190: Merry Weltschmerzmas

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by OnePassword.com. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I am Jason DeFillippo here with my co-host. I'm Brian Schulmeister. How you doing, Brian? Well, I'm in a basement. It's very cold. I walked outside and everything was white. I've never been in whiteout conditions before. It's been snowing nonstop for 12 hours and supposed to continue for another 12.

But I found out that because it gets so cold here, I'm down in the basement. There was a little closet and I opened it up and there was beer in there. Ah, there you go. So, cheers. That's the Canadian emergency storage locker. Who knew? Who knew? And I got my maple cookies, no thanks to you.

See, I figured that they had them. It's not like an exclusive. It's not like poutine or, you know, decent unpasteurized beer. It is a little tough to get, but I'm going to tell you right now, here's a pro tip for anybody that's been listening and had a hankering for some maple cookies. Trader Joe's maple cookies, they are made in Canada and they taste exactly the same like the ones you get up there.

Oh, good. I'm not going to hear this bitching anymore then. No, no, no. I've known not to put my faith in you for anything, so that's okay. Well, it's not like I could just hand them to you. If you had still been in LA, it would have been no problem. Oh, you went up there and didn't give them to me when I lived in LA too, so your point is moot.

To be fair, you lived in the valley. That might as well be a different country. That's true. That's true. Points for that one. Okay. I'll let that one slide. Okay, so a little follow-up. I found an article on Elon Musk from Playboy, of all places.

No nudes. No nudes anymore. He's actually talking about the free basic income. Yes, he did bring it up way back in the day. It's true. I forgot to ever even mention that since we started bringing it up. Yeah, he knows it's coming, and he's smart. Because he's part of the problem.

Yes, he is part of the problem. All these things that are making me lots of money are going to screw all of you, so let's start talking about that. Yeah, we need a way for you to have some money so you can buy my things that make me money. Well, see, that's the thing that these people always forget. Once we are screwed and we have no money, you will eventually have no money too because we can't buy anything.

Right, and when we have no money and you have all the money, then comes the burning of the yachts and the civil uprising. In the news. Well, we said we wouldn't really talk about politics unless it entered our realm, or if it bled into our realm.

And somebody has cut an artery because it is bleeding all over us today. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Trump had his tech summit yesterday with, you know, all the head honchos of all the big companies. Zuck wasn't there, but... Oh, and his daughter and his two sons.

Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Okay. So, yeah, there's just two points about that. A, what the fuck are they doing in the room? Yeah. Period. And they snubbed Twitter. Jack Dorsey wasn't allowed to come because they claimed that, well, the conference table wasn't big enough.

Right. Yeah. Completely glossing over the whole thing that they're actually still pissed about the crooked Hillary emoji scandal back in the day, which is... Yeah, I mean, people are saying that. There's also the fact that Dorsey was very outspoken about how Twitter would not, in any way, shape, or form, help build a Muslim registry, as it were.

They're the only tech company that came out, said that they would not help, and somehow they're the only tech company that wasn't at this table. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. No, we're dealing with a five-year-old with a Twitter account here who is going to be running the country at this point. He's saying, no, you wouldn't let me play with your hashtags.

No, you won't make my toys. Yeah. He should be bowing at the altar of Twitter. I don't think he'd be president if it wasn't for Twitter. I know. Well, you know, Jack should have canceled. Just close the account. Close the account. You, sir, close the account. Yeah, there's no room at the table.

Oh, we're out of database room. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, but, I mean, it was an interesting meeting in which Trump basically turned around and, along with LockerUp and everything else that he was saying throughout his campaign, did a complete three, or what is it, a 180 or a 360?

What are we going with? A 360 gets you back to where you're going, so it's a 180. Okay, he did a complete 180, and, yeah, now, you know, everything's fine. Well, he's not going to shut down Amazon. Yeah, Apple, you're cool. It's all good. We're going to do nothing but help you. I particularly enjoyed the, you'll call me or you'll call my people.

There's no formal chain of command around here. You're the motherfucking president. There's supposed to be a fucking formal chain of command. Yeah, I like that one, too. It's like, oh, throw me a DM anytime and get me on the horn. Yeah, you know, hey, do it, do what my friends do.

Try Messenger if I don't respond there. DM me. If you don't get me there, try WhatsApp. I may or may not be on that. Hey, whatever. You know, no formal chain. None whatsoever. Yay. Yeah, it's good times. Yeah. So this is this is going to be interesting.

And all of the tech people who are just like, yeah, fuck Trump. Yeah, we're not going to deal with any bowing at the altar, sticking their nose in the trough. Of course they are, because Trump's good for business. We all know that he's going to let these people do anything that they want to do. Watching the stock market rise, which, oh, by the way, I've had a couple of conversations with people here in Canada land.

Obviously, there's been a lot of what the hell, America. But there are a few people up here that are kind of Trumpian. I mean, you get them everywhere. And they're like, hey, stock market. Good, right? And I was like, do you own any stock? Oh, no, you don't. OK, so who cares?

You're pro Trump because you think the stock market is rising, which does not affect you in any way, shape or form because you have no stock. Yeah. Again, this is most of the people. Yeah, this is the, you know, the winning the winning electorate. So good times. There we go.

And if you want to get a good read, this comes from the outline dot com. It's called Valley of the Dolts. Silicon Valley's power brokers want you to think they're different, but they're just average robber barons. It's a long read, but it's interesting. Yeah. And, you know, kind of what I've been saying about Uber since day one and Airbnb and all of Facebook and everybody and Twitter wishes, but they just can't figure out how to rob anything.

I know they're the guys that they're just sitting in the in the on the corner as everybody like drives away in their their limos. We'll tweet for millions. Yeah. Jack Dorsey has to take an Uber. Everybody else has a helicopter and a jet. Yeah.

All right. So let's get let's move back to our favorite new pet peeve since I've opened your eyes to it. Since I pulled the A.I. wool away from your eyes, Jason. Another article. I put this in for two reasons. First, it's Christmas time. And then secondly, the A.I. aspect again.

The the title is this A.I.'s attempt to write a Christmas carol is absolutely bone chilling. First off, not an A.I. Second, not bone chilling, not bone chilling. But still, Merry Christmas and definitely creepy. Research researchers in Toronto.

So apparently I could go find them and hit them upside the head for doing this. Have used a technology called neural karaoke to teach a computer to write a song after looking at a photo and the little carol that penned after viewing a festive Christmas tree is an absolutely horrifying display of what these things think of us.

It's actually quite an amusing song. It is. It's funny, but it's yeah. I enjoyed it. It is janky. Yeah, definitely not going to pass the Turing test anytime soon on that one. No, but, you know, flowers, pretty flowers, flowers and flowers. OK, so there's an article in the New York Times.

This is a big one. It's a New York Times magazine called The Great A.I. Awakening. Dun, dun, dun. Yes. How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services, and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself. Now, it's at this point I actually got out the dictionary because I thought we should have a baseline.

I thought we should have a baseline in this in this argument. They're just this this A.I. side of things. So we have a baseline on what the hell we're talking about, because we keep saying that's not A.I. That's not A.I. That's not A.I. So let's go to the Oxford English Dictionary to get us a baseline definition.

And here it is. OK. The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making and translation between languages. So according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Google is actually using A.I.

for their translation algorithms. OK. Interesting. So that's a different one. So that one actually, you know, passes the test. Right. The I don't see anything about writing Christmas carols in there. Yeah. See, this would not we could.

I guess we've been wrong all along, Jason. And it takes big podcasters to admit they've been wrong. But this is not what I would traditionally define as artificial intelligence. Right. I still think. Yeah. General test. Yeah. I don't know. There's so many definitions of it out there. And right now it's a buzzword. It's like the cloud.

It's the cloud of 2016. Yes. This is if we had the wired back in 20 years ago, the wired buzzwords. We knew this is the word we'd have to use in our Monday meeting. Yes. This would be the push of the day. Exactly. I'm never going to live that one down.

Amazon. Yes. They have finally made their first delivery with Prime Air. Yes. Say 13. Was it 13? It's 13 minutes or 13 miles. There's a 13 in there somewhere. But yeah, this dude ordered some Amazon swag and some doggy treats.

And so they literally have two customers right now as they roll this thing out. I watched the video and it's kind of cool. I like their little their little system for, you know, packaging things up and rolling out the drones. I think it's kind of neat. It is. It's definitely neat.

I can see this rolling out in rural areas. I don't see how this is going to work in a city anytime soon, but it's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. But yes, they only have two customers right now and soon they're going to be ramping up to dozens. Dozens.

I tell you dozens taking over the world. Yeah, it's interesting because the drone that they showed in the video was not one I'd seen yet. No, we have never seen a photo of this one before. It's pretty groovy looking.

I mean, it's definitely it's not sexy, but it'll do the job. Yeah, I think what this one's doing, it's got this main housing on it. And I think that's where the engines are. It's probably run by some kind of geared system to run the actual rotors. It might not have because most drones have brushless motors on each each quadrant, but maybe to keep the sound down because they said it was silent and they must have some new motor technology if it's silent because I've never seen a silent drone.

Those things are loud. You know what? What? Trump asked Bezos. What? Can you make it silent but deadly? Oh, well, I can't even I can't even go go with that one. So check it out. They're actually doing their thing in England because we wouldn't let them do it here.

Well, that's about to change. Oh, absolutely. No, everything that you thought was sacred is out the window now. You remember that bit about we can't fly drones over large groups of people? Have at it. Have at it. Come on. Well, there's an article in QZ.com, which I love.

It's Quartz is the website, which I've been really finding some good stuff on there. They've got an article that says truckers think automation won't take their jobs for 40 years. Silicon Valley strongly disagrees. Well, this is you and I have been going back and forth on this for weeks now.

You know, it's one story is here it comes. The next story is this isn't going to happen for 30 years. I'm starting to side more and more with the it's about to happen any day now. Yeah, well, we'll get to a few more stories about this real soon, but because it happened yesterday.

Yeah, I think this is I think we're getting closer and closer to the, you know, the three year mark than the because I think when we started talking about it, we said five years and that was two years ago. So eventually, by the time we this podcast ends, we will have self-driving cars and one will probably come and take us out.

Yes. By the time an AI is doing this podcast. Yeah, exactly. We'll have that new Adobe technology so we can just type in our words and let it run without us and we will script everything. We'll have Perl scripts to actually create our podcast scrapers for the websites. We don't have to show up.

Oh, thank God. Our our outdated programming skills will be useful again. I know. Oh, man. So, yeah, it's an interesting, interesting read because it's come comes from the trucking side of it where the, you know, the actual trucking companies and then the technologists and it's it's going to be interesting because what they're purporting is what they think that it's going to be.

You're just going to have total automation and like two big players like Walmart and Amazon will be going head to head with trucking. Makes sense. Which totally makes sense. Those are the two biggest, you know, shippers right now. Yep. So we'll see how that goes and plays out. But, you know, it's interesting that the truckers are taking the long road with it.

And I just want to say history's not on your side there, guys. It really isn't. No, I'd start learning Perl right now. Well, maybe not Perl. OK, maybe not. I hope not Perl. Anything but Perl. Yeah, we want to be the last two people left that can still do it.

