191: I Am Jack's Mesentery

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 for 2017. We're back. Woohoo! I'm Jason DeFillippo and I'm here with... Brian Schulmeister. How are you doing, Jason? I'm doing great. It was 7 degrees here today. Brisk. I'm ready to go. Had about 18,000 cups of hot chocolate. Oh, great.

Yeah. Well, you like pussied out and skedaddled back to Southern California after being in Canada for a while, so you got to be nice and warm and relaxed and chill. It's actually been rainy and cold this whole week. It sucks. This is not what I live here for. You live there for the Prius and the beer, I know.

Yes, yes. I almost got ran over by a white Prius yesterday, which I had a Masanto sticker on it. I hate Masanto. I saw your post about that. That was pretty funny. Yes, you hate Masanto and you also hate stop signs. Mm-hmm. Thanks a lot for that. Anyways, here we are. Let's get into it. We have a lot.

Yes, we have a metric poop ton. Oh, it's a clean show. No, no. Fuck no. So, quick note about CES. We have a few things about CES, but everybody on the planet is covering CES, so I think we just need to move on from even caring about CES.

Because we usually only cover things that are actual and not theoretical. I don't like talking about vaporware and I don't like talking about the bullshit that people are doing just to get press. And this is why we generally don't talk about Apple. Pretty much. Oh, oh, quick show note, though. Speaking of, I saw a Facebook post that you made over the holidays, Jason.

Which one did I make? You said something about having your Apple Watch back on and I said, I quote, when you said that you were putting it away and never using it again, I said, you'll have it back on within a month. And you said, fuck you, Brian, you're wrong. Bullshit. You posted that you were wearing it again. Yep, yep. I've actually got that. We'll cover that in our in our apps and gadgets section.

Here's the reason was I got my justification, justification, justification. Yeah, well, yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is. I'll call a spade a spade on that one. I gave away my Fitbit, but I couldn't give away my Apple Watch. Nobody wanted it. And I'm like, oh, well, what if I turn off all the notifications and just throw it back on?

Because I gained seven pounds after I got rid of my Fitbit, because it turns out quantification actually matters. At least for you, it does. It does for me. I live alone, man. I don't have anybody telling me what to do. And if I if I don't have something saying get the hell out of the house, it's winter.

I can't walk, bam, bam, drink. And what am I going to do? So I need something to say, hey, it's time to get your fat ass off the couch and walk up and down some stairs. All right. I'm just saying I'm right. You are right on this one. You're absolutely right on this one. There you go. So shut the fuck up, asshole. All right, Alexa. Jeez.

So when you this has gone completely viral and I put it in the show notes just because I wanted it in the show notes. It's the little kid talking to his Alexa and gets the the the porn rundown. Yes. Have you tried this with your Alexa? I can't even tell what the kid says, so it's hard to.

I don't know what the kid says. And I, you know, I've got other things to do with my Alexa. I'm like, well, well, I'll get into that in the software apps and gadgets segment as well. OK, so no, I didn't. You still get Sean Bonner's newsletter, friend of the show, Sean Bonner. Of course I do. I actually just bought his new book on Kickstarter.

Oh, you're one of the ones that purchased it. Well done. So they're they're actually moving to Tokyo. I don't know if you heard about that. Yeah, I'm so jealous. But I did I did I did impart some wisdom to him to go get one of those Ricoh Theta S's. So for if you're living in Tokyo or if you're going anywhere that's got cool stuff, get one of those Ricoh Theta S's.

Hold it over your head and just get you can get 3D snapshots of everything and just throw them in a folder. And later on down the line, it's just like a great memory tool. So he ordered one of those. I can't wait to see what he's posting from that. Very cool. Well, his newsletter started off with a bang in 2017. So if you thought you were going to be happy, I just want to read a segment that I that I took from him because I love this one.

This is a segment. This sounds like the whole newsletter. No, it's actually only one paragraph. OK, I'm going to go go get a snack while you read this. Go for it. OK, are you a millennial? Are you on more than two social networks? Chances are you are depressed, especially if you live outside the U.S. and decide to visit. Since U.S. border folks now want you to hand over all your social media info, though, if you are on Facebook, the government already has all your info.

Oh, wait, Facebook knows all about you, even if you aren't on there. But honestly, with Uber employees spying on people and this prosecutor who forged judges signatures so she could wiretap a love interest and colleague rival for a year or so, it doesn't even matter what you think you are keeping private. And your Amazon Echo is recording everything in your house and cops are now trying to get access to those recordings.

