason got banned from adult friend finder for life. Yep. So luckily all these people can now go to the, uh, newly relaunched, uh, Ashley, Ashley Madison, uh, site, which, uh, as, as part of their security protocols in their ads being read on many podcasts, uh, announced that you don't log in with your social network accounts anymore.

Well, good. Yeah. One of the things we, um, yeah, one of the things we, we, uh, that caught our eye with this, with this, uh, attack is how many, there is a, a not insignificant, a not insignificant number of accounts that were revealed that are .gov and .mil accounts, um, which of course brings up the real possibility of, uh, blackmail and espionage.

Um, you know, that, that's a real, that's a real threat. Um, so, uh, on the other hand, uh, you know, you think to yourself, who is the person who is dumb enough to use their .mil or their .gov account?

And, you know, as we've learned with these, uh, have you taken a good look at the government lately? Well, I'll tell you, you know, there, it just, you know, it just happens every time there's one of these adult, uh, website hacks, um, you know, this comes up again and again. And so, um, you know, I think an important thing to remember too, is that, you know, no, these sites are not illegal, you know?

So it's really easy to sort of furrow our brow and tut, tut these people for, for, for, uh, you know, being caught up in something like this, but no, you know, they're not breaking the law there. Maybe we don't approve of what they're doing, but, um. Well, I just think, I just think using a work email address for personal, you know, personal stuff, unless they were.

That, in fact, could be illegal or cost you your job at the very least. Yeah. That's the dumb part about it. You know? Yeah. Getting your, getting your, getting your groove on. I got no problem with, go for it guys. You know, have, have a good time, but, uh, yeah, just don't use your, your government assigned email address. Yeah.

No, that's, uh, that's, uh, heading you towards a whole lot of hurt. Yep. Yes, it is. Okay. We've got a couple of rapid fire stories here that we should close with. Um, okay. Researchers from Shanghai, Boston, and Tampa, they put out this paper called CSI meets public, or, uh, what is it called here?

It's basically, um, yeah, CSI meets public Wi-Fi inferring your mobile phone password via Wi-Fi signals. Okay. Uh, by, by, it is a lot of math in this, but, uh, checking the signal based on how your fat finger goes over your phone and the, the variance in signals can let them possibly sniff sniff your password or your PIN number.

They can't do a full password yet, but they can do a PIN. And, uh, it's one of those neat ones that we, we, we like to talk about, like, you know, when they'd use the air gap computers and have the speakers transfer data off and. Right. Yeah. We, we, we, we did one last week. I interviewed a researcher who did one where, um, if you, if you type during a Skype conversation, um, they can totally know exactly everything you're typing.

Yeah. Basically with 90%, over 90%, um, you know, accuracy just by the sound of the keyboard, uh, through a Skype call, they can figure out what you're typing. Yep. So once they profile the keyboard, it's just that, Oh, Oh, he's got one of those clicky ones. Those are even easier. All right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But these are kind of fascinating that the, you know, the, the, the variables in the, in the RF based on the movement of the, the meat bag that you are, um, can, can let them, you know, figure out with a certain amount of accuracy, what, what you're putting into your phone.

These people really need to get jobs. Ah, I think they have them. That's the scary part. Yeah. Smart. These people are super smart. So, uh, ransomware has been the scourge of the internet this year. And, uh, did you guys cover the crisis ransomware keys on, uh, the cyber wire this week?

We did indeed. Would you like to tell us what happened? What the big news is? Well, uh, they, they, um, the folks at Kaspersky, uh, basically found, decrypted the, uh, they, they, they published the master decryption keys for this ransomware and we gave them a big, uh, high five, a big way to go on our show.

Uh, we do that anytime someone comes up with one of these keys. Um, and so, you know, that means that for the moment, this bit of ransomware is, uh, is defeatable. Um, and, uh, you know, that's good news for everybody. It's interesting. I, you know, I was talking to one of our, uh, we have a, someone on our show regularly, Jonathan Katz, who's a crypto guy.

Um, and he was saying how often, uh, in ransomware, it's discovered that the people who are programming these ransomware things are, they can be pretty sloppy in their executions. And that's good news because it means that decryptions like this, uh, can happen. Nice.

Yeah. Good stuff. We like sloppy programmers. We've made a living being them for a long time. Well, yeah. We are sloppy programmers. Right, right. Sloppy programmers, not just sloppy programs. I've got a little. Yes, that's true.

Uh, I've got a link from the intercept, which is never shy of having a political opinion, but I would argue that this is just good information regardless of the administration. The article title is of course, surveillance, self-defense against the Trump administration. It's a good long list of things that if you are a security minded person, you might want to consider.

Uh, even if you aren't going out and being a crazy activist, uh, there's some basic stuff in here that, uh, you really should be doing so. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's been remarkable to me, uh, how many people have come up to me in the past week, um, you know, knowing the business that I'm in and saying to me, Hey, I am, I, I really don't want to be, uh, you know, a prepper when it comes to this stuff, but I have some concerns.

What do I need to know? Change your Ashley Madison password immediately. Yes. So, you know, some good things can come out of things that aren't necessarily so good. Uh, people are paying attention more than they ever used to. So maybe we'll actually get some people, you know, using one password. Yeah, no, it's a good, it's a good wake up call.

No matter, I guess no matter where it comes from, if we can get people to be better about this stuff, we'll take it. Yeah. Right. And I would like to offer a slow clap for Clapper. He's on his way out the door. Yay. James Clapper is retiring at the end of the year.