I know. Yeah. Job security. Oh, man. So the here comes the big batch here. The DMV has added NVIDIA to their list of companies that are allowed to test autonomous vehicles in California. Guess who's not on that list?

My old desktop PC. Yeah, exactly. Your computer will be able to drive you to the store. Nice. I can just sit on top of my old desktop. Yeah. Yeah. So in a little bit, we'll be talking about Uber because they're not on the list. But there's some new interesting tech that's coming out there.

The U.S. government might start to mandate that cars actually speak to each other to avoid crashes in the future. I'm down with this. It's a little bit weird privacy wise, but we're already screwing the pooch on privacy left, right and center. I've seen some white papers on this for a long time now.

The idea that you would just kind of basically have local level Wi-Fi that's just pinging everybody around you so you don't crash. Yeah. Yeah. What could go wrong there? Everything. Of course, everything. Yes. No, that's not a brick building. That's that's some foam foam rubber that you can just crash into and have a nap.

Yeah. Well, I mean, outside of the fact that how easy would it be to go ahead and hack the Wi-Fi system? And basically, you could just sit there in your house, project out and make cars do drastic U-turns or you fear off to the right suddenly for no reason other than, hey, I figured out how to do this.

Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be encrypted and it's probably not going to be Wi-Fi, hopefully. Encrypting solves everything, doesn't it? Let's get to the security segment. Well, yeah, we'll see. They say that they're supposed to only have like, you know, a 300 foot radius for the cars. But of course, anybody with a Pringles can and a Wi-Fi set up can tell you that's that's not really realistic.

No, and depending on speeds, 300 feet ain't enough anyways. No, it's not at all. No, it's yeah. You need you need full stopping distance at, you know, 120 miles an hour. Exactly. Plus, you know, room to room to breathe. Well, I mean, isn't that that's also one of the supposed big pluses of automation and things like that is we can drastically increase road speeds because we're no longer worried about the the human element.

Right. Right. No. And if you know instantly that the car in front of you is stopping, so there's some math that goes along with that, like that car, the braking distance for that car has to factor into your braking distance. So you're both slowing down. It's not like you're going to have a wall in front of you. So they, you know, they're slowing down.

But if they have better brakes than you do, then the math goes out the window on that one. Yeah. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting how that plays out. But yeah, no, I think that there needs to be standards for this inner intercommunication between automobiles for sure. And I think the just the basic so I can see what five cars in front of me see, you know, if we're going.

So if a car five cars up hits a deer, then everybody slows down to avoid proportionally. Well, thank God the tech industry has a long history of adopting standards. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's a great thing about the newest standard. Then, you know, somebody will make a new one tomorrow. I'm glad my Betamax car didn't screw up too much with your VHS car over there.

Yeah. Make sure your NVIDIA PC doesn't get in the way. You've got your NVIDIA in my beta. You've got your beta in my NVIDIA. Yeah. Good times. Well, Google self-driving car project finally got a name. I see. I've seen this name. Would you like to would you like to tell us what that name is?

Well, when I initially looked at it, I thought it said Wham-O. And I was like, that's a horrible name. I'm like, well, isn't that trademarked from the 70s from the Frisbees and all that stuff? Yeah. But no, it's Waymo. So, you know, friggin horribly stupid name.

Um, yeah. So they've been doing this for about, what, seven years now. Um, they are still just saying they will bring robot controlled vehicles to the masses within the next few years. Again, I think you're right, Jason. I think we're two, three years out and except for Uber, which did it yesterday. But we'll get to that.

Um, yeah. Uh, so the Google funky looking car, it's a pod like car with no steering wheel and brake pads. Uh, it drove a legally blind passenger around neighborhoods in Austin, Texas without another human in the vehicle, which marked the first time one of the project's cars had given a passenger a ride.

Uh, so there you go. And now it's got a name and its name is Waymo and that's a lame name. And I love that. Let's put a blind person in for the test just in case. Well, you know, if something goes wrong, he won't know what. We can blame it on something else. Yeah. Uh, speaking of blaming on something else.

Yes. Ubers, self-driving cars have expanded to San Francisco. Um, my friend Jordan actually saw one the other day when he was driving up to the city and he's like, Hey, there's a self-driving Uber in town. And this was before it was really announced like a couple of days before it was announced. And, uh, yep, they threw some cars in town and then the first day caught on video going through, going through a red light.

Ran a red light. I also love the fact that Uber just continuing with what they do all the time. They don't give a fuck about anything. Uh, they just went ahead and did this even though it wasn't legal. Right. And the DMV is just going, uh, you guys can't do that. That's why NVIDIA actually even a car, a graphics card company who is on the ropes right now has gone out and got approved to do this.

And you and your billions of dollars can't take 15 fucking minutes to fill out a form so you can be approved. You assholes. That's Uber. That's Uber in a nutshell. Yes. And even better. They're saying they're throwing the driver under the bus on this one. They're saying, uh, it wasn't under autonomous control.

And then, and they're trying to spin this saying, see, this is why we need autonomous cars because if it was under autonomous control, it wouldn't have blown the red light, but we had a human behind the wheel and he had to pee. So he had to get over to the Chipotle and take a leak. So he ran the red light. Yeah. I don't buy that at all.

Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't matter either way. It's like, yeah, you're, you're Uber ran a red light. And, uh, if you're, if you're going to have these things be autonomous on the streets, you need to make sure you have to have a sign outside that says under autonomous control or under human control.

So people know, or as the DMV politely states, we have a permit process in place to ensure public safety as this technology is being tested. So get in line. Yep. Like everybody else. And get your damn permit. But Uber doesn't really care about this stuff. So Uber, the Airbnb of the road, the Airbnb of the road.

That's exactly right. Uber is currently also being sued by, well, one of their own who got fired by Uber because he whistle blew. So yeah, his name is a word Spangenberg. It's a good name. Spangenberg.

Yes. He's a, he's 45 years old and he's, he says he dealt with age discrimination, shocking, as well as retaliation, retaliation for blowing the whistle on alleged security lapses and other problems at the company. He was fired 11 months after he started. Um, he would basically blew the whistle on the fact that Uber was using its God view, which is literally what they call it.

Um, basically to track high profile people, politicians, celebrities, even personal acquaintances. So people that had access to God view were tracking their exes. Um, I believe Beyonce was one of those, one of the, uh, celebrities specifically, uh, targeted.

I'm like, what's Beyonce doing riding an Uber? Yeah, seriously. When you have gazillions of dollars, what the hell are you doing in an Uber? Anyways? Uh, so yeah. So a bunch of employees, again, Uber is throwing the employees under the bus here saying that they never authorized this sorts of things and it's the employees faults and we're not going to fire them though.

We're just going to fire the guy that told people about it. Yeah. The fun thing about this is we had the same conversation about the NSA. How long ago? Well, like two years ago when the Snowden leaks came out, we're like, oh yeah, the NSA employees are watching their ex-girlfriends and doing all this other stuff. Yes. Uh, and so if the NSA can't figure out how to stop people from abusing this power, then how do you think a private company who doesn't give a fuck about anything is going to handle that?

They don't care. Exactly. They don't care. What we are continually to learn, what we're basically just continuing to learn is that absolute power corrupts people absolutely. So God view, shockingly, corrupted people. Yeah. There you go. So not surprising.

As somebody who has worked in the tech industry for long enough and has always had access to the database. And we've always abused it. Every fucking time. Period. Yeah. That's, you know, when you're a kid and you're a programmer, you have fun.

That's exactly. Yeah. How many women actually signed up for this? Let's see. Hmm. Well, no. Many of them live around here. No, my, my, still my favorite one was putting a George Bush impeachment on the homepage of Technorati. Nice. And then it became a trending topic and then it got into the headline news.

So there you go. It's easy enough to spin this stuff. It is. That's how we got our new president. So, uh, the AI winter isn't coming, uh, according to the MIT technology review. Um, apparently what usually happens with AI is it gets a hot streak, then it cools down and then it gets a hot streak, then it cools down.

And they're saying, nope, it's hot. Now it is ignited and we cannot get rid of it. So that's because we also can't seem to define it. That's true too. Yeah. When something is amorphous and, uh, undefined, you can pretty much say it is what any, whatever it is, you can have your Pearl script that is just a simple, uh, simple chat bot become AI.

If your marketing team dubs it so. All of a sudden, yes, all of a sudden pattern recognition is AI. Mm-hmm. Pretty much. Yeah. So, uh, back to Amazon for a second. Yes. Uh, the workers that, uh, at their Fife warehouse in Scotland apparently decide to get some tents and stay outside in the freezing cold instead of going home at night because it costs too much to go home.

Whoa. Yeah. Uh, so the, uh, workers in the warehouse allegedly have to pay around $12 and 69 cents a day to take the company arranged buses to work in back and they only make $9 and 33 cents an hour. So it, it costs quite a bit of money.

Yeah. Um, and you know, the interesting thing is I'm pretty sure in Silicon Valley, those buses you don't pay for if you're working at Amazon. So, or actually Amazon's in Seattle, but, uh, the Yahoo buses and the Google buses, those guys just kind of run. So why can't Amazon just pay for the damn bus?

Yeah. Or strap your workers to a drone and fly them home. Fly them in. You can test things out there. Why not? Yeah. Uh, anyway. Yeah. Another, uh, another Amazon horror story from one of their warehouses. Yeah.

Uh, magic leap. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the super promise technology that was going to revolutionize augmented reality is apparently way behind the ball. And Microsoft with their hollow lens is, uh, actually doing much better. Oh boy.

Yeah. This comes from the verge and, uh, that's great. You know, as long as somebody's kicking ass with it, everybody I know that's tried the hollow lens says it's pretty bad ass. So, yeah, I really want to check it out. And you and I have been talking about how Microsoft has really hit their stride right now, apparently anyways.

So if they're hitting something else out of the park, that's fantastic. I definitely want to try it. I'm, I'm well into AR. I think it's fantastic. Uh, here's the deal. Just like any movie that doesn't screen itself for critics before it opens. If we've seen nothing from your technology for three years now, there ain't nothing there.

Well, they have been about, you know, four or five months ago, they actually started doing the in, you know, in device demos and passing them off to us. And we actually talked about it on the show and we had a couple in our show notes and I've seen a couple other demos that came out of it and it looked pretty cool. Yeah. In a very, very controlled environment.

Exactly. Very controlled. So we don't know what it would be like in a normal, uh, you know, just, uh, the wild west of the real world. Yeah. Well, and I do know one thing. Um, if, if your PR department is debailing on you, you're, you're dead because, uh, that's the easiest job in the world for, for most of these tech companies is to run PR and their chief PR executive, uh, just bailed on them.

So I have a feeling they're in trouble. Oh, yeah. That's never a good sign for a tech company. No, because when you're dealing with vaporware, that's the greatest job for PR. They can just make shit up all day. Yeah. They just make crap up the whole time and get paid a ton of money for it. And, uh, when they start jumping ship on you, you're in trouble.