Alternatively, traffic is fake. Audience numbers are garbage and nobody knows how many people see anything on the Web. But we're post-truth now anyway, so what does it matter? America's largest police union cried fake news over legitimate media coverage and seasoned, respected, award-winning journalists are now saying the Wall Street Journal is running fake news.

So fake news is no longer things that are fake and is now just things you don't like. And a full half of Trump supporters believe Pizzagate is real. We don't have a fake news problem. What we have is a stupid people problem. Thank you, Sean, for putting our show into a nutshell. Yeah, pretty much it.

Yep, there you go. So there's a link to Sean Bonner's newsletter in these show notes. I highly recommend signing up for it. It's always fun. He always has good links that we usually steal for the show. And this one has like 8,000 links, some of which we have covered on previous shows and some are new. So I recommend just going to get the newsletter because I'm not going to spend four hours putting them in the show notes.

There you go. The one thing about the Amazon Echo and the police scandal that's going on, the Amazon Echo only does have a 60-second onboard buffer. So it does not record everything. So and it does not send all of that to Amazon. It waits for the trigger words. But the 60-second buffer is so it can just kind of it's kind of like a RAM buffer and just keeps overwriting itself.

Yep, in theory. Well, no, people have checked it with the network connections. You get a copy of Wireshark and you can kind of check that out. Excellent. Yeah, so I found a great video from Simon Sinek, who was actually on The Art of Charm a long time ago. It's about millennials in the workplace.

It's a fantastic video. I'm stealing Brian's fantastic for this one. Where he just talks about what the state of affairs is for millennials and how screwed they are. And I thought it was a very well-done video and a very well-thought-out point. All right. Did you watch it? I listened to it. I did. I didn't like him.

I found him off-putting and kind of smarmy, but I agree with his points. Oh, I like him. I thought he was okay. Okay. He's a nice guy. So now let's get to Zweckenfremsdungsverbot. Good enough. Yeah. It's actually Zweckenfremsdungsverbot.

That's closer. That's closer. I like it. This is the term that Germany is rolling out to ban short-term rentals from Airbnb. Good. So don't expect to get a Airbnb in Berlin anytime soon.

And if you do, it's probably going to be pricey. Actually, that is not entirely true. Under the ban, in effect, since the 1st of May, people who let more than 50% of their apartment on a short-term basis without a permit from the city risk a fine. Landlords will still be able to let individual rooms as long as they use at least half of the apartment for themselves.

Home exchange, where two parties agree to swap their apartments for a period of time, will also be unaffected by the ban. Okay. So basically, it's allowing Airbnb to do what it claimed to do when it launched, which is, hey, I've got a spare bed in my house. I'll put it up. You can still do that.

What you can't do is buy 17 houses, rent them all fucking out all the time, and get around the fucking laws that are involved with hotels. You cannot be an Airbnb slumlord. Exactly. That is all that these laws do. They are not, and I hate the journalism on this, because it makes it sound as if Airbnb is being impeded.

No, the original concept of Airbnb still fucking stands. They're just saying, be what you said you were going to do, and don't cheat the system. Well, there you go. God damn it. Brian's Weckensibout. I'm with the Zweckensibout. Okay, quick follow-up on our Uber story from last time, too.

When they were rolling out the self-driving cars in San Francisco. Well, the California DMV said, get the fuck out, and kicked them out, which is good. Which is good. Yes, because you shouldn't be testing these in heavily populated urban areas. Unless you have a license.

Unless you have the license, which you apply for. Oh, gee, wait. Hold on. Another Web 2.0 company saying, fuck you to government and licensing? Shocking. So, apparently, Governor Gary Ducey of Arizona, though, says, bring it on. We want you. Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads.

While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way. Ah, nice. I see what they're doing there. See what you did there? Yeah, yeah. They're paving the way for new technology and new businesses. In 2015, I signed an executive order supporting the testing and operation of self-driving cars in Arizona with an emphasis on innovation, economic growth, and most importantly, public safety.

This is about economic development. I thought you just said it was about public safety. Oh, okay. I'm confused. Yeah, whatever you say down there. But it's also about changing the way we live and work. Arizona is proud to be open for business. California may not want you, but we do. See, the key part in that entire bullshit thing that they just stated was the wide open roads part because they've got them in Arizona.