All right. And why, why a slow clap from you, Jason? What's, what's your take on Mr. Clapper? I'm not a, I'm not a fan of Mr. Clapper. So, all right, I, uh, he's, he's not on my list of, uh, of fun people out there. Is it, are you, are you a fan of, of the clap? Do you like the clap? Sure.

Uh, use it. No. Well, I, I, first of all, miss, no, the clap I do not like it is, it is a bad thing. So, there I've answered that question. Um, I, honestly, I do not have a strong opinion either way on, uh, on Mr. Clapper, um, you know, the, uh, director of national intelligence.

Um, I cannot claim to have a very well-informed, uh, you know, opinion of him. So. Okay. Uh, I do, uh, we're out of time for, uh, for me to go into that very deeply, but there's an article on Wired, a very, uh, long article where, uh, James Clapper is, um, talks about the Snowden leaks and, uh, our ominous future and things like that.

Yes. I, I, and I do kind of understand Jason's, uh, slow clap for the removal of Clapper, but I'm more worried about a more virulent strain of the Clapper coming in. So that is my concern. So, so we'll see who we'll be getting. The devil, you know, versus the, the devil, you don't.

Yes. There's always something to be said for that. Yeah. That's a good point. All right, Dave. Well, thanks for joining us again. And of course, go, go protect your back door. Oh, wow. Okay. See you next week. All right. At the library.

Finished a couple of books as well. I, I, I started a book and I finished a book. So we've got, we've got one full review and one review. That I think just everybody should go out and buy this book immediately. Uh, first book is how to make a spaceship to band of renegades and epic race and the birth of private space flight space flight by Julian Guthrie.

I got to move my microphone. I keep screwing up my reads because the bar is right in the middle. There we go. Much better. Uh, by Julian Guthrie. This is the story of, uh, basically privatized space flight going with, uh, Peter Diamandis and the XPRIZE, spaceship one and that whole story.

SpaceX, the whole thing. Yeah. The whole nine yards is really, really, really, really good. I'm talking, I'm talking to Julian on Monday, I think for my day job and, uh, been chatting with her here and there about the book. And, uh, I, I mean, I, I love this book. I can't recommend it enough.

If you're into the nerdy bits about space and, and the cojones it takes to build your own spaceship. I mean, it is honestly insane. Definitely check it out. Now this next, this next book is, uh, by Michael Foley. I've heard it recommended here and there from very smart people.

And it's called the age of the age of absurdity. Why modern life makes it hard to be happy. This is, this should be the manual for everybody that listens to grumpy old geeks log off of Facebook, get off of Twitter, all of that.

But it, it, it goes, I mean, I cannot believe that we haven't read this book and we still did the exact same show that we've done because it is really interesting. Like this guy wraps a lot of it in classical philosophy and psychology. Right. And it's funny. It's really, really funny.

It's dirty and it's funny and it's high. It's, it's highbrow and lowbrow at the exact same time. Now you just read it, right? I'm, I'm about 25% into it. I was reading it on audible and listening to it on audible. And then I'm like, um, there are so many passages in there that I wanted to highlight.

So I'm like, I'm going to go get the Kindle version. Can't get the Kindle version because it's not out on Kindle. So I ordered the paperback. So I have the paperback in my reading chair with a yellow highlighter and I've been going back and rereading it and making notes on some of the best stuff in it. Interesting. Okay. Old school. As, as you're going through it, cause I wouldn't mind you coming back with a bit of a recap on this.

Um, I would be really, because this was published in 2011. Yeah. We say that's, that's actually, you know, ages ago and technology wise. So I'm, I'm interested to see if that has any effect on the book itself. If you feel that it, um, I guess has legs. Here's the thing it does because the concepts are timeless.

You know, that's the great part about it because yeah, 2011 seems like a long time ago now, but in internet years, that's like 16 years of the web. You know, so it, it, it was really, you know, we were fairly mature on the web at that point.

We have devolved since then, but, uh, we were in a pretty good place on the internet where a lot of things, we still had social, social, you know, media accounts and things like that. The web was not, uh, the, the cesspool it was in the nineties at that point. So it had matured quite a bit by 2011.

So it, it, a lot of the content, all the concepts so far remain and the humor is top notch. So excellent. That's cool. I do wish it was out on Kindle. That's a shame. Yeah, me too. Um, I am almost done with, it's not quite, this is my second book in a row that I, that I got without realizing that it was, it was 948 pages long.

Um, and that's not an exaggeration. I'm looking at the Amazon page. It's 948 pages long, which is why I haven't finished it. I am almost done. Um, I've gotten, you know, to, uh, to the point where we're well into his presidency. Okay. What's the book? Tell us what the book is. Washington, a life by Ron Chernow.

Okay. Um, it's great. Uh, I, you know, you know, you know what you know about Washington. Um, you may know more if you, you know, pursued history to a greater degree in college, but most of us didn't. Uh, so going in and getting the deep dive on what his actual life was like and his experiences, uh, was, it was great.

It is long and it is well-researched and it is exhaustive. Uh, it would not be a bad thing if there were a somewhat abridged version of this book. Yes, it is exhaustive and exhausting. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm really interested in the main bullet points.

I don't really need to get into what kind of China he had, uh, which is what we do get into in this book. Um, you know, it's, but it's great. It's, it's really good. It's really weird timing to be reading it. Obviously I started this prior to the election, um, to read a book about a man who was offered you to be the King and walked away from it.