Yeah. Fun times. Oh, sorry. Magic leap. Hopefully they will make a leap that, uh, is not so magic and get us something that we can play with. Um, but you now able to play with Instagram's live video. Yay. Oh, joy.

Another live video streaming service. This one, once the broadcast are finished, they're kaput. They cannot be replayed. They are gone off into the ether. They are no more. They have ceased to be. Existing only on Instagram's personal service forever and ever. So they're not gone.

Or anybody that had their phone attached to their computer and was screen crapping, screen screen crapping, screen capping the whole thing. Yeah. I already don't look at Instagram stories. I'm not going to be looking at Instagram's live video. If I have a friend that actually does Facebook live, I unfriend them.

I don't care. I've actually enjoyed some of my friends, Facebook live. And I did try one of the Instagram live video things. Seth from the Graham life podcast did one right when it first came out. And Seth put a shirt on is all I got to say. And, uh, you know, and here's why I don't do that.

There you go.

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Hello, gentlemen. Hello. Good to be back. We preemptively told you to go away last week. I know. I know. Way to make a guy feel wanted. No, it's good to be back one more time before the new year. And it's a good thing, actually, because there's lots to talk about this week.

Oh, there is. Billions and billions of things. Oh, gosh. Yeah. If only Carl Sagan were still around. Yeah. Yahoo has announced that more than a billion customer accounts were compromised way back in August of 2013.

And this is distinct from the breach of 500 million accounts that the company disclosed back in September of this year. Okay. Let me stop you right there. They had a billion users. That's no. I don't believe that Yahoo ever had a billion users. It is interesting.

I mean, I actually looked it up today. There are, you know, seven and a half billion people on the planet. So but you figure between people having multiple accounts, businesses having accounts, it's plausible. They had a very popular client for a long time, which required you to sign up for Yahoo, which is the only reason I ever signed up for Yahoo.

Okay. So theoretically, they could have had a billion people on Yahoo. Yes. How did they screw that up? I don't know. I wonder. Right. I don't know. But maybe a CEO that's getting paid millions upon millions per year might have done something about. No, no.

No, never mind. Well, I mean, Yahoo was, you know, historically known for for underspending on security. So, you know, not surprising that this this might have affected them, especially given the half a billion accounts that were that were disclosed as being breached earlier in the year.

But Yahoo did confirm that the user data is genuine. They they don't know who did it. Of course, Yahoo is saying that it's a state sponsored actor. Of course. And, you know, saying that it's probably Russia.

Info Armor, which is a well-known cybersecurity company, they reached out to us and said that they aren't sure that they believe it's a state sponsored hack. They think that it's probably an Info Armor investigated the previous Yahoo hack. They're saying that it's probably criminals doing it, you know, for all the reasons the criminals do these sorts of hacks.

It's a 400 pound hacker in New Jersey. Yeah. But they also pointed out that when it comes to Russia and criminal hacking, that often it is a distinction without a difference between, you know, state sponsored and and, you know, Russian mobsters, for example.

That there's a lot of back and forth between those groups. And when it's convenient, they have been known to help each other out. So, I think the real take home with this, though, for the listeners is obviously if you have a Yahoo account, what experts are recommending is that you go in, you log into that account, delete any emails or any other information that you have in there.

If you did answer any of the personal questions, they're saying go in and change them to just, you know, something nonsensical because these, you know, these records are often don't go away even if they say they've been deleted. Even if you delete it, it doesn't mean that the record goes away.

It's also brought up a really good conversation about is it the time, have we reached the time when these personal questions need to go away? Because, or at least that you shouldn't answer truthfully to them. These questions are designed to be something that's easy for your average person to remember who's not, you know, who's not keeping a database of all of their passwords for all the different places.

So, you know, the history of it makes sense, but it seems as though we may have gotten past the point where that's really useful. And obviously, if you're reusing these, if you're answering them truthfully on more than one place, then perhaps it's time to go in and just start changing them to random answers.

Um, you know, did like it could treat it like a password, you know, a random string of characters is the best way to go. And the one thing that, I mean, obviously everybody sign up for one password.com. They support the show. We love them. Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's a, we, we posted a link to, um, the story from the verge about this, uh, about this hack.

I also posted a story, uh, on the cyber wire site. We did a nice little rundown, a gathering up all of the, uh, the information we got from people all over the industry about, you know, what it is, uh, who it affects and what you should do about it. So, um, it's a nice little, uh, more, more, um, little industry insider, um, uh, tech discussion of what's going on here.

So there's a link to that as well. And that would be at grumpy old geeks.com slash one 90. There you go. There you go. Um, moving on, uh, interesting new ransomware came out, uh, in the past week that sort of evolved to, uh, become a real thing. This is one of the most insidious things I've ever seen in my life.

You know, it's genius. It's game theory, like brought to ransomware. It's awesome. You know, it kind of is, uh, in a, in a, in an evil kind of way. Um, you know, just when you think people couldn't get any more despicable, uh, this ransomware called popcorn time, which, uh, has nothing to do with the popcorn time, um, you know, movie piracy and downloading app, uh, this is kind of at a black mirror.

It's like, okay, we're going to let you off, but you have to infect your mom and your grandmother. Right. Right. So the way popcorn time works is, you know, it's, it's like any ransomware gets on your system. Uh, it starts encrypting things and it pops up a message that says, if you don't pay us, you know, we will start, uh, erasing things.

Or, you know, if you want to get your stuff back, you have to usually send us, uh, some, some amount of Bitcoin in order to get your stuff back. What's particularly bad about popcorn time, where the innovation is with popcorn time is that, uh, you can, if you basically read out two of your friends, infect two of your friends and two of your friends pay the ransom, they will unlock your files for free.

So evil. So evil. I kind of, I kind of like it though. I'm just like, that's, that's pretty clever. You got to give them points for, for being clever. Um, you know, it, it is not, uh, we, we don't, we don't know how successful it's going to be.

Um, this doesn't seem to be a particularly sophisticated bit of ransomware in terms of how it's been coded. And, um, so we'll see if, uh, someone comes up with a crack for it. Um, but there haven't been, uh, stories yet of it really circulating widely in the wild.

So we're going to have to stay tuned with this one, but, uh, you know, interesting innovation. Hey man, everybody's got to, at least they're trying something new, you know, at least they're, at least they're moving things, moving things forward. They pivoted, they pivoted from the old school model of just, ah, here's a gun.

Give us your money. So now it's, uh, now it's like, oh yeah, here we go. Let's just, uh, yeah, you know, rat out your friends just to, just to get a few more Bitcoin. That's how it works. Yeah, Jason, you, yeah, Jason, you had some followup on the, uh, the San Francisco Muni, uh, uh, rant, uh, hacker.

Yes, this is genius. Uh, a security researcher who wishes to remain nameless, hacked back at the, uh, the hacker who hacked Muni and he did it by guessing their security questions. Go figure. We're just talking about that. Exactly. So he went in and, and, uh, got two email accounts from the person who actually hacked the Muni and took over his email accounts.

So good on you. And of course he wishes to remain nameless because there's apparently some smart people in, in, uh, computer security out there. So if you don't take credit, you don't become a target. Also, it's still illegal to pack somebody back. So, yeah. Well, there's that.

There is that. But if, if the email accounts are housed in Russia, then is that still illegal? Well, I don't know. Does the bear shit in the woods? That is a, that is a good question. So this one's kind of interesting. Ford has recently published a new patent and, uh, people are kind of on the fence about this, freaking it out.

Uh, it's about crowdsourcing your, your cameras in your car, your new autonomous driving car or anything with a camera to be able to do license plate sniffing, to see other cars around you and get vehicle identification for, uh, people in the cloud around you, the road cloud, as it were.

Um, it's a, it's a patent. It doesn't mean they're going to implement it. And they're saying it's mainly for, uh, you know, theft. So it's like, okay, if you're, if your Ford F-150 was stolen and somebody else picks it up in their escort, uh, it'll call the police and tell you where you're at.

This also goes into things like, uh, Amber Alerts and, uh, you know, that kind of thing where it's like trying to find stolen property. Now, do you really think that, uh, this kind of patent is a good thing or a bad thing, guys? Well, uh, I think it's an interesting thing.

It got me thinking about, um, you know, the thing I think about with, with cameras, pretty much every car these days comes with a rear facing camera, you know, a backup camera. Um, so it got me thinking about, you know, how is the signal from that camera integrated into the rest of the computing devices in the car?

What does that pass through? Is there a way with most new cars, well, many new cars coming with, uh, internet connectivity built in, um, how is that camera separated from the connection to the internet? Interesting, you know, interesting thing to think about.

I don't know the answer to that, but it's something to think about. Um, it also, you know, my, my thought experiment kind of goes to what happens when like you look at all the video that they have out from Tesla's right now and all the cameras and what the cameras are seeing. What happens when they actually, you know, start piping that video into facial recognition software and license plate data and everything else.

You, you, you basically have a global surveillance system that's on the road 24 seven, always gathering data. Um, who needs those drones? Exactly. We're doing it to ourselves. Um, and, and it could just be a checkbox on the, you know, the terms of service.

It's like, Oh, uh, you know, like when you start up your new Mac, it's like, would you like to send crash data to Apple? It's like, would you like to send, you know, data back to Tesla from your cameras? It's like, Oh, so then when there's an Amber alert or, you know, there's a bank robbery in the neighborhood, then they just put out a bolo on this face.

Let's go find this face. And all the cars driving around, then you are, you are literally in the land of minority report at that time. Yep. Well, and I could imagine a company saying, Hey, you know, we will, uh, we'll give you a free internet connection for your car. If you will give us access to your car's exterior cameras.

Yep. Or free coupons to Starbucks to get that fancy new Christmas cup or the realistic one, which already exists. The insurance companies. Yeah. Let us, let us have access to that data and we'll lower your standard rate. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So there's all sorts of things that are going to happen with this.

When we have cameras in every car, we already have the problem with security cameras in every home, uh, and getting in what, yeah, what happens when you're, uh, when your, uh, Ford Focus is now part of the Mirai botnet. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it really is a shifting notion of what constitutes privacy and a reasonable expectation of privacy or even ownership.

I mean, I've always gotten upset with these things when, when I know there's a camera on my car. Why can't I access that data? Where's that data being stored? What's it going to? Why can't I see it? Why isn't there a login for my car? Cause they don't want to give you one. I know exactly.

So anyway, yeah, I just thought that was a, an interesting thought experiment based on this new patent. And then, you know, a lot of the times these, these car companies put these patents in just so nobody else can use them. It's like, Oh, everybody's going to think of this at some point. Let's get a break on it. And, uh, so then it's in our portfolio.

So then we can charge everybody else a nickel when they put it into their car. Yeah. It's interesting. Did you guys check out the Snowden Q and A with Jack Dorsey this week? They did it on Periscope. I did not. I did not. Uh, I have not had time to check that out.

What, uh, what's your take on it? I watched about 15 minutes of it and it was, it was a good Q and A. I want to go back and watch it again. It's a, it's about an hour long. Uh, the link will be in the show notes. Um, they've got a pretty good interface on the web. If you want to go and watch it with, uh, in, if you watch it in the embed from Periscope, it's square, obviously.