They do. So, by all means, test self-driving cars in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. Don't test them in the middle of downtown San Francisco. There are 14 people in Arizona. So, yes, the chances of somebody getting run over by a self-driving car is astronomical. So, let's see how that goes.

And before anybody gets upset, if you live in Arizona, I love Arizona. I love Phoenix. I've been there many, many times. The busiest street in Phoenix doesn't hold a candle to anywhere in San Francisco. Yeah. No, San Francisco is packed with man poo and lots and lots of people.

So, yeah, go test them there. I don't care. Follow regular – it's just so stupid. In the news.

We are both fans of Bruce Sterling on this show. Awesome sci-fi writer. Somewhat ironic that the only place that he publishes anything is on well.com from, you know, 2000. The well was around long before 2000. That's true. Well before that. Anyways, he – See what you did there?

Well before that. Oh, well, yes. He put a big post up about the big five tech giants in 2017. I'm going to – we'll have the whole thing because it's a screenshot in our show notes because you can't get into well.com unless you're a member. And I'll do the TLDR one. Google, moonshots all miss the moon.

Apple, rich guy's rose gold wrist toy. Facebook, best friends with Nazis. Microsoft, office supply company. Amazon, not bad. Okay. Didn't see that one coming. Me either. Because I thought Microsoft's been doing pretty good lately.

I thought so too. And we'll talk about that later in our new segment. Now I feel screwed. There you go. Well, oh, Bruce. I love Bruce. He's a character. I wish I would have gotten to go to one of his South by Southwest parties back in the day when it wasn't 7 million people at South by.

But so the French. Let's talk about the French for about two seconds. Oh, oui, oui. Avant garde. The French have decided to say it's not cool to check your email after working hours if you have a company with more than 50 employees. And it's it's, you know, kind of still optional because the companies have to drop the policies and all that stuff.

But it's a it's a move in the right direction to make people shut the fuck up after six o'clock. I agree. I think, you know, every study comes out that says this 24 seven cycle that we're all starting to be under is killing us. It's making us less productive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So let's let's start addressing it. So look at the French. Good. Good on you. Have we said never before on Grumpy Old Geeks? The French blazing the blazing the trail, blazing the trail of not working.

That's what they do. OK. Yeah. Fortunately, we don't have that many French listeners. So we may have pissed off two people. We're good. OK. I think we probably would have pissed them off with a wah-ha. So this is an awesome article from Reason.com titled A Stronger Economy Will Also Destroy Jobs.

But it's necessary. And this comes back to many things that we've talked about on the show with the the rise of technology and people bitching and moaning about not having any more jobs and blah, blah, blah. So what it really comes down to is, yeah, this has happened before, this will all happen again.

Get used to it and start shucking and jiving and find a new job. And the one thing at the end here that I really like is, like, the next administration may or may not succeed in speeding up economic growth or restoring jobs in old industries, but it can't succeed at both. To pretend otherwise is to write a check that can't be cashed.

And this comes back to either you need to find new jobs for people or you need to stop, you know, technological growth, which is never going to happen. Agreed. And I don't have any argument with this article whatsoever, except it's really just illustrating the problem and not positing any solutions.

Pretty much like our show. Exactly. Moving on. Yep. So a bunch of people that don't have jobs anymore. Yeah, this one's a sad one. Sorry, guys. Medium. Medium. Well, sorry. We've been telling them that we've been screaming about how they have no business model since day one.

So. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, we have. Maybe you shouldn't be working at a company that has zero business model. You know what they had? They had founders with deep pockets who have now changed their tune and said, oh, you know what? The thing that we were going to do doesn't really work and it's toxic and it is ruining the web.

Yeah, we knew that, Ev. We knew that a long time ago. Yeah, we totally knew that. Have you ever looked at Blogger, Ev? You know, that other beast you created that was basically the means for AdSense to come out and get into our veins for per-click advertising?

You started this shit, Ev. So now bitching about it, you know, does not fix the problem. So I have no tears for you, Evan Williams, because you are one of the people that started this shit show. Yeah, that was going to be my point before Jason just, you know, basically said it very angrily, which is that, you know, he is partially responsible for the ad-driven online media broken system that he said just ruined his company.

So, yeah, yeah, in the company that he started on the billions of dollars he got from Google for his blogger empire. So thanks a lot for that, Ev. It's come out that a Snapchat ex-employee is claiming that the company has faked their growth and their stats to boost their value for their IPO.