What a difference. Yeah. What a difference. Yeah. I'm 20 hours into the 30 hour audio book version. I'm waiting for the first snow and then I'll probably curl up with the dog and finish it. It's well worth it, man. It's a slog at times. And like I said, an abridged version would not be remiss, but, but it's, it's, it's good.

Yeah, definitely. Um, and I've, I've updated my Goodreads profile. So if anybody's, uh, out there on Goodreads, my username is JP DeFilippo. And if you can't spell my name, I'll have a link to it in the show notes. I'm trying to get everything that I've read up there because I got my audible list. I found a cool JavaScript, uh, bookmarklet that will export the entirety of your audible list in CSV.

So I've been going through and putting everything in there and I had 583 books in audible that I've listened to. Yeah, I, I've, uh, wow. I, I've, I had a Goodreads thing when that they'd first like did their integration with Facebook. Um, so then I, I signed up for it then and I started putting some books and I have not followed up on it.

Uh, I wonder I should, before I would put my link up there, I got to go in here because I probably haven't put anything in here in like four or five years. Yeah, go fill it out. It's fun. I'm, I'm enjoying it because I'm doing all every time I do a new author, I get, I start to get the alerts. They're like, you're getting the Amazon alerts, but I'm getting those two and the Goodreads alerts.

Cause sometimes I do Q and A's where you can actually ask them questions and stuff, which is kind of fun. Let me know if you happen to find out of a script that, uh, takes my, my Amazon Kindle purchases and shoots them automatically into Goodreads. That would be fantastic. What do I look like? Your fucking intern? Yeah, pretty much.

Software, apps, and gadgets. So I took the, the leap this week and I updated my Mac to Sierra. Okay. Oh my God. What a pain in the ass. That was hours. I remember the days that you told me how easy Mac was.

Well, everything had to get switched to this two factor off now with Apple and it, it is not easy. Yeah. It is so not easy. I did that well before you did and it was not fun. No, definitely not. But, uh, it's over. It works now. And, uh, what is fun though, uh, this, this is an app recommendation.

It came from Jordan Harbinger from the art of charm. Um, bartender two. Okay. Uh, when you do run a Mac, you get, uh, all these little widgets in your top, uh, menu bar that just eventually become unwieldy and untenable and get cut off half the time.

And, uh, bartender gives you one icon that you can put everything under so you can clean it up. It's three bucks. It is the best three bucks I've spent all year. I cannot recommend this enough. Go get it. If you have a Mac seriously, it's so much nicer.

Um, my second software recommendation for the week is Zen caster. Now this is for podcasters for the most part, but, uh, if you're trying to do remote interviews like, like we're doing right now, and if you didn't want to record on Skype and you needed the other person to record their end, so you get a high fidelity recording, Zen caster will do that for you.

And it's browser based. So all you do is you send them a link and they open it in Chrome or Firefox, uh, give the microphone permissions and it will send you, it will send you to Dropbox, a wave file or an MP3 of their side of the conversation as soon as when the, when the conversation's over.

Fantastic. It's, it's not very expensive for what you get. It's, you know, like, you know, a couple of bucks a month. And, uh, I, we've used it. It has saved our bacon on some really high profile interviews with people in like Croatia where it doesn't matter what kind of pipe they're on. Skype is going to suck from Croatia and it saved the interview because they kept dropping out and, uh, we got a clean recording slotted in the Zen caster one and sounded great.

So they just came out of beta and, uh, I believe the guy's name's Josh. Uh, I could be getting that wrong, but nice guy. Check it out. Well done. Nice. Yes. And, uh, this, this, uh, this is a gadget that I'm not going to buy, but, um, it's called the grappler police bumper.

Yes. It's this wacky little net thing that the cops have developed to, uh, be able to put on the front of their trucks, go up behind somebody and basically stop a high, high speed pursuit with, uh, with basically some rope. The fun part's the video. You got to watch the video.

Yeah. I liked it. It was really cool. That's smart. It's, it's fun. Yeah. The video is great. I would love to see that happen in the wild. Yeah. You know, and the thing that got me was, I'm like, oh man, they're never going to get that close. Why would they want to get that close on a high speed chase? But then I remember they always do that when they, when, you know, they have to do the quote unquote pit maneuver.

Yeah. That works about, you know, 15% of the time and then just makes the cops look dumb when it doesn't. Um, but yeah, this, you have, you said still have to get up on them, but, uh, I imagine at some point they'll have a launchable version of it, but definitely go check out the, uh, the video.

It's fun. Uh, the next one I found was, uh, a lifeguard drone. Right. This is drones done right. Yes. If somebody is drowning, they, they whip out the drone. It goes out, throws them a life preserver with a, with a beacon on it and, uh, gives the lifeguard some time to actually get on their little ski doos and get out there and pick the people up.

This is a great use of technology. I think super cool. And the video that again is really good. Yeah. Cool. A lot of these have videos. Sorry. We're an audio podcast, but some things we can't help. And this, this next one is in here for you. It's a Sith versus Jedi cuckoo clock. Why is this in here for me?

This is nerd. I'm, I love star Wars, but this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm going to see it in your kids. The next time I come over guarantee you a hundred percent will never see this. It's going to be delivered by your millennium Falcon drone. This is quite possibly the ugliest piece of merchandise I've ever seen.