But what is nice about the Periscope website is they actually show you the widescreen version so you can actually see everything that's going on. Um, otherwise most of the time when Jack Dorsey's on camera, he's cut off because he's off to the right. It's like letterboxing in the old days. So you can see like Putin off to the side.

Yeah. There you go. Uh, no, the link will be in the show notes. I definitely thought it was interesting because especially since we talked about earlier in the show, the fact that Twitter was not invited to the, uh, the, you know, the Trump estates for the big meeting at the board table because there weren't enough seats, but, uh, maybe Jack was busy talking to Snowden and, uh, not building the Muslim registry.

So another fine, another fine, uh, pickle you've got Twitter into there, Jack. So, uh, last one I've got is 150 filmmakers are asking Nikon and Canon to actually encrypt the data that is being saved on the SD cards.

This is very smart. I never even thought about this until I was reading this article. It's like when Laura Poitras was sitting there filming Snowden, somebody could have broken in and grabbing the, grab the SD cards and had all of the footage. But if you can password protect those cards as they're actually saving the data, you know, put in your own like PGP key or whatever kind of security key for the encryption, then, you know, it, it, it becomes as, as Dave Bittner would say, a sticky wicket.

Or at the very least you could put in your mother's maiden name in the street you grew up on. That's your porn card. You know, I know I have friends who are, who are, uh, camera people who travel around and do these sorts of things. And I know it's common practice to, um, to basically have a set of decoy cards in the camera while you're traveling around.

Um, you know, like if you've shot some footage of, of anything, any, any card that's been used, you put that somewhere hidden. Um, but then you put decoy cards in the actual cameras. So if you have a run in with anyone, you know, in a foreign country or whatever, they confiscate your camera, they look in the camera, they go, aha, we have the cards and, uh, but they don't actually, um, this is an interesting thing.

You know, it actually got me digging around. I did a, some quick searching to find out if there were any existing like SD cards that have hardware encryption built in, you know, and just sort of puzzling through, like, how could you do that? If you could, if you could handle the encryption on the card rather than having it need to be somehow integrated with the hardware of the camera and, you know, not necessarily easy to do.

So does it exist? Well, it does. I found a couple of things. I found a story from 2011 about, um, Panasonic, Samsung, SanDisk, Sony, and Toshiba who are hoping to provide hardware encryption on SD cards for the purposes of distributing movies.

But it doesn't, doesn't seem like anything came of that. Um, I did find a company, uh, that does sell a, uh, micro SD card that, um, has built in hardware encryption and it's designed to go in your, uh, you know, galaxy S, um, phone, um, and you know, encrypt, it sort of does double duty.

It'll, it'll encrypt data on the phone, but it also allows the phone, there's software you can put on the phone that uses the encryption hardware on the chip. So you can scramble your voice while you're talking on the phone. So you can, you can have your own version of scream ready to go.

This all seems redundant as the galaxies already have self-destruct capability. True that. Zing. Yeah. So the only, yeah, the only thing I'm thinking about with the encrypted SD cards is, you know, you're dealing with the file system that the, the actual camera is writing to.

So there would have to be a microchip that actually takes in the data and transcodes it to an encrypted format and back again. So if you're like trying to view your images from, you know, so there has to be some, some communication layer. There's some API that the camera knows.

So I don't think you could buy a card out of the gate that is quote unquote encrypted, even if it had some kind of microchip in it that the camera manufacturer doesn't have an interface to. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking the same sorts of things. I was thinking, could you make the card, you know, right only when you put it in the camera, you know, and the card would have some kind of logic on it that would sort of, you know, trick the camera into seeing the things that the camera needs to see.

But every time you want to look at your video of Snowden, you just took, it shows you pictures of kittens. Right. Exactly. Well, it's sort of, sort of like that, you know, you wouldn't be able to play the footage back in the camera, but if, if security was your top priority, then that's just something you'd have to live with.

I think the best, the best, the best thing that we could get here is the camera company stepping up and actually having encrypted file systems on the camera. No, absolutely. Makes sense. Absolutely. It seems, it seems like a no brainer. It seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do. So yeah, why not? I think it's a good thing.

They should do it. Yeah. You don't think it's that hard to do, but have you ever seen the interfaces on consumer electronics? Come on. Seriously. Yeah. I guess I should say there's no technical, technical reasons why they couldn't do it. Yeah. No doubt.

Yeah. Imagine putting in your, your password into, uh, into the back of a camera, you know, with a little, the little joystick wheel on the back of a camera trying to, yeah. Fun, good times. Yeah. It's kind of like, kind of like using an Xbox remote to put in your, your Microsoft ID.

It takes about six hours, but when you're done, you only have to do it seven more times because it can't figure out how to save. Right. Exactly. Exactly. All right, guys. Uh, one other thing I want to plug, uh, today is, uh, we made a funny Star Wars video. Uh, we, uh, we took some footage from, uh, Oh, we'll be the judge if it's funny or not.

I'm telling you, my 10 year old thought it was hilarious. So there you go. Uh, so if you like Star Wars and, uh, of course you're, you're a monster if you don't, uh, please, uh, check out, uh, this video.

We, we, we think it's pretty fun and, uh, sort of a celebration of, uh, the new movie and also, uh, a little lesson about, uh, cyber security. I'll ask my date if, if they think it's funny. All right. Fair enough. So Bam Bam talks. You guys are so slow.

You guys are so slow. You don't even remember last week. Oh, right, right. Your date. Right. Cause you're, cause you're dating yourself. There you go. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks guys.

Uh, and I, I think, am I, are we actually done for the rest of the year? We're done. Right. This is, uh, this is it for 2016. So, uh, good riddance to it. Oh man. All right. Say hi to Bam Bam for us. Yes. So on to 2017. Good talking to everybody.

At the library. I am, uh, totally happy to, uh, admit when I'm full of crap and I've lied about what I'm going to do and what I'm not going to do.

I said, I wasn't going to read any of the new Dune books. A couple of months ago, I reviewed one of the new Dune books. Uh, I also said I wasn't going to read any more of the Anne Rice, uh, vampire chronicles. And here I am having just finished the latest Anne Rice vampire chronicles. Oh, so you're 15 years old again. Okay. How's that new Lestat book?

It was actually pretty good. Nobody is more surprised by this than me. No, trust me. I am. I thought it was going to be a stinking piece of crap. Uh, cause Anne Rice has gone on her own weird ass journey over the years.

Um, she became a Jesus freak for a while, was only writing books about Jesus, then kind of became disenchanted with religion as one ought to, uh, and veered back into the vampire territory rather horribly. Um, they were pretty bad books for a while, but they started to pick up again.

I really did enjoy this one. Um, if you were a fan of the original series and kind of got into it a bit and, uh, disappeared for a while, this might be your good re-entry point. Um, it was well-written. A lot of the old favorite characters were there. Um, I was worried because it, you know, here we go.

Prince Lestat and the realms of Atlantis. This already sounds like it's going to get ridiculous. That sounds right out of the gate. That is the stupidest title. It's like, oh, come on. I know. I know. Yet. The next book, Lestat in space.

I'd probably read that too. You would. You're such a mark. Oh, anyways, it wasn't bad. It's somewhat of a return to form. I really did enjoy it. It wasn't over the top, uh, as how could you say it's not over the top?

You're talking about vampires in Atlantis. Come on. For a book about a vampire in Atlantis, it's not that over the top. And there you go. There's your show title. Oh, God. I can't do anymore. I'm laughing too hard about the ridiculousness of this.

But it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. I'm sticking with it. Software, apps, and gadgets. The Wynn hotels in Las Vegas are going to equip 4,748 hotel rooms with the Amazon Echo.

Steve Wynn says, it's seamlessly delicious. Now, I still have problems with my Echo here at home. Yes. A lot. Uh, it was turning out. I was, what was I watching last night on TV? I was watching something.

Uh, oh, I was watching the Louis CK concert. And it kept triggering my Echo over and over. So I had to go in the other room and turn the mute button on to shut it up. It kept saying, I'm sorry, I didn't get that. I'm sorry, I didn't get that. I'm like, it's a fucking joke. You're not supposed to get it.

You're, you're, you're not AI. You don't laugh yet. But. Right. Well, I mean, this is a, this is a genius marketing move for Amazon. Oh, yeah. By far. I mean, it gets people somewhat used to the idea of it. It'll introduce a whole bunch of people to, to the Echo that would never have thought of getting it.

So, fantastic move for them. So many problems with it. I mean, I can't even imagine the privacy and security nightmare that must be involved, especially if they're doing what they say they're kind of going to do in this article, which is you'll be able to control everything in the room with the Echo.

That means a lot of IOT stuff going on, which means a lot, a lot of security concerns. Yes. The, the attack surface is massive on this one. And. Yeah. The other interesting thing is it's, it's going to be recording everything that's said in every hotel room constantly.

Well, I mean, you know, there's the privacy aspect of that, not just with you and I owning them in our house, but when you have it in 5,000 hotel rooms in Vegas. Yeah. What happens in Vegas? Stays in Seattle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon brunette.

19 years old. Room 256. Stat. Exactly. Yeah. There's some, there's some weird stuff going on in here. I mean, I applaud the idea, but I don't, it's not there yet, especially in terms of privacy and security. I mean, I seriously doubt this is going to be available straight out of the gate, but I mean, in the article, they're talking about guests will be able to verbally control every aspect of lighting temperature, the audio visual components of a hotel room, et cetera, et cetera.

Which I can't even do in my damn house yet. So I doubt it. I think they're blowing a lot of fucking Vegas smoke up people's asses here. I think they're just going to dump an echo in everybody's room. Yeah, they're going to do that. And the thing about it, too, is like I said, the fact that we made a conscious decision to put these in our homes.

You know, when I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation. I do not want any, I don't want a microphone in my room. I just don't. I think that there should actually be some legal requirement to inform people of what they're walking into and, you know, teach them.

That should be part of the deal. There should be a sheet of paper saying, by the way. Yeah, there's got to be a release. Everything is being recorded. If you want to turn it off, here's how you do it. Yeah, because you and I are, we're savvy enough to know, okay, press the mute button. We don't even know if the mute button actually works. We just know the light turns on.

We still don't know if things are being sent to Amazon when the mute button's on. By the way, if I want it off, I don't do that. I unplug the damn thing. That's probably the wisest move, yeah. I don't know if you'll be able to unplug it in your hotel room because then maybe you'll steal it. The Amazon Echo, the new towel.

Oh, I didn't even think about that. Everybody walks off with their Echoes. There must be like a market in like creating some sort of lockable device to stick it into now. Yeah, it must be, must be. Well, anyways. Yeah. If you want a free Echo, go book a room at the win.

There we go. Stay for the view. Leave with the Echo. So I got my DG, everybody says DGI, but it's DJI. Osmo Mobile this week. I don't even know what it is. So it's a handheld gimbal for your smartphone.

Oh, goody. So you can take video of your puppy. People making viral videos walking up and down Venice Boardwalk. Fantastic. Yes, it's pretty much exactly what it is. And, and I have the selfie stick attachment that comes today.