Wait, hold on. Is somewhere in social media has fake statistics? Oh, my goodness. Anthony Pompliano was – he was the head of the growth team and was brought on to actually steal people from Facebook. So it's interesting that he – when he came on and they said, we need you to cook the books, he says, no.

No, I'm not going to cook the books. Yeah, I'm not going to cook the books. And as somebody who has been in this position before and has cooked the books for another company that got sold and didn't get a dime from it, god damn it, this does happen. This happens all the time. Yes, of course it does.

All of these things are – it's all built on lies, people. Lies. It is. It is a foundation of lies. And stats mean nothing. Remember back in the old day when we used to count hits versus views? So you would put extra GIFs – and it's GIF with a G – on your page so you could have extra hits because nobody understood the difference between a view and a hit.

We did, but the unwashed masses didn't. So if you had a million hits and 3,000 people, it didn't really matter. Well, the washes are all – the washes. The masses are all washed up now. They're all wearing suits and they're all getting billion-dollar IPOs based on the same bullshit and they still don't understand it.

Go back to Sean Bonner's rant from the beginning of the show right in the middle with links. Alternatively, traffic is fake, audience numbers are garbage, and nobody knows how many people see anything on the web. True, true, and true. Yeah, and this was true in 1996. Exactly. Now there's just more money behind it.

Yep, more money behind faking it all. So Anthony Pompliano, I salute you. We salute you. Apple says that January 1st was the most lucrative day in App Store history. So a bunch of hungover people went and got Mario, apparently. $240 million worth of apps were sold in one day, which is just redonkulous.

That's a lot, but not surprising. A bunch of drunk people sitting on the couch with a hangover. What's surprising, I did just use the word redonkulous and you didn't call me out for it. It's a new year, Jason. I give you a certain allotment of stupidity. You saw cray-cray. I know. That's two down.

I got a chalkboard right here. Oh, don't be ridiculous. Three. Okay, Tress says he doesn't trust computers. Yes, I'm just going to throw this one to you because you are basically an in-house Trump critic.

So what do you have to say about this? I'll just quote him. I know a lot about hacking and hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else, he said. He added cryptically that he also knows things that other people don't know, so they cannot be sure of the situation. And then he also did promise to tell us a couple days later what those things were that he knew that other people don't know, but he obviously hasn't told us because he doesn't know shit.

Yeah, so there you go. And we're back to self-driving cars because CES is in the news. Brian Solis has an interesting State of the Union on self-driving cars on tech.co. Highly recommend reading it because it goes through all of the different companies that are in the space.

You know, and he's just kind of an out, he's a tech journalist who is giving you basically a breakdown by breakdown of where everybody's at, what they're doing and where it's going. It's a good read. So, Slate, who's your go-to journalism outlet?

Decent journalism. Wrote one of the most ridiculous stories I've ever read. I saw this story and I was going to put it in the show notes and you beat me to it. And this is horrible. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Self-driving cars will make organ shortages even worse.

Yes, that's what we should be focusing on and worried about right now, Slate. Thanks a lot. Let's stop killing people, you know, for no reason, just so we can save some other people who have broken bodies. I will say, in defense of Slate, that both Ian Adams and Anne Hobson, the authors of this article, this is the only article they've ever had on Slate and hopefully the last article they will ever have on Slate.

I have seen so much blowback from this article, it's ridiculous. First off, it's just fucking stupid. Yeah. Actually, let's just leave it at first off. Well, here's the thing, this is a great subplot for a sci-fi book. Honestly, it's a great subplot for a sci-fi book for, you know, organ harvesters of the future or how to grow organs on pigs' heads, you know, like they're doing now.

But just it is clickbaity. It is one of the worst titles I've ever read. But my God, it's just the thing goes on and on and on. It is not a short article. They put some thought into this. They really did. They thought about how to suck organs out of people and make sure that we don't have this problem when people stop dying.

Yeah, I know. Honestly, go have, just go read it. It's a fun read. And Toyota Research Institute CEO says, We're not even close. Guys, we're not even close. It's a wonderful, wonderful goal, but none of us in the automobile or technology industry are close, says Gil Pratt, Toyota Research Institute CEO.

It's going to take many years of machine learning and many more miles than anyone has logged to achieve level five autonomy, which is what the self-driving car standard is what everybody's going for. I'm getting increasingly confused by the journalism in the self-driving car section because, first, one article says they're here now.