This is right. It's right out of the Franklin mint plate division. It is bad. It is real bad. Um, I like, I like the, the millennium Falcon perched to skew like a beret on the top of the clock. That is one of the more ridiculous parts. Also the hanging lightsabers dangle.

Uh, yeah, I could just see, I can see Han going and say, let's jump to light speed in France. Yeah, that's good. Uh, okay. So speaking of dangling, um, Ubisoft has a game out called watchdog to watchdogs to I, I, I'm not a gamer.

I have not played this. Uh, but, uh, you know, they are doing the things where, you know, this is an online game where you're playing with other people and you can share things throughout the game via the game itself. Um, and apparently somebody who built the game, uh, created one of the female characters, uh, with an entirely rendered vagina that you get to and find.

Um, and so some character or some character, some guy playing the game, uh, he might be a character. You don't know. Goron 2000, uh, found it and shared it using the game's own tools and then was banned by Ubisoft and said, uh, you're out of here.

You can't do that. What? Not Ubisoft. Sorry. Uh, Sony, Sony. So all the guy did was find something in the game, use Sony's own tools to publicize it. Uh, and now all of a sudden he's in trouble. Well, that's stupid.

What the, yeah, that's my high brow. Commentary on it. Well, that's dumb. That's pretty much what it came down to. So, but, uh, Sony did eventually give him his access back. Um, so he can go in there and I, one would assume they're removing the fully rendered vagina. I just like saying a fully rendered vagina.

I wish we could make that our show title. That's our show title right there, kids. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Uh, and Amazon has updated their app just in time for Christmas. The Amazon app for iPhone now has X-ray vision. Except it doesn't. It does not have.

Sticking with the French. X-ray vision. Uh, to see inside your packages. No, it does not. That headline is a lie. Uh, what it has is it will scan, uh, it will scan the, the barcode and it'll connect it to your account and what you ordered, then what was shipped within that barcode.

So you don't have to open the box, uh, to see what's inside of it. So you can just wrap it and be cheap and give people stuff wrapped in the Amazon box. Oh, how, how lame is that? It's pretty lame. I'd be annoyed if, uh, if it was just the Amazon box that it was covered in some, just pay them to wrap the damn thing right away.

Seriously. They offer that. Yeah. Yeah. So this is cheapskate vision is what this is. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's cheapskate vision. Um, I have been using my echo a little bit more than, than I intended to. Uh, I've now delved into the shopping list and the to do list, uh, functionality and I've even ended up using, yes, if that's then that programming and I found a cool little script

that basically, uh, allows you to easily send your, uh, your shopping list to your email instead of having to use the app itself when you're out and about, or, you know, then you can just print it. So it's pretty cool. So if you've got one of these, you haven't gotten that far yet, a link is in the show notes. We'll put that recipe in the show notes because I think I want to use that.

That that's, that is the link I provided Jason. Oh, excellent. All right. Even better. Look at you thinking ahead. All right. I try. Well, since, since you put that in there, I found this one that just came out, uh, your Alexa, uh, or echo. They, they, see, this is the problem.

The verge, uh, screw this up. They call it the Alexa and it's an echo. It's not. It's the echo. Yes. Uh, well, it starting tomorrow, actually when this airs, it'll be starting today. You will be able to send text messages. If you're an AT&T customer to up to 10 friends, just by speaking to them, to your echo.

And if you were worried at all about all your texts going to China, now they're going to Amazon too. Yeah. Bezos will be in the closet. Hmm. What did he say? He is, how many, how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? Three. Yeah. Ah, ah, ah, ah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it's a great functionality.

I, as long as you're aware of the privacy issues involved, but, uh, I look forward to having that functionality on Verizon. That'd be great. Yeah. Speaking of, speaking of that though, I've got that echo dot, not nearly as good as the main echo. It, it picks up, it will pick up the dog snoring and light up like it, like, like it said, you know, echo.

Well, it doesn't have, you know, the, the, the array of technology inside of it. So obviously, but it still should have the same speech recognition chip that sends the stuff to Amazon, but I don't think it's the speech recognition issue that you're experiencing. I think it's probably the difference in the microphones and how they're, they're arrayed inside the actual system.

I don't know. It's, it's right next to the bed. So I don't know. It's, it's annoying when it, when it lights up in the middle of the night, because literally the dog will snore in a lot, the room will turn blue. I thought Jason, just one quick thought about that. You don't have to have it right next to your bed. Well, I've only got a nightstand in my room and that's where it's got to go.

Well, stick the whole point is so I can reach over in the morning and say, Alexa, play K-Rock. No, the whole point is, the whole point is so you don't reach over at all. It's hands-free. Well, I, I lean, I roll over and point to it. I put my, I put my mouth hole at it and say, play K-Rock.

Oh God. Anyway, what else you got? The final thing I have is just when all of this, I gave a shot to Signal messaging app. This is by Whisper Systems. This has been doing the rounds since the election just, and even before then, because of WhatsApp being owned by Facebook, et cetera, et cetera.

A lot of people are touting Signal as being basically the strongest encryption and the best for privacy in terms of a messaging app that is out there. So I downloaded it and installed it and have zero friends that have it. I've got it. That's weird. You should see me. I'm on there. I've been on there forever. I know you came up on there.

I'm just, I was making a point. I'm not your friend. I'm just your co-host. I would like to point out though, right now, that K-Rock is playing in my house because I just yelled at my echo. That's pretty funny.