You are such a loser. Well, here's the deal. I'm working in Final Cut a lot now, learning, learning video and stuff. And like, take a video. It's a better way to learn than videos of your dog. Exactly. But I would like smooth videos of my dog. But there's, there's actually one feature on here that's really good.

If you're doing, if you're like doing walk around the room type of stuff or doing demos and things like that, it will, it has face tracking on it. So you can put it in a stand or on a tripod and on the app, actually have it recognize your face and it will follow you anywhere in the room.

It's really cool. Okay. But for the most part, it's, uh, it's really good for just like smoothing out handheld video. And it works with my iPhone seven. Looks great. Uh, I just started playing with it a little bit this morning and a little bit the other day, but, uh, for 300 bucks, the technology is incredible for 300 bucks.

And it's a write-off, but check out the video. It's the, the, the actual amount that this thing can stabilize is pretty crazy. You know, these things used to be thousands of dollars years ago and now they're 300 bucks and you can hold them in your hand. I think it's neat.

Neat. It's neat. I'm so thrilled about how professional all the videos of all those douchebag skateboarders are going to look now. Oh, it's going to be fantastic. Yay, man. As soon as the snow melts, I'll be out there with my skater friends taking videos of them too. Okay. Joy. Yep. You don't have to watch them. You can unsubscribe.

I will. I'm sure you will. And if you're looking for something for, uh, you know, that, that survivalist that has everything. Oh boy. I recommend the flash torch or the flash torch mini. These are $200 flashlights. Uh, the flash torch mini clocks in at 2300 lumens.

Now that's a lot. Or as the marketing blurb says, use this power to guide your way home, light a fire, or even fry an egg. Why illuminate when you can incinerate. Exactly. Fucking insane people.

This thing, this is less than what I paid for my flashlight, which is only like 180 lumens a couple of years ago. I mean, granted my flashlight is pretty damn sturdy and it's going to last forever, but 2300 is ridiculous. And this is, can you fry an egg with your flashlight?

No, I can't. That's what I'm saying. And if you want to go the bigger route, you can get the flash torch, which is 4,100 lumens. Unfortunately, it's out of stock right now, but it's only $200. It wasn't out of stock the other day. I should have got it then instead of my gimbal. Then I could have fried some eggs and post them on YouTube with shaky video.

But yeah, they actually do show this thing starting a fire and, and cooking an egg on the website. But for 200 bucks, that's a pretty bad-ass flashlight. I gotta say. What could possibly go wrong when somebody finds this and has no idea it's that powerful? Well, yeah, the thing is, I originally got it for walking around San Francisco because it is basically weaponized light.

You flash somebody with that. You can burn that man poo. That's it. When, when, when the end times come, I can just gather up all the man poo and start a, start a kiln to start making bricks again. Oh man. So, uh, I have a little bit of software here.

Yep. Askjelly.com. Yes. This comes from Biz Stone, I believe. Uh, so. You don't remember me reviewing this like about a hundred episodes ago? No, because they, they, they pivoted. This is the new version. Okay. Yes, this is the new version. And I, I like to call it Quora for really dumb people who can't Google.

That doesn't really have the kind of, it doesn't flow off the tongue. No, they're saying jelly is a new kind of search engine without ads that finds people with experience in the area of your question and delivers helpful answers directly to you. When should I use jelly? Use jelly anytime. When you've exhausted researching the web and you feel awkward asking your social media friends, then you might want to try asking jelly.

Or if you're at a party and don't want to be that person on your phone, you can ask quickly and get back to talking with people. Jelly will let you know when you have an answer. Or just stay on the phone and have the answer already. I have gotten so many stupid fucking questions from this thing.

I mean, they're beyond belief. And it's the other one the other day. Who invented the radio? Google it. You dumb fuck. Marconi invented the radio, by the way. But, uh, if you can't Google, you, you, apparently you have to ask jelly.

Okay. Well, uh, yeah, uh, interesting pivot. I don't care. No, no. I, it was fun at the beginning because I went into the podcasting group and I was answering questions and then I'm like, eh, you know what? Fuck you. Pay me. Yeah. I'll answer all your questions. Or I could get paid for my expertise. What I can't get, what I can't use that money that I get paid for with my expertise is to buy some AirPods.

Still not here. I hear they're shipping. No. As of when? I don't know. I thought somebody said something about it yesterday. Okay. It might've been yesterday then, but yeah. I should ask jelly. Ask jelly. What am I getting my AirPods? Uh, the rumor is they've had manufacturing issues, uh, with these things because they're apparently hard to make.

Um, but yeah, not yet. I, now that I have a seven, I need these things soon and I need the little string to hold them together so I don't lose them. Uh, but my, the thunderbolt or I'm sorry, the lightning headphones that it came with already destroyed. The microphone doesn't work and I'm not going to go spend another 35 bucks on another pair of those when I want some Bluetooth headphones.

Yeah. That you're going to lose in a week. Yeah. I like the ones with the string, but I haven't found anybody that has a pair that they actually recommend. Do you know anybody that has Bluetooth earbuds that they recommend? Jelly. Oh, it's not a voice service. Okay. No.

Anyway. Yeah. So, so no AirPods yet. Uh, we'll review them in the new year. Maybe no AirPods. All right. Well, I found something that harkens back to the days of, uh, of early GOG podcasts and Jason's realm into the, the sexual technology area.

Um, my, it's the pulse, Jason. Now that I'm in a cold climate, I, I need a whole new way to warm my world. Okay. Yeah. Uh, basically this is the Keurig for your junk. Um, okay.

Would you like to elaborate a little bit more on that? Uh, basically it is a single pod pulse. They come in the, you order little pods of pulse and it's basically lube that comes out of a nice looking funky container that you put next to your bed and it's nice, warmed, pre-warmed, loose, pre-warmed lubricant pods.

Yes. Yes. What I, what, what I like about this thing. I mean, it's like in the old days. You, you'd pour it on and you rub your hands together. You go like wax, like, like Mr. Miyagi when he's getting ready to fix Daniel's leg. That's how you used to warm your lube. Right? Yeah.

Well, now you have a thing that does it with individual, uh, very expensive lubricant pods. Yeah. So this thing costs $249 and the, the lube tubes are, um, you get about nine squirts out of them. They're like 25 bucks. So I think it, whatever it worked out to about 49 or 40 some cents a squirt.

Um, but what I like about it is it's got mood lighting that you can change. So it's like a Virgin America flight for your vajayjay. I cannot wait until you can connect this to your echo. You know, it's coming. Alexa squirt me. Alexa, order me more lube pods.

I cannot believe this thing is not an internet of things device. It's, you know, cause I can't believe this thing wasn't kickstarted. I know. Well, man, yeah, maybe it was. And we're on the, it finally got past the shipping stage, but this, this, you know, we, we, we are on the cusp of the internet of junk.

That's what we're looking for in the future. I really like my Keurig for your junk line. Yeah, that was good too. Okay. Anyways, uh, I tried out some real software this week. Um, I tried a sauna, which is project management software. And I'm curious, how did you like it?

It's fine. Um, it does everything that you need to do. I'm not big on, on project management software. Um, I like just using things like Slack to keep track of everything. Uh, but I see how this would be useful for larger groups of people.

I generally, my projects are two, three, maybe five people tops. If I were working with a midsize thing, anything from like 10 to 30 people, I could see how this would be really useful. Um, it's all right. It's a little too, it's very basic.

It's very simple yet. It's got strange quirks on it. Like, uh, I couldn't figure out how to, how to close a task, like a task. How do I mark a task completed? I Googled this shit. I probably should have, I should have asked jelly. I might've got an answer in three months. It's, it's, it's weird, quirky things like, okay, you just click on the circle.

That is a little circle graphic that goes with the task. All right. But you have the hamburger menu on the right-hand side that has every other thing that you can do with a task. Why don't you also stick complete task in there? Uh, because not put that in the menu.

It was because this was written by Facebook people who, this is like something they used at Facebook and then they left Facebook and built this. Um, yeah, it's, it, you know, it's fine. I, I, I'm glad I learned it. I know how to use it. If I, you know, get involved with some sort of project in the future where say, say, do you know how to use a sauna?

I can say, yes, I do. But, uh, would I personally bust this out for anything that I'm doing? No. Yeah. I've used, I've also used Trello. I've used Meister task, which we still use for, uh, the other podcast I'm on and, uh, to attract guests and things like that and all this stuff.

It's like, eh, it's okay. I just don't like the, I just don't like the, the entire idea behind, you know, the cards and the workflow and all that stuff. It just doesn't, it doesn't grab me at all. I mean, granted, it's better than a Gantt chart, but anything is better than a Gantt chart.

As long as it, trust me, as long as it's not Microsoft project, we're all good there. I don't know. I think I'd almost rather use that than a sauna. Yeah, that's true. I think the guys at Omni, um, made a really good project management tool, but it was super expensive. We used it at, uh, this company BLT I was at for a while and we were starting to get it working and it worked really well.

It was gorgeous. It was much better than project and you could export to Gantt chart if you needed to have printouts for your weekly PR or sorry, HR meeting. The, yeah, well, a sauna is deceptively expensive as well. I mean, it's got the free, free level, which is, you know, if you're working with one or two people, fine, but the upsells are ridiculous before you know it, you're dropping $500 to $1,000 a month on it.

Oof. Yeah. That, that, that's painful. Yep. I'll just use Slack for free. Yep. That's, that works. Actually, we pay for Slack at my company because we have like 18 people on it, but yeah. And that actually adds up to a lot of money too. Slack is not cheap when you're, when you start to pay, it's like seven bucks a month per person.

All right. Yeah. That's not cheap. Nope. Not at all. So Skype, they are bringing real time translation to their phone calls now. And this article, I put this article in here. This comes from Mashable and it says even on old school rotary phones, like that's a stupid headline, but basically they mean landlines.

So you can call into Skype and it'll translate for you. I haven't tried this, but. How about you increase phone quality first? Yeah. Like maybe on this fucking call that we're on right now, that keeps getting dropped every six minutes. Exactly. But you know, you can translate it, but I'd rather just actually have a decent call.

Yeah. Yeah. I hate Skype pretty much is a universal. So anyway, if you're on a PC, you can try it out right now, but we're on a Mac and we can't. Yes. And we're coming up on the end of the year. This is probably our last podcast for this year, actually, I think.

So it's one of those times a year where people go, fuck it. I'm getting off social media and you know, this kind of thing where, and then they're back in February. But if you're serious about it, there's a nice link. We put a link in the show notes, Gizmodo came up with a field guide for how to start fresh on social media.

So there's some decent apps out there that'll let you go through your Facebook and Twitter and kind of pull all your posts. There's nothing that is just like one stop delete everything, which is a shame because that would be awesome. And who knows if anything is really deleted, which is the kind of bullshit about our social media stuff.

Yeah, it's not, it's not deleted. And I will say the Facebook post manager Chrome extension, I was almost late to the show because I was playing with it works really well. The only problem is you can only go by month. You can select a year and a month and then have it like, you know, either take out the likes or delete the posts or whatnot.

It works. It works really well and it's free. So give that a shot if you want to clear out the backlog. And I used to have to do this manually. So this is fantastic. Yeah, it's good that they're starting to make these things. It would be nice if you knew you're actually really deleting it for good. But, you know, it's good enough for now, I suppose.