Another article says it's going to be 20 years. Then another article says, oh, well, Uber's doing it now in Arizona. Then another article says, no, we're not even close. Not going to happen anytime soon. Which is it? So the reason I put this in here is because this is like a diet book. The self-driving cars have become the nutrition journalism of the 2010s because before it's like fat will kill you.

Fat's good for you. Carbs will kill you. Carbs are good for you. Right now, it's just like, here's the deal. We'll get there when we get there. So just shut the fuck up already. The thought that came to me about this is it felt to me like a VR versus AR thing that's happening with the cars, like the fully self-driving cars, the fully realized, that's the VR, which is ages off still.

But everybody is still talking about this because we do have viable augmented driving that's currently happening right now. So that's where I'm at with this. And maybe we need to start using some sort of different terminology, like machine learning versus AI, to differentiate the two different things.

Instead of just saying autonomous cars, there could be an AR version and then the full autonomy version. Augmented vehicles is what we have right now. We have augmented vehicles, which we've had for a long time. We've had lane change, you know. Yes. So let's stop being lazy journalists and let's actually use different terms to differentiate these things.

Brian, that's not going to get people to click on the links. That's not going to get their two cents a view. AR will not do anything for organ shortages. Damn it. Maybe my AR can look into your tummy and tell me that your liver is toast because you've been to Finn McCool's too many times.

I don't need an AR for that. That's true about that. But part of this was the Tesla that predicted the car crash and hit the emergency brakes video that's been making the rounds, which was pretty impressive, I got to say. Yeah. So definitely go check out this video. Unfortunately, it's on Mashable, and I couldn't embed it in our show notes, so you have to go to Mashable.

And I apologize for that, but turn on your ad blockers because otherwise you're in for a car crash of your own. God, their site is so terrible. All these sites are terrible. Yeah. Well, thanks again, Ev. Yeah. Thank you, Ev. Much appreciated.

Even though it's a little side effect. It's lovely that the internet is completely unusable, and yet nobody is making any money either. That's awesome. That is awesome. It's funny that we started out this show with how to make money on the internet, and yeah, still haven't figured that one out.

191 in. We're still working on it. Still working on it. It's in the back burner, Vaz. MIT has done a study that says 3,000 ride-sharing cars could replace every cab in New York City if you did the math right. Very interesting. And never going to happen.

Nope. But it's a thought piece from MIT, and every now and again they come out with something that can get – maybe the people at Uber will take this and use that in a court setting to get around some local regulations to put more taxis out of business, and maybe this will be the way it goes.

But I don't know. I doubt it. I doubt it either. And remember when I got my first Alexa – or my first Echo? I'm sorry. Yes. Echo? And I told you that I'd be in my kitchen, I'd tell my Echo something, and then I'd get in my car, and then I would talk to my car and say, you know, play face-to-face.

And I'm the one who drinks too much, apparently. Well, you know, you just get the – hey, look, have you – now be honest here. Have you ever walked out of your house, and instead of putting your key in the lock, you actually pulled up your key fob for your car and tried to lock your house with it? No. Well, I have.

So, there you go. I've tried to lock my house with my key fob as I go to my car, so I did try to talk to my car after I've played with my Echo. But Ford is going to start bringing the Echo into the cars with their – with the next generation of their sync technology, which is fine by me.

I'd love it. I would like it not to be for the next few generations of the Echo technology, personally, because it's not quite there yet. I'm not sure if I want it in the car. I've embedded a very funny video to explain why. I wouldn't want this Amazon Echo dad guy using this car. Oh, my God, that was so good.

That was so good. And by the way, that one is very not safe for work, so don't play if your boss is around. Much like this show. Yeah. I mean, I have two commands that I actually say to my Echo every day, which is play KROQ because it cannot understand KROQ, even though it says playing KROQ.

Oh, actually, three. Okay. Play KROQ, play KROQ2, and play WGN. That's it now because Pandora, I've given up my Pandora premium subscription because $60 a year is a little too much for not having commercials, and they've been going downhill with their algorithms big time.

Yeah. Good times. Well, we've talked a lot about, well, we hit our Airbnb, and now we've done our Uber, and we've done our self-driving cars, so let's hit our other big one that we have to touch on every episode, drones, except this is a gigantic drone that looks like something out of Star Wars.