Media candy. I found this nifty little short film by Laura Poitras and Heinrich Moltke. It's called Project X. It's 10 minutes long, narrated by Rami Malek from, you know, Mr. Robot and Michelle Williams, who I can't remember for the life of me who that is.

I've been in quite a lot of things. Yeah, I'm sure. Just like I said, just not at the moment. It's based on some Snowden revelations about this building that they call Titan Point in the middle of New York. Yep. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

And the Intercept did a full-on article about it, which I highly recommend reading. So, it's a little bit longer, but it gives you the whole history of the building. It's really neat. So, I think you should definitely check that out. And if you go to the Intercept article, there's a quick little snippet from the film, which is kind of fun because it does have, you know, Rami doing his voiceover, which is fun.

Yeah. I actually didn't see this in the notes earlier, so I just put something in our show notes because I saw this in the news yesterday. This building has already been added to SimCity as a mod. Nice. Okay. So, if anybody's still out there doing SimCity, God knows.

Yeah. I mean, this is, I mean, it's surprising. It's an old building. It's been around for a very long time. And there have been lots of documentaries about it. Yeah. So, let's get down to some more entertainment news. Ghost in the Shell, the trailer's out. Have you watched it? I have. What did you think? Not a fan?

No. I liked it. Shouldn't be Scarlett Johansson. It shouldn't be Scarlett Johansson, but I think she did decent, you know. Yeah, fine, but shouldn't be Scarlett Johansson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're one of those. Yes, I am. Trailer for a new sci-fi series out called Incorporated, which is very interesting.

Yeah. Yep. I will watch the show at some point. Yeah. After it's canceled, for sure. Yeah. One of the main bad guys is Dennis Haysbert, which we know from the Allstate commercials. But also, he was Snake Doctor in The Unit, which I love him for. Okay. The Unit was a great show.

Highly recommend it. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. And I know last week I said I was going to sit down with the Cornetto Trilogy and watch it. Yes. But as I was scrolling through my media center, I realized that a while ago, like maybe a year or two ago, I had delved through the backwaters of the internet and found the complete series of WKRP in Cincinnati.

My God, man. I've been watching that every night. I watch two episodes before I go to bed. Does it hold up? Oh, my God. Does it hold up? Awesome. It is just as funny as it was when we were kids. And in some places, it's funnier. But it is just one of those things where it's just like that little breath of levity that I need at the end of the day.

And I have to say, friend of the show and our iOS developer for the Grimpy Old Geeks iOS app, Trent Hamilton, is Dr. Johnny Fever. Nice. The similarities are unnerving, except Fever doesn't have as many tattoos. That's true.

The tattooing wasn't quite so in vogue back at that point. No, but man, I can't recommend it enough. It's on Amazon. You can find it. When I was looking for it, it wasn't out. It was like one of those really hard to get, like, you know, overseas imports. But you can get it now. It's awesome.

I highly recommend it. If you're just looking, if you're an old fuck like us and you just want some old school, you know, sitcom, go for it. Nice. Google Music Play or Play Music, however you want to say it. They've relaunched with some machine learning. No joy.

Yeah. It's going to figure out where you're at and we'll give you a playlist based on if you're at the gym or I wonder what it would be if you're in a meeting for like six hours. Maybe it'll be like a fugue, you know, I don't want any of this. Nope. That's why I don't use Google Play Music.

Okay. I use Amazon Music Unlimited. I signed up this week because I was looking at the pricing on it. $7.99 for the whole house or, you know, for the full thing since I'm a Prime member. The downside is my recommended stations when I signed in are Pink Floyd, Journey in Chicago.

So obviously they don't want to retain me as a customer because those are the three most hated bands of all time. Good times. Yeah. And also Amazon Music has stuck up with the proud tradition of nobody on the fucking planet being able to do a decent UI for a music service. It's terrible.

I just can't. I still use Spotify. The one Spotify isn't even great, but it's the best of all the streaming services out there. So it's that. And that is the only reason I am sticking with them. As you're about to tell me, I shouldn't. Well, you might want to get a new SSD drive for your Mac because they are writing massive amounts of junk data to your drive.

The thing, though. Yeah, go ahead and finish, actually, first, and then I'm going to ask you a question. Yeah, yeah. No, it's buffering or doing something where it can be doing multiple gigabytes and terabytes in the background to your drive while it's just sitting there in idle mode. You're not even playing anything.

So they need to fix this because SSDs, they have a very limited lifespan. So if you're just writing and writing and writing to them, you could be taking a huge amount of life off that drive. And it's not as easy as it once was to just open things up and replace them.

You have to buy a new computer or get a Mac monkey to open it up with his special tools and, you know, welding torches to, you know, get at it and put it back together. Now, my question being, I never launch Spotify on my actual laptop. Hardly ever.

It's mostly not running. So I'm assuming if it's not open and not running, this isn't happening. No, it's not an issue if it's not running. I only use it on my phone or via Amazon Echo. So theoretically, I'm not having this issue. Yeah, you should be safe then. All right, good. Well, fix it anyways, because every now and then I do want to launch it.

Yeah, definitely. And I have information that I think will make you a very happy man, Jason. I know that you listen to regular K-Rock now. Yes, I do. Echo to K-Rock being the legendary Los Angeles station and Jason being in Chicago. I want to let you know about K-Rock HD 2.