I personally don't give a shit. It is what it is. But I know a lot of people out there would like something like this. So there's a nice guide up there for you to check out. Yeah, it's really well done. I appreciate that link. That was a good, good find. Well, thank you very much. And the other good find I had for the week is Lifehacker, again, talks about Privacy Badger.

They've come out with 2.0 and it is a more robust version of what they were doing before. It's actually, I may be trying Privacy Badger and switching over to this full time over like the hodgepodge of various things that I'm currently using. Really good review from Lifehacker on this about the speed that it's actually using and the full suite of tools that you're getting.

And so, you know, it's 100% free. So check it out. Here's a problem with that. I tried to check it out this morning. Every time I tried to install it, it said, this extension is corrupt. Try to delete and reinstall. I did that five times and I could not get it to install. So they're having issues with the launch over there.

So try it later. Link will be in the show notes. GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 190. And hopefully they'll get that sorted out because I definitely want to try it. I ran the first version, but. They're talking about it in the comments on the thread itself. So if you're in a hurry, it looks like somebody's had success.

OK, so we'll see. Yeah, but they were definitely having problems with the rollout. OK, good. Good to know. Good to know that they're on that because I like my free software to be on time and on point. Exactly. I don't want to pay for anything and I want it to work perfectly. Unlike Skype.

Anyway, one thing that does not work perfectly and is also seeing a mass exodus is Evernote. I am pissed I paid for it. Well, you know what? I canceled my I've been getting rid of Evernote for two months now, just weaning myself off of it and moving things around.

This new one is ridiculous. So they've they've killed the free tier down to two devices and the paid version is actually going up in price. Yep. So I canceled. I canceled my thing so it will not auto renew in January. So I got lucky. I got to pretty much run out the year on it.

I still have to use it for a few things. But yeah, I so you've got a link coming up and let's talk about that. Well, actually, first. So the big thing right now is their new privacy policy is going to allow employees to read your notes. You know why? Because they are going to start running your notes through machine learning algorithms.

Why? No idea. None whatsoever. Keep your hands off my notes. I don't want your machine learning anything about the stuff that I put in your product. You know what I want you to do? Shut up. Their reasoning behind it is we are going to use machine learning to increase the effectiveness of our product and make sure that people who are using it are getting the features that they want and need.

You know what your feature is? You save some fucking text. That's it. Shut up. And I don't want you tracking it and I don't want your people reading it. It's supposed to be fucking private. It's what I paid for. Their notes. Yeah, no, their notes. That's it. There's nothing.

Every time that you make a quote unquote improvement in your service, it gets worse. It has gotten worse since day one. When it started out, it was great. Then they added formatting. Nope. All I want are plain text notes. You can't just say save everything as plain text. You have to go in and quote unquote simplify formatting every time.

And it's still rich text. I want plain text. That's it. All I want. Well, can't do it anymore. Again, it's it's this is the God view version of Uber's God view for Evernote. The employees will be able to look at anything that you do with their stuff. They are saying it's an edge case when they have to do it because computers still aren't very good at actually learning things yet.

So we have to put in people to make sure that the computers read it right. Well, and they're also claiming that only a limited number of employees who have undergone background checks will be able to access user data. Bullshit. And that users will be able to encrypt their notes they consider sensitive to prevent employees from reading them. Another step that I don't want to have to take because my note should be encrypted already.

Exactly. There you go. So if you're pissed off, Lifehacker has a large, large article about how to jump ship from Evernote and take your data with you to a number of different and competing options. And a tip of the hat to Charlie Strauss. Yes, the author, Charlie Strauss on Twitter at C Strauss, who is the one that brought this to my attention.

OK, here's the deal. I went through some of this stuff because, like I said, I've been doing this for a couple months now. If you're on a Mac, Apple Notes is surprisingly amazing now. They've done a good job. Yeah, they've done a really good job with the latest version. So 99% of everything that Evernote did, you can do a Notes now.

And the export from Evernote and the import into Notes, pretty straightforward. There is some issues with attachments. That can be a little dicey. But if you're just doing text notes, it's pretty easy. And yeah, Notes app, amazingly good.

I did the whole thing with Microsoft OneNote. Don't do it. For the love of God. Yeah, I think it's one of the worst programs ever invented. It's hideous. It barely works. It's got an interface from 97. There's nothing good about Microsoft OneNote.

I mean, yeah, you can get the free app on your phone and your iPad and all that stuff or your whatever the PC want to surface. But for the most part, OneNote is just a shit show. It is the dumpster fire of note taking. Stay away from it.

But yeah, just for a quick and dirty fix, go to Apple Notes. Or if you're on a PC, go to Notepad. Does the same thing. Save text files. Just stay away from Evernote, man. Those guys are just... They have shit the bed. Yep. So, speaking of, where does one shit?

Where? A bear. Where does that happen? I was trying to connect the dots on that one. It just didn't work. It was very weak. It's funny that I was, you know, I'm trying to figure out another option that's not notes that is a little bit more robust. And I came across Bear, which is the, you know, the Apple app of the year.

And I went and grabbed it and installed it on all my devices and signed up for the year package, which was like $14.99 a year, because you get a full month trial. Right. If you sign up for the weekly or the monthly, you get a week trial. I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why would I sign up for that if I don't even know if it's going to work yet?

So, the trick is sign up for the year-long paid Bear Pro, and you get a month to try it out, and then you can cancel your subscription if it doesn't work for you. And then you get more time to try it out. So far, it's nice. I haven't started porting anything over to it, but I like the interface. I like the themes.

It's got a nice gray theme, and the fonts look nice. It looks like a nicely designed Evernote. It looks very nice. I'm going to go on the two-year program in that this will all be available completely for free within Apple Notes in two years. Yeah, pretty much.

One thing that I don't like is they don't have multiple notebooks, and they don't have folder structures. You use tags for everything, but you can use nested tags to use that as your hierarchy if you want to nest things and have subcategories and things like that.

So far, I like it, for sure. Cool. All right. The next little bit of software I want to talk about is Master Class. I told you I'm taking the James Patterson class on writing. Really fun. But man, they're coming out with some major names now. You've got Deadmau5 on electronic music production coming up, and you've got Cooking with Gordon Ramsey.

Yeah. Those look like fun. And they're only 90 bucks for, you know, depends on the actual class, how much video it is. I know there's hours worth of video in my writing class. Deadmau5, I think, is like four hours plus a video.

Same with Gordon Ramsey. And I'm taking the Gordon Ramsey class. That looks great. I watched the previews on these. Deadmau5 just looks like he's annoyed and pissed off the whole time. Well, that's kind of Deadmau5, so fair enough. Yeah. But he's even funny about it.

He's like, yeah, if you're terrified of getting on stage in front of people, put on a fucking helmet. That's what he says in the actual thing. They do have lots of swears in there, so it is for adults. But for 90 bucks, I still want to do the Aaron Sorkin class. I want to actually take them all because they're all really good, and I could learn something from all of them.

Yep, I agree. They seem pretty interesting. I mean, they're definitely finding best in field for a lot of stuff, so that's amazing. Yeah, whoever put this thing together is killing it. I want to do some digging on them for next year and find out who's behind that because, man, all of this, there's so many different sites like Skillshare and Udemy and all this stuff, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We don't want Joe Schmo in his closet with a webcam teaching you how to do anything. We want to get the best in field, and that's what they're doing. Yeah, we're upfield geeks teaching you how to podcast. Hey. We're available. We are available, sadly.

Media candy. Brian. Yes. Have you watched any of the White Rabbit Project yet? I have not. Ah, okay. I'm going to save you some time because I have. Yep. Don't. Yeah, but you didn't like the B-team on Mythbusters.

I like those guys, and I like their chemistry. Okay. This is one of the worst things I've ever seen on television. Wow, that bad, huh? It is that bad. Grant Imahara needs to be taken out back behind the woodshed and shot. Carrie is an evil C, as the kids would say.

What? And Tori is a doofus. Well, yeah. Yeah, but here's the thing. They took their personalities that they had when they were doing B-team work on Mythbusters and turned it up like 10 notches. I'm not going to say they went to 11 because going to 11 is cool.

There's nothing cool about this show. It's terrible. Utterly terrible. I'm not going to believe you. I'm going to have to watch this for myself because, again, I like them. I like their chemistry. And I think that there are a million things that could be worse, which is basically everything that is supposedly on the Discovery Channel or whatever the hell it's called these days, which, you know, it's all bullshit.

Like, did the Nazis really get to the moon? And it's all voiceovers with no fuck. Those are the shows that have replaced Mythbusters. So this has to be better. Well, I don't have Discovery, so I don't watch that crap. All right. Oh, you know what? I will say, though. Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime is pretty good.

I binge watched like six episodes last night. I really like that show. I have heard that's fantastic. It's really good. I saw that it got picked up for season three, and I'm like, okay, well, there must be something to it. And I was looking for a comedy, something funny. Did you follow my rule there? No, I just hadn't heard of it.

It got picked up for a third season, therefore it must be okay. No, that's different because I hadn't heard of it until I saw the note that it got picked up for season three. Okay. So at that point, I'm like, oh, I'll check it out because there's, it wasn't because they were at season three.

It's because I hadn't heard of the show. All right. Well, I will watch White Rabbit when I get back, and I'll, in 2017, you will hear if Jason is completely wrong about that. Absolutely not. And check out Mozart in the Jungle. I think you'll like it. It's pretty funny. I will. I'll definitely take a look at it.

Something else for 2017, the Sherlock season four trailer has dropped and looks fantastic. I am so excited. I binged the show, and I'm all caught up, and I can't wait for some new episodes. Yes. Welcome to the rest of us, finally. Yes. I'm very excited. So stop doing so damn many movies, Cumberbunch.

I know. You and your Cumberbitches. Get on Sherlock. It's a great show, and I can't wait for the fourth season. The trailer looks fantastic. Very excited. I don't know if this is going to be the last season. I hope not. I hope not, too. It's a great show. And, you know, the seasons are three episodes. They're three episodes, but it's like three movies because they're two hours long, you know?

Very true. The OA is a new show coming out on Netflix tomorrow. Actually, by the time this airs, it'll be today, hopefully, with all the editing I have to do today. Maybe it'll be the same day. Who knows? Anyway, the OA got into the news because Netflix did some stuff on their Twitter feed and their Instagram feed that got people a little bit upset.

Did you watch any of the trailers or the Twitter videos? I watched the trailer, and I was wholly unexcited about anything. Yeah, it looks kind of weak, but it looks like, wow, Stranger Things and Westworld did really well.

Let's cobble something together. Yeah, but, you know, they were working on this a long time before that. Yeah, I know. I know. The interesting thing about it was I did watch the Twitter video that got everybody kind of up in arms, people who have had to deal with suicides, and it's a girl that runs across the Golden Gate Bridge and jumps off.

Yeah. And the people that are watching have a kid in the car. I can see where that might upset a few people, but it's television, so, you know. Yeah. There you go. I mean, what do you expect you're going to get from Netflix's Twitter account? Yeah. They're going to show promos for their fucking shows.