That would carry stormtroopers to come kill you. And, of course, it's by the Israelis. Israeli aeronautics firm Urban Aeronautics has announced to the press that its Cormorant drone, named after the aquatic bird, has successfully passed another milestone, flying itself over uneven terrain. The company reports that this gigantic drone can carry over a 500-kilogram load, a distance of 30 miles while traveling at speeds of up to 185 kilometers per hour and at altitudes of up to 1,800 feet.

It is pretty badass, and it scares the crap out of me. The funny thing about it is I watched the video on this news piece, and the thing looks about as stable as one of the planes from Thunderbirds back in the day. It cannot—it's just, like, all over the place. I'm like, I'm not getting in that thing.

And especially $14 million a piece, you'd think you'd have a little bit more stability on it. If they can make my little DJI drone, like, you know, hover perfectly, you'd think this thing would be able to, but— Apparently not. I guess chaos theory comes into it, but no, it is scary, and they should really not paint it black, because it definitely looks ominous.

It looks very—well, what are they going to do, paint it pink? Maybe. That'd actually be kind of cool. Hello drone. Hello kitty. Hello kitty version. So, have you heard of Gunter Ottenger? I have not, but I think he's going to ruin the entire world.

It seems like it. He is leaving the EU's top—or he is the EU's top internet policymaker. And I don't know how he got this job, because he's— He does not seem to understand how the internet works.

Yes, he's the digital commissioner and is trying to throw a grenade in the EU's internet policy, basically saying that if you put a link to a journalism blog or anything like that, if you don't have rights to do that without paying the paper that you're taking the link from, he's making it basically illegal to link to anybody, which is so—I'm going to use the R word.

I'm going to use the FR word. It's fucking retarded. Sorry. But go look at this list. This is 10 everyday things on the web that the EU commissioner wants to make it legal. Ottenger's legacy. And you'll just scratch your head saying, how can somebody get into office with so few skills and such a lack of clue?

And then as I'm saying that, I'm thinking, I live in the United States. I should know exactly how that happens. Yeah, I was about to say, is it really that much of a mystery anymore? No, it's not. No, it's not. God damn it. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, I mean, if you read through this list, your mind will spin.

It's pretty insane. And a lot of them are the same actual rules, but just, you know, on different use cases on how we can get screwed. Yeah, pretty much. CNN did a report on the Russian hacking. And, you know, you have to use your little screen grabs and screenshots when you do these sorts of things.

And people at Reddit went into an uproar because apparently somebody over at CNN basically used a screenshot from the game Fallout 4. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares, right? I would say who cares. Yeah. I don't give a crap. Apparently, they went crazy. But as is pointed out in another article over at Slate, why CNN used images from a video game to illustrate a story on hacking.

There aren't really that many interesting images for hacking. You either use that or a scene from The Matrix. You use some neon green letters. There you go. A dude in a hoodie. Basically, it's generally a dude in a hoodie. A dude in a hoodie. Mr. Robot kind of stuff. There you go. Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. And don't we have bigger problems, Reddit?

Well, we do have bigger problems, which we'll actually talk about a little bit later. But, yeah. There you go. Hang on. Sorry. No problem. Now we talk about Elon Musk every now and again on this show.

And I think Elon now has tunnel vision. I came up with that one myself because Elon Musk now wants to do tunnel boring under major cities to alleviate road congestion. And he's coming up with a new machine to do boring, even though it could.

The tunnel vision bit was funny, but it is not as funny as Musk's himself. Musk's boring plan and calling the company the boring company. Yeah. No. In so many ways, this just doesn't feel real. I feel like this might be fake news.

Sometimes I wonder if he's just messing with us, if he's trolling us a bit. But he seems to be relatively serious about this one. And if, you know, you know what? I'll invest in it. How much money do you want to bet that the Hyperloop was just a MacGuffin to get people to just go do something else and leave them alone?

It could be, but I did see that the Hyperloop is actually doing their first official test in two weeks. They've already done some tests. They've done some propulsion tests. They're doing like a big scale one in Nevada somewhere. But I thought they were moving to Dubai. I don't know. I don't work there. I just invest in them.

Security? And we're back again with the crew and Mr. Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. And let's talk security in this new year. All right. Happy New Year, gentlemen. Happy New Year. Yes.

Are we going to talk Star Wars first? Or what are we doing here? Well, you know, I think we left off on saying that we were all about to go see it the last time we were talking. So we might as well mention it. It was awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I thought it was pretty awesome, too.