What's this? This is Rock of the 80s. You can go. It is basically literally the same jocks or at least some of them that were helming K-Rock back when it was world famous and innovative. And they're playing the same music that they were playing.

It basically, it's like you're in the DeLorean from Back to the Future and you've gone back to the 80s when this is on in your radio. It's all the great songs. Again, I'm always flabbergasted that you are the only person I know that didn't grow up in Southern California that loves Oingo Boingo.

They play Oingo Boingo all the time because that's what they did back in the 80s here at K-Rock. And there's no playlisting. There are deep cuts being played all the time. This is now my go-to station in my car constantly. I've given up on Sirius XM's first wave because you hear the same 10 songs all the time.

This takes me back to childhood. This is exactly – they could just be literally playing tapes that they recorded from back then. Awesome. It is fantastic. I think you should check it out. You can definitely get to it through TuneIn, which means you'll be able to get to it through your Echo. Yeah. Give it a listen, Jason. I think you will love this station.

No, that's great because I only listened to K-Rock through my Echo. So this is the best – Merry Christmas to me. Thank you. I think you are going to be so pleased with the amount of Oingo Boingo they play. And just – you'll love every song. You're going to be so hooked on this. Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. And as a present to you, AbFab the movie is coming out November 29th.

I'm very excited. I managed to completely miss it because of the timing and my son being born and all that. So I have not seen it yet. So I am looking forward to this. Yeah, I've – well, you can download it on the backwaters of the internet if you'd like to get it a little bit early. I'll wait.

It's okay. Yeah, I'm still getting caught up on that. WKRP kind of got in my AbFab round. Maybe I'll do a KRP and an AbFab before I go to bed. It's a lot of letters. It is. It is. And there is a Christmas present for all of us. We have been waiting a very long time.

The Grand Tour was set to debut today because you'll be hearing this on Friday. They actually decided to pull it out a day early. So as of Thursday, the 17th, which is right now when we're recording this, not quite right now, in two hours, Jason.

This will be at 4 o'clock Pacific time. Episode 1 drops. Oh, goody. I'll be cutting this one quick. So another Christmas present for you because I guess you didn't know that. I did not know that. Yes, the first episode will air in exactly two hours as you're listening to this.

It is out. So go watch it. Oh, sweet. Boy, do I have a Christmas present for the pretentious bastard in your life. You know, a couple of years back, if this would have been released, say, five years ago, Jason, when I was making crazy money, this would have been your your Christmas present.

I can see that. I can see that. Hands down. Apple is releasing a $300 book containing 450 photos of its own products. Yep. It is called designed by Apple in California. And as the Verge article states, a name that somehow manages to be both humble and incredibly pretentious at the same time.

Yes. Didn't they also say something like that takes navel gazing to a new level? That and a book like this takes courage. Yes. A book like this takes courage. Oh, yeah. I don't know who's who's dumber.

The Apple for releasing it or any idiot that buys it. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people buying it. You got to watch the video of Johnny Ive that I dug up. It's I didn't watch it. It's good. That was that's in the show notes. Everybody go take a look. Yes. And the last one, a Scottish Colin Beattie.

He's got letters that I don't understand because I'm not from over there, but he's calling for government action over the change to Toblerone. Because there's nothing more important going on over there right now. Yes, he's saying the change to the bars are emblematic of the devastating consequences of Brexit.

And he wants to offer condolences to those mourning this change. You know what, though? The funny thing is, if you really follow the money, he may not be wrong. No, he's not. Because because the spokeswoman for Toblerone says, well, the foreign exchange rate is currently not favorable and could not clarify if it only applied to the UK, which means it might actually be part of it.

Mm hmm. I just didn't realize Toblerone was a U.S. company. I did not either. I always thought that was a European candy. I thought it was Swiss. Toblerone. Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut, also a British company. That's why their pizza sucks so bad.

Ooh, fancy. Fancy. Ooh, fancy. So on Patreon, for our Patreon subscribers, we love you. Patreon.com slash GOG podcast. Or just GOG. God, just GOG. Um, I posted, uh, for those of you not really into Iron Maiden, because we talked about the Iron Maiden ugly Christmas sweater last week.

Um, the Cure Christmas sweater. It was a beautifully designed, very funny, kind of based on South Parkian take of Robert Smith on a sweater. And it was fantastic. And it was on a site called tchip.com. Uh, since then, unfortunately, it has been removed.

Uh, one would assume because of copyright and content issues. Yeah. So it, uh, earlier today, I checked it out and said, this campaign is under review by our content review team. And, uh, yeah, then gone. Now I am somewhat curious as to how they deal with that.

I assume people that had ordered it will just get refunded. I actually do know somebody that, that ordered it. So I'm going to send her an email and find out what exactly happened. I'm sure they just got a refund. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So it's a shame because it was quite, quite good. Uh, now this, this next one, uh, hat tip to the Chinese, they hate the high beams over there.

So they've come up with a ways that they've come up with stickers that you can put in your rear window that only get illuminated when they're, when the high beams are on and they're very scary. They're from, you know, like, uh, the girl with no face and all that stuff from horror movies, you know, like, uh, the ring and stuff like that.

It's very funny, but apparently there are problems with that because, uh, if the driver that has the high beams on or flips their high beams on sees the person in the window gets freaked out and causes an accident, you're to blame if it's your car with the decal. Yep.