I mean, that's pretty much it. This is like people who follow Coca-Cola getting upset about there being, like, you know, sugary drinks being promoted. What the fuck is wrong with you? Oh, my God, diabetes. Shut up. Jesus. I mean, people complain about the dumbest fucking shit, yet, you know, Russians took over our election.

Ah, whatever. Yeah. Point, Brian. Anyways. Did you check out their Instagram feed, though? I did. That was well done. I think they did a really nice job on their Instagram feed, and the tiling that they did on that had to be a bitch.

Oh, great idea. Well executed. Must have been a pain in the ass. Yeah, totally. That must have taken some time. You know, this is the kind of work that I'd like to be doing. So, you know, anybody out there with a ton of cash to do really interesting things, hire me. This is the cool shit that I'd like to do.

This is what this is the kind of stuff I tell people. Hey, let's do something really innovative and interesting. Is that going to cost money? Yeah. Fuck it. Yep. That's pretty much that's what we used to do. This that the level that they used for their Instagram is like the quality that we used to make in the 90s. Exactly.

This is what we used to do for for businesses and for, you know, bands and for movies and TV shows. That's what we used to do. And now when somebody comes out and does it, everybody's like, oh, my God, how innovative. Yeah, that's what we do. Yeah. Somebody's gone back in the way back machine and saw what we did back in the day.

That's about it. Spend some money, get some great results. That's how it works. But they did. They did a really good job on that one. So kudos to them. Unfortunately, I think I know. Are you going to watch the show? I don't know if I'm going to. I'm on the fence about it, but I was going to say, unfortunately, I think I know the team that did that.

And that's the team that got me fired from one of my previous jobs. So while they did a great job, go die in a fire. OK, since it's Christmas, the next thing I have up is an older movie by Danny Boyle. It's called Millions. It is one of my favorite Christmas movies.

Have you seen this movie, Brian? I have not. You have to go watch this movie. It is Danny Boyle. It's like right at not too long after train spotting. It's it's it's bizarre, but it's fun. It's got this is when the the pound was going away, like the old pounds and the money switch over and it had a, you know, a train robbery and just this kid with a great imagination.

And it's a it's a surprisingly good movie. I was my dad and I watched it one Christmas and we were both just like floored by how good it was. So this is definitely one of my go to crazy feel good Christmas movies. I highly recommend everybody go check it out if you can. I will definitely watch it.

I've never even heard of it. So cool. Despicable Me 3 trailer dropped today. Very funny. I love these movies. I don't know if you've watched any of them, Jason. They are fantastic. You don't need to have a kid to like them. They're fun. I watched the first movie and I worked on some stuff for Minions, their web stuff and their universal stuff for Minions 2.

But yeah, this was one of the funniest trailers I think I've ever seen. I was I was howling. You should see Despicable Me 2 then. It's really good. I can't wait for this movie. It's going to be a lot of fun. Great cast. Good times. Very funny stuff.

So super exciting. And I also like that. I like the callback to the the Apple squirt gun emoji. If you know what you're looking at. Yeah, that was very funny, too. And then the Muppets have new life going on, even though show was canceled.

They're still cranking out stuff and putting it up on YouTube. And I've got to say Pigs in Space are back. First time in 20 years, there's a new episode of Pigs in Space. Man, they never would have gotten away with this back in the day. It is funny. It's so funny. I'm not sure how much of this is for kids.

This one's straight up for adults. It was a good time. No, it was really good. And from what I heard from the series, it was supposed to be for adults, too. And that was what kind of made it fail. This did not fail. This was really funny. No, I did. I actually I watched the Muppet series, and I think that was the problem.

It was to insider Hollywood. It was Hollywood elite. Didn't didn't appeal to the Trump audience. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Well, so it was still funny, though. But this is fantastic. This is I always loved the Pigs in Space stuff. When I was a kid, I was rolling. It's like three minutes and I was dying.

So I know it was so good. I thought it was a movie trailer, but then I got into it. I'm like, oh, this isn't a trailer. This is an episode. This is great. Yeah, I hope they do a lot more. So that's good stuff. So I'm a fan of Penn Jillette, and I follow him on Twitter. And he had a link to a new TV series that he was involved in called Unlocked the World of Games Revealed.

It's an eight part documentary on video games. And just all the different aspects of it. And I went it came out today. You can go buy it. It's 20 bucks, but it looked really interesting from the trailer. And so I went and bought it. It's 20 bucks and you can get it on Amazon, iTunes and some Google shit that some people like.

But I went with iTunes because as much as I like Amazon and their Amazon Prime video, it does have problems. So I know on my Apple TV, I can just download it and play it without any streaming hiccups because I have had some streaming hiccups, especially lately with the Grand Tour. There have been sync issues, I've noticed, with the voice.

So I've had to reboot my TV since it's built into the TV to actually make it play right. So I just said, screw it. I'll download it and go from there. So I dropped the 20 bucks. So next week I will have or not next week, next year I will have the the review of Unlocked the World of Games revealed.

OK. Woohoo. I'm excited about Star Trek. That's been pushed back. Apparently now it's going to be in May and on CBS online. So I'm going to have to buy the stupid app or pay their whatever to watch this thing. What's it? You know what sucks about that?

I got that coupon for CBS. Yeah. They came with my TV. Yep. I was going to save it for this Star Trek thing. Spires by then, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, once they pushed it, the coupon's going to expire and there's nothing I want to watch on CBS. So I threw it away. That's a that's a load of crap.

Um, do you watch The Walking Dead by any chance? Because I do not. Yes, I do. All right. Do you then, you know, this actress, um, I'm not even going to attempt the first name. Shaniqua Martin Green. All right. That's how you spell Shaniqua. Never knew that. I think there are varied spellings of Shaniqua and I could be actually saying it wrong.

It could be it could be Sonequa. Well, I'm going with one way or one way or another. We will know how her name is actually pronounced because she is going to be the star now of Star Trek Discovery, which also makes sense why it won't be premiering in January, as we thought, since they just cast her. Yep.

No, they're they're they're definitely way behind. And as a fan of the well, as a previous fan of The Walking Dead, I wrote it off this year. I was I watched the first episode and I was just like, ah, this is getting silly. And then I went back and I watched every I like just, you know, went to Sweden and got all the episodes and got caught up.

But now I'm kind of like hooked again and now that doesn't come back till February. But she's a great actress. She's fantastic. I can't I think she's a great pick. She'll be really good. I have no I have no complaints about her whatsoever. She's she's gorgeous. She's she can emote very well because, you know, after you watch somebody, you know, deal with zombies, you can really tell if they're a good actor or not.

And she's a great actor. So I'm I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm really excited about it as well. Michelle Yeoh from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is apparently going to be the captain. No way. They in a but what they're doing is in a change instead of the main character being the captain this time, Shaniqua is going to be the main character as the lieutenant commander.

So that's great. They're going to follow her perspective of the whole thing. So I'm I mean, the more I hear about the show, you know, you always get worried when it gets pushed back so far. But the more I hear, the more I'm into it. I'm pretty excited about this. Yeah, that that that whole change of perspective actually kind of got me a little excited, too.

Yeah, I was like, yeah, that's kind of cool. I like that. They're like, yeah, we're tired of following the captains. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. I mean, it's kind of a bummer because when you get somebody like Michelle Yeoh playing the captain, I mean, she's a powerhouse like, yeah, but we're going to get a lot of good stuff out of it. And if it follows the trend of most of these, it'll run for six to eight years and then we'll get a movie.

So good enough. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm down now. This this actually has kind of reinvigorated my my excitement for the show because I didn't really have much coming in coming up till now. But she's a great actress. And I love the fact that they're going they're breaking the mold with it, you know? Yeah, I'm pretty excited, too.

And then I've had something in my show notes forever and I kind of forgot about it. So I just dropped this in now. So if you're looking for something new to listen to, there's a group called Dark. It's spelled D period, a period, R period, K, period. Goth Club Music. It's a basically a mash of the Cranberries and the Smiths.

It's a super group. The album came out in September. I really enjoyed a lot of it. It's it's good stuff. So, you know, Dolores are riding from the Cranberries, the lead singer. So you get her voice over a club track that was partially written by Andy Rourke from the Smiths.

It's interesting, cool stuff. I think it's well worth a listen. So I finally decided to just pull this out of the links. And even though it's kind of old, drop it in there. Yeah, I was really confused when I started going through this. I'm like, this is old. And I was like, oh, when's this dropping?

This is dropping Friday. And I'm like, look, and I'm like, oh, wait, September and Friday. Well, you know, nobody really pays attention to music that much anymore anyway. So, yeah, no. Well, so I went in my Amazon Music account and added it to my list and started listening to it. I like it. I like it a lot. I think it's really good.

I hope they do more. So, yeah, as a Cranberries super fan, I really was nice. It was nice to hear her voice again. And if I go with Neil Young's new Pono streaming service, I can hear it in HD. Neil does not know when to quit.

I was a little surprised you didn't put this in Moron of the Week, but I guess it's a good transition. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So, he's still keep it on, keep it on with that Pono. Yeah, because the, you know, the Toblerone playing device that had the downloads in high definition is now basically doing their rebuilding title, which is doing ever so well.

The high definition streaming service. Yeah. Good luck with that, Neil. I'm glad that you have so much money to blow on stuff. That's fantastic. Moron of the Week. So, in Venice, well, I technically live in Santa Monica, but Venice Beach is very close by.

We have this lovely little string of lights that say Venice down Venice Boulevard right by the ocean. And every Christmas season, there's a bunch of holiday lights that go there. And the sign changes colors to green and red. And it's all very Christmassy in a place that is 95 degrees for most of Christmas.

The lighting was supposed to take place a couple, about a week and a half ago, I believe. I wasn't there, sadly. I've gone many times in the past. It's fun. All the locals kind of go out there and then we go get drunk. Unfortunately, the lights did not get switched on when they were supposed to because of Snap or Snapchat.

Now they call themselves Snap Inc. Oh, snap. The power, the switch that powered the lights that was supposed to go on to signify Christmas from a rooftop access through the offices, at least by Snapchat, who in previous years had given people the key. Unfortunately, Snapchat did not hand over the key, so the lights didn't go on in time.

Thanks a lot, guys. Yeah. Well done. They were too busy at their minion-looking device trying to sell some glasses. Yes. So thanks a lot, Snapchat. And in probably my favorite holiday news of the year, McDonald's Christmas coffee cups have gone viral, much like Starbucks did last year.

However, this time for even more fun, link in the show notes, you can take a look at the photo. Apparently, those are supposed to be mittens. You know, when this thing came out, I did some Google image searching to see if this whole thing was fake, and I couldn't find the thing, so I let it go.

But since this is coming from the UK, maybe this is the UK coffee cup. Yes, I believe it's the UK coffee cup. It's actually not here, sadly. Okay. It is fantastic. Yeah, it is basically... I saw a Goatsy version. Design matters, people.