So, uh, I think, uh, I think the best one, you know, people are going around this and figuring out better ones, but the best one is at the very end. It just says, turn off your fucking high beam, which I think really sums up the whole point. It kind of gets right to the point there. Yeah. Are you kidding me?

Love it. Julian Assange is back in the news for many different things. Yep. First off, he met with some, uh, prosecutors for the people who were, uh, trying to get him for the rape charges way back then. Um, but, uh, this is the abuse of a different type of pussy.

His cat. Oh boy. His cat. He's dressing his cat up in, uh, collars and ties and putting them in the window of the embassy, the Ecuadorian embassy, because he must be so ridiculously bored after being there for so many years. This is what it's come down to.

Yeah. I guess, you know, he got sick of being dressed up as an ass hat. Mm hmm. So now he has to dress up somebody else apparently. Yep. Okay. Well, we've got, uh, in my, in my, uh, are you kidding me files? I have Star Trek, the cruise to electric, the wrath of George Takei, I suppose, uh, it's hosted by George Takei.

Oh my. And you get to actually quite a good cast list is going on there. Um, no captains, you know, you're not going to get a captain, but, um, you know, Frakes McFadden, some good people, LeVar Burton, Terry Farrell. I like this group. No, you got a pretty good, pretty good mix and mash here.

I, I, you know, if Avery Brooks was going on that, I'd be booking my stateroom. No captains, man. No captains. No captains. Because you have to, you have to sign up for the captain's cruise. Apparently so. That's much more expensive. So, uh, this is funny. I mean, okay. Okay. Why not? I would never go on this, but I, I, please do enjoy the, the cheap, cheaply done website and all the horrible attempts at engaging Star Trek humor here.

Like, uh, get ready to engage on the most fascinating adventure. And, uh, you know, we've set our phasers to stun you, our guests. That is. Uh, see now if they, if they had, if they had said done the, the Simpsons set phasers to fun. That would have been, that's probably copy written.

It actually, it is. It's, it's a Simpsons. So I, I still steal it anyway. Fuck them. Yes. And, uh, the last one, we both put this in here at different, different, different times of the day. Uh, post truth is Oxford Dictionary's word of the year. Hat tip to Calbee Mundy for, uh, pointing me, uh, to this one last night.

But, um, yes, post truth, which is, uh, basically, uh, truthiness, which Stephen Colbert coined in 2005. Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion or elections than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

There you go. This is, this is, uh, this is about as groundbreaking as when literally was reclassified as a word meaning absolutely nothing. It could mean, it could mean literally, or it could mean literally I went to the mall and got some shoes, you know?

That's, that's, yeah. Yay. Yay. Yay.

Comment of the week. Whoa, we got some comments. We did get some comments. We got some comments. Okay. So here we go. We did, we did, we did talk a little bit about our feelings post election. So fair enough. So some people wrote back.

So we're not going to keep on doing that because that's not the show that we do. You've got plenty of podcasts for that and knock yourselves out. But here we go. This is a from Jason to Jason. No, I didn't get drunk and write this myself. Oh, that, wow.

What a black Miriam twist. This could have been, I know, but actually the beginning part could have been written by me, but go ahead. It could have. Okay. So it's long. We're going to go quick. Uh, really vomited because of this election. I thought you were grumpy, not wimpy. Listen, the last eight years for some of us have been a nightmare. Obamacare has done serious damage to my son's ability to receive proper healthcare.

He lost his doctors and affordable medication due to this horrifying legislation that none of the Dems read before passing. This did not cause me to set my neighborhood on fire, destroy others' property, nor did I pull black people from their cars and assault them. I strapped in for this shit-filled ride and did what I had to do for my family. I have had to watch my son and my family suffer for the last eight years, and I hope that neither of you have to ever go through this.

I truly hope that Brian's child is healthy, so you will not have to endure the pain of watching your child be denied care due to lack of insurance and funds to pay for needed surgeries. We also lost social security benefits due to Obama's policies while millions of people who just walk into this country are treated like royalty. Many of us voted Trump just on the hopes that Obamacare will be repealed for something better thought out and less damaging to most of us.

There is a balance if the time is taken to do it right. You both have a lot to say about a man who has not even taken office and has set no policy yet. Can we not be adults about this and see what happens? I can tell you from experience that you can do nothing about what has been done. I do love the show and have for years. I enjoy the books you review and recommend.

I listen to them and the new security updates help keep me cyber safe. I am a 1Password user. Thanks, buddy. Could you please stop with the doom and gloom and get back to being grumpy about botnets and Facebook selling us out to the highest bidder? Thank you for your attention, Jason. Okay.

First off, yes, we're going to try to do that. Secondly, unless the tech and the policy, there is a crossover, which there will be an awful lot because the security implications are going to be pretty big for technology. So we're going to talk about it a lot.

Sorry. I understand everything that you're saying. I appreciate the fact that you took the time to do exactly what you did. This is the dialogue that we talk about being missing. The fact that you wrote all this to us is fantastic. And I feel for you and the things that you've gone through.

And I appreciate the fact that you actually wrote this to us instead of just going, fuck you guys, because saying, fuck you guys on both sides is useless and it actually makes things worse. So thank you for writing this. Sorry about what you went through. I disagree with your view on Obamacare.

Obamacare was gutted because of a fight between the two parties. Exactly what we're talking about, about the lack of communication. It isn't what it should have been. A hundred percent agreed on that. Not entirely their fault. My personal take on this is I understand the people that voted for Trump because of things like Obamacare getting repealed.