Design matters. Now, if you've seen the Goatsy version where somebody actually, like, stuck a pencil where the butthole would be and just filmed coffee pouring out of it, if you haven't seen that version, it makes it all the better. Yeah. Somebody, I think it might have been Shenny from Boing Boing, she tagged it, this is what 2016 feels like.

Yeah, I agree with that. Ooh, fancy! Fancy! Ooh, fancy! Jason and I found basically the same conceptual link this week without even knowing it, which is kind of amusing.

I found a link on Mental Floss. 15 unique illnesses you can only come down with in German. And these are actually quite real. Kevin Ismus is a real one. At some point in the last couple of decades, parents in Germany started coming down with this thing, a strange propensity to give their kids wholly un-German American sounding names like Justin, Mandy, and obviously Kevin.

There are 15 of these, and there's some overlap with randomly what Jason found. Yeah, so this is funny, because I posted a video on Facebook from the BuzzFeed Germany that had the 21 perfect German words we need in English.

Yes. And there's some really great ones in here, and it's funny, Sehnsucht is in here, which I already knew, of course, from my love of Rammstein. Yes. An intense yearning for something far off and indefinable. Yes. I feel that every day, my friends.

Yes. No, these are really fun, definitely Zugzwang, feeling pressure to make a strategic move when you would rather do nothing. Yes, have that every day, too. Yeah, yeah, and I kind of feel that the word of 2016 is in here, and it's a very German concept, Weltschwes, or world pain.

That's about it. It's a sadness brought on by a realization the world cannot be the way you wish it would be. It's more painful than ennui. Yes, it is, because it's auf Deutsch, so it's always more painful. And in going through these words, I found one of my new favorite places called Forvo, F-O-R-V-O.com.

It's the pronunciation dictionary. Yes. Which we need a lot on this show. Yes, it does. I was putting all of these words, except the ones I didn't know, because I still have a little German left in me. Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben. I can count to forever in German, but I can't pronounce half this stuff.

But Forvo is pretty cool, so if there's a word that you need to pronounce, just put it in there, and there is somebody who will say it for you. It's kind of nice. It is very kind of. It's great. It gets you things like Liebenschmuckigkeit. Ausgeseichnet. Civilization krankenheit. Are you kidding me?

Love it! Scientists have now discovered a way to send text messages through chemicals. Oh, thanks. Yeah, they're figuring out different ways to send signals through different bits of chemistry so you can have connectivity in places where, like, electromagnetic signals don't really work that well.

Mm-hmm. It's an interesting proof of concept. I've got to give them that. It's kind of neat, but usable? Probably not for another ten years. Well, you know, Jason, there's no chain of command around here, so just send me a message any way you want. Well, I'll send it to you through some household chemicals.

Oh, thanks. In the what could possibly go wrong files, British Airways has patented a digital pill to monitor in-flight happiness. The concept being you take this pill when you get on your flight, and the staff then monitors you to see if you're a little bit dehydrated, or perhaps just a tad hungry, or a little bit cold, and they will take care of you.

What could go wrong with that? I have no idea what could possibly go wrong with that. What happens if you crap out the pill? That would be pretty quick. I guess if you got the squirts. Well, then you know that, you know, then they know something was wrong with the fish.

Here's the deal. They can't get my cracker order right. What am I going to eat their fucking pill? Look, I just want a pill that says, yes, bring me another drink. Yes. You know what? That's just, that's your arm on the button to just, you know what you need? You need a cocktail button. That's it. Yeah. When the cocktail is, you know what?

Remember that cup that would tell you what you're drinking? Yes. I forget what that thing was called. But they need those on every flight. So when it gets empty, it sends a signal up to the front to come refill. They just call it the refill. We can kickstarter that. It's pretty straightforward.

That's all I want. I want a refill. Done and done. Got it. And finally, speaking of taking a poop, if you get bad fish on your plane and you finally make it out, hopefully you're at one of these destinations. I love this article. Seven of the world's most picturesque places to poop.

As you said, the Russians have hacked our elections and we're talking about seven places you can go take a dump. Well, many of them happen to be in the USA, some in Canada. I particularly, I feel like I need to go to New Zealand because the Redwoods toilet in Rotora, New Zealand looks fantastic.

Although I'm that that the fact that it has a shower right behind it looks a little skeevy. It's a pretty funky one. The one thing that I was surprised about was that they didn't have Necker Island in here. I'm not aware of that.

Oh, that's the home of Richard Branson or is his island home. He has there's a very famous crapper at Necker Island called the throne room. And there is a crown that you can put on your head when you are taking a dump. And it is open to the sea and you can just stare at the sea. Oh, that's quite nice. Yeah. And you can listen to the cure, obviously, while you're staring at the sea with your crown on your head, taking a dump at Richard Branson's house.

Well, that sounds fantastic. And as Doug just Doug said on the comments, crappy article. Our first iTunes comment comes from Hari22.

I love, love the show. And the thing about this is there are emojis in here. There are hearts. I did not know that emojis worked in iTunes reviews. So get creative, people. We want to see some profound, profound reviews with this new technological discovery. And thank you, Hari22.

We love you, too. Thus come all the poop emoji reviews. Oh, crap. All right, Doug, just Doug. Then we got some comments through GrumpyOldGeeks.com. The first is from Matt Krieger. Great show. Just wanted to make a quick correction.

Canada isn't the first mirror for the Internet Archive. Actually, Egypt and the Library of Alexandria beat Canada to it by many years. Well, thank you for that. Did not know that. Did not know that. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Yes, very nice. No, it's cool. We have an article linked in the show notes about that.

So definitely go check that out. Thank you very much, Matt. That's appreciated. To be fair, Egypt, not so stable. True that. Next one comes from Ivor. Surely this has to be a contender for The Net's Not Dead. Well, The Net's Not Dead is actually not a section, but we're going to keep it anyway.

26 times shit got way too fucking real in Britain in 2016 from BuzzFeed. It was quite. I enjoyed it. That was very funny. It was very chuckle-rific for sure. I quite enjoyed this one. So thank you very much, Ivor. Yes, thank you. Our next comes from John Rogers. Just listening to a recent episode and your reference to nipples.

Of course, I trust you realize that without nipples, boobs would be pointless. Mind blown? Is that what that sound effect was? Yeah, we need the boom crash, I think is what we need. The rim shot. Just for the record, I've been a grumpy old geek since about 1982.

Enjoy the show and the banter drives my bride nuts. That's a ringing endorsement from the ladies. Next one comes from Amir. Comment. Hi, guys. I'm writing to show my support for your authenticity. I know some of your listeners are not happy about the political commentary you guys provide, but for me, it's really important to hear them.

I've been listening to several podcasts before the election and after the election. You're one of only a handful I can stand. By the way, I'm an immigrant Muslim female who may be adversely affected in the coming years. I understand other podcasts are sticking to their business agenda because it's not a platform for politics, but what's happening to our country and across the world is more than politics.

It's about humanity. Is our purpose here on Earth just about business? I'm sorry to be going on about some existential rant on this technology podcast, but truly, the days after the election, I found so much comfort listening to your authentic reaction. Even if you don't talk politics going further, I want to thank you for speaking your mind on those podcasts because it's not business as usual.

Thank you again. Well, thank you, Amir. Appreciate it. Thank you, Amir. Just so you know, we stand with you, 100%. We're trying to scale it back a bit, but I think what we feel is bleeding through regardless, and it's going to as we go through this stuff, and there's no way for it not to.

As we talked about at the beginning of the show, the adverse effects on the technology realm are huge. There's a lot of stuff going on, and yeah, at the end of the day, we're fucking liberals that are just shutting up about it for the most part. Fuck Trump. Thanks for all the feedback.

Head over to groupyoldgeeks.com and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air and piss off half of our audience. Well, on the plus side, anybody that actually listened to Trump, they only read headlines, so they've never made it this far into the podcast. The word of the year for 2016, at least according to Slate, is not a word, it's a number.

I agree with this. We don't need post-facts. We don't need anything. The word of the year for 2016 is fucking 2016. That's true. This has just been, sure, my son was born. That was awesome. David Bowie, dead.

Prince, dead. Zika, Brexit, Trump. Alan Rickman, dead. Alan Rickman, just Alan Thicke. Alan Thicke, Alan Rickman. Yeah, so many, so many. So many. This has been a crappy year, and really, you can't blame us for all of it, because there's only a few things.

I particularly like this one little aside. 2016. All right, fuck you. I'm killing everyone you like. Me. Fine. We're eight months in. I've built up a soul callus. I'm immune to your evil, 2016. There's nothing more for you to take. 2016. Leans in. What about Gene Wilder?

Me. You son of a bitch. And 2016, the proof that things can always get worse. Yes. Yes. We live in a dystopia, and it can always get worse. So thank you so much, 2016. I recommend everybody go back and watch the John Oliver 2016 end of year special, because I think he peaked early on that one.

So go back and watch it for New Year's Eve, and then just close it out, and let's get on with some business next year. Agreed. And I want to give a shout out to this particular artist. Her name is Aria Watson. She created a series called Hashtag Signed by Trump as a final for her project for her photography class.

This is very not safe for work. The link is in the show notes. I found this to be very moving and quite profound. Because there are gasp nipples. It's the only reason it's not safe for work. Yeah, pretty much. Or if you're working in the new White House, it's definitely not safe for work. You're not going to enjoy that very much either.

So there you go. Have yourself a trumpy little Christmas. See you in 2017. All right. My shout out, my main shout out goes to the Doggy Depot in Downers Grove. Now, Brian, you have to deal with child care now. And I finally have been able to deal with puppy care. And these people have saved me.

I now have time to myself because my little Bam Bam gets to go to the Doggy Depot a couple times a week and play with other doggies while I have my life back for just a little while. So I love these people. The first day I took her there, they gave me a little note from Bam Bam saying, I had so much fun.

I met my new doggie friends. And they had pictures and a video on Facebook of them playing together. That is some customer service right there. So if you're in the neighborhood and need to crate your dog for a while, take them to the Doggy Depot and thus endeth the unpaid ad.

And thus endeth the fourth beer. And also, Trainspotting. We covered that on this week in Does It Have Legs? Number 38. We're back. So go check out. Go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com and you can find that episode. We're not dead yet. We're not dead yet. And we do have a special episode coming out next week with Chris Piccioni from the Grime Life podcast.

He and I are doing a Christmas movie just for you guys. So I'm Jason DeFillippo. All my info and links are at about.me slash JPD. And I, God, I hope the Christmas movie is diehard. I'm Brian Shulman. It is. Sweet. And you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus. Thanks for listening to the Grumpy Old Geeks.

If you'd like to help us out, please visit Patreon.com slash GOG and sign up. Even as little as a buck a month helps keep us on the air. And we do take one-time donations. Just go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com and click on the PayPal link in the sidebar. If you're cheap or broke but still want to support the show, please go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a glowing review and five stars.

And at the very least, please share the show with your friends. GrumpyOldGeeks.com is where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, ask us questions that we can read on the air, or find links to our awesome sponsors and stuff we like. We have our new subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash GOG podcast. Join in and throw us some links that we can use on the show.

We're also on Twitter at GOG podcast and on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 190. Thanks again to 1Password for their support of Grumpy Old Geeks. This January, Bear Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

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