And I understand the people that voted for Trump for things like we need our jobs. I don't accept that. To me, that doesn't make up for the fact that you voted in misogyny and hatred. And that is the campaign that he ran and that I have a problem with.

And I draw a line there. I really do. While I understand why you did what you did, you need to understand why I feel the way about it that I do. And, you know, let's keep talking about it. But that's not going to be our podcast. No. Okay. Yeah. Here's the deal. After the show.

Yes, I did. I did puke because here's the problem. I have I read thousands and thousands and thousands of articles a week just for this show mainly. And after a long time, it does get to you. And then the cognitive dissonance kicks in when something that you think can't happen does and your brain just can't quite adapt to it.

So once it was passed, I've been happier than a clam the past week. So, you know, Brian, Brian has his take. I have my take. I have just been getting to work. And all I want to do is make great content for people to bring them levity and fun times in the hard times ahead. And I understand why you did what you did. And a lot of people that I've talked to, same boat, same exact boat.

You know, when when there's no other alternative for the problems that you have, you got it. You got to change it up. I understand that. And that's all I'm going to leave it at. I'm done with it. I'm I'm I'm I'm out of the politics game because I am not. It's above my pay grade, honestly. So I am.

I am not a political pundit correspondent. I just had a bad week, a bad year and a half, but I'm done. So let's move on to some more interesting feedback. Well, you can't be more interesting. That was actually the most interesting feedback we got. But let's let's talk to some more entertaining feedback.

All right. Well, from iTunes. This is my turn. My turn. Oh, sorry. My bad. Back up. OK. Hogging the mic. Jesus. This one comes from Flern. Yes. Flern. Title of this review from iTunes. Hmm.

Nope. One star. Very completely. Meh. Yep. Thanks, Fern. Flern. Well, gee, shocking. The one day, the one show right after the election, we get a couple one star ratings. Yeah.

I wonder what view they take. Now, see, that's the difference between Jason, who took the time to write a thoughtful email to us and people that just go, well, screw you guys. I'm going home. Yep. Yeah. So, all right. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Exactly.

Luke K1 gave us a five star rating. Go to podcast. Of all the podcasts I subscribe to, I find myself trying to keep up with this one. Never seem to have the time to keep up with them all. Tell me about it. Jason's super trooper about that stuff. I'm always behind as well. Enjoyable tech news updates and banter.

Having just retired from tech slash corporate R&D, 40 years. I still look forward to listening to Jason and Brian every week and now hope to have a tiny bit more time to do so. Thank you so much, Luke K1, and congratulations on the retirement. Absolutely. Congratulations for getting the hell out. Yep. All right.

This next one comes from Vra Chevalier. Yes. Now, there's a typo in this. I don't know. Actually, it might not be a typo. It just could be the way he spelled. But he spelled waste, wasp. So, I immediately went to my French accent. But then I looked up Vra Chevalier.

It is very French. Yeah. So, the title is Papin Pablum. This show is getting progressively worse. It is now a wasp of my time to listen to. It has turned into a bunch of Papin Pablum. Such a shame. One star. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Again, I'll take the one star ratings because I know exactly why you're giving us a one star rating. You don't like our politics. Cool. That's fine. Well, honestly, we did kind of suck for the last week. But that's okay. We're back. We're better than ever. I was in a bad mood. We both were. All good.

All right. They can't all be winners. No, they can't all be winners. Oh, and by... Never mind. I'm not going to say it. Okay. Jason Blackman, five star rating. Jason, I love your show. You guys have just the right amount of cynicism and humor to keep true geeks coming back.

Thank you for keeping your listeners informed and entertained. Basically, what it's all about. I find myself looking forward to the next show immediately after the end of the last one. Thank you so much. Woohoo. Thank you very much. Yes. Thanks for all your feedback. You can head over to grumpy old geeks dot com and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

Closing shout outs. Since I have stopped looking at social media, Twitter, Facebook, the like, stopped reading the newspaper and have been rediscovering music. I found a great video that I loved when it came out. It's called Mein Land from Rammstein.

Okay. Not to get political. Didn't you tell me to. I just I love the video and then I look, I love the video, but then I looked at the lyrics. I'm like, oh, shit. But still, it's a great video. Got to watch it. Wait for the end.

It's it's an entire day at the beach with Rammstein and a lot of sexy girls. Not to be political, but maybe we should listen to some dead Kennedys. There you go. Kill the fucking poor. Anyways. Okay. Well, I will give a shout out to Corey Seeger and Dave Roberts.

Dave Roberts, the manager of the Dodgers. Corey Seeger when gets rookie of the year and Dave Roberts got National League manager of the year. So well done. Let's go Dodgers. And a shout out to Dan Rather. He's a real journalist and he's killing it online right now. Follow him on social media. He wrote a really great story over at Scientific American.

Now, more than ever, we must stand up for science. And I do believe educated people on both sides of the aisle can agree. We must stand up for science. Science. Yes. Well, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo. All my info and links are at about.me slash JPD. And I have a new domain.

You can find me at JPD.photos because I'm, you know, split the difference. And .photos is such a cool damn like top level domain. I had to buy it. What a waste of money. I don't care. I love it. I love it. Fine. I'm Brian Schulmeister. And you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus or Brian dot whatever's man.

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Voiceovers for the show are provided by Robert Fogarty. You can check out his writing and editing services at scribblepinch.com. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 186. Alexa, off! At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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