Yeah. I have to say, for me, the best, it just felt like a Star Wars movie. You know, it fit within the universe. And the way that it just, spoiler alert, flowed right into episode four. I was just happy as could be about that.

I was happy that there were going to be no sequels. That's what made me happy. No sequels at all. And I was very interested in their security procedures for the Death Star plans and the very large hard drives. Everything was stored on. Yeah. Right. All in all, I thought it was, I thought it was picture perfect.

And I loved how they pulled out the archive footage for the battle scenes. That was good. They did a few too many callbacks for my taste, but just the kitschy ones. Yeah. I mean, they were funny. They were cute. I'm not one of those, you know, Star Wars stormtrooper Nazis.

I'll be just like, oh, that's just not in the canon. So I can't have it. I can't have nice things. I thought it was fun. I walked in with a smile. I walked out with a smile. I thought it was great. The only thing that rankled a little bit was the CGI for Tarkin and relying on him a little bit too much. I think they might have wanted to, they could have probably done a little bit less with him so that we weren't thrown so much.

But other than that, no complaints. I don't disagree with you. I will tell you that I've seen it twice. And on the second viewing, Tarkin seemed much more natural to me. For some reason, I don't know if I just got over the fact that, you know, he was generated the way that he was.

But there were several scenes where he just looked dead on accurate, like spookily so. And I didn't feel that the first time I saw it. So I'm interested if you do check it out a second time, if you feel the same way that I did. Even the appearance at the end of Princess Leia, same thing.

It felt a lot better the second time seeing it. Interesting. Yeah. And I also had, unfortunately, I saw it in 3D because I didn't have a choice. And I'm not a fan. But I did speak to somebody who saw it in both 3D and then in regular. And he said that the effect is way more pronounced in 3D. So it actually comes off better in kind of your standard look.

So I can't wait to see it again that way. Because I saw it in 3D and I was fine with it. I had no problems. I thought, I mean, at the beginning, I'm like, damn, they got a dead ringer for him. And, you know, it took me a little while to really kind of see. I'm just like, okay, yeah, he's CG. But this is the best character CG I've ever seen.

You know? All right. Yeah. It did not bother me in the least. Even Leia didn't bother me. I had no problem with it. Yeah. Yeah. He knew it was coming, so. I just love the way that, you know, I knew it was going. There were strong rumors that it was going to lead right into Episode 4.

But boy, did it lead right into Episode 4. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. That did surprise me and I enjoyed it greatly. So all around, great, great, great movie. Yeah, I think you had basically time for a pee break between when Rogue One ended and Episode 4 began.

That was about it. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right. So shall we talk about some security then today? Indeed. Besides the Empire's black security when it comes to their archives. So while we were gone, and we've been gone a while, one of the biggest stories was about this alleged hack of the Burlington electrical grid, which turned out to be not a hack of the Burlington electrical grid.

A story came out two days before New Year's holiday weekend. The Department of Homeland Security shared a lot of the details about some of the tools that they say were used by Russian intelligence services.

And so they sent out a bunch of these IOCs. Those are indicators of compromise to all of the people that they send those things out to. And that includes electrical utilities, people like that. And so the Burlington Electric Utility Company, they dutifully loaded these IOCs into their systems.

You know, basically these are, you know, malware signatures that you load in. And sure enough, one of their systems came up as basically pinging and saying, we've got a problem here. We may have a problem here. And this is because he hit one of the IOC IPs, right?

Correct. Well, this is because he checked his mail on Yahoo. Yeah. That is what he did. He checked his mail on Yahoo. And again, important to note that this is not a computer that was in any way connected to the grid. This was a, you know, a laptop that a worker happened to be using.

So, you know, it may as well have been someone in HR, for example. And that's not to say that's not a problem. You know, a lot of times that's how people get into a network. They'll start in a system that's not directly connected and they'll weave their way through. But in this case, this gentleman checked his email.

That triggered an alert. And Burlington Electric did what they're supposed to do. They got back to the Department of Homeland Security and said, hey, we think we may have a problem here. Then, quick as a wink, the Washington Post came out with a story saying.

The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Yeah, pretty much. Saying that the, you know, the grid is hacked. More of a journalism problem than a hacking problem. Well, it's, well, yes, certainly. Well, but what's interesting is, I think the really interesting part of this story is, is that who tipped off the Washington Post?

I was going to say that. I'm like, okay, they sent a report to DHS and then the Washington Post is publishing a story? Hmm, me thinks he have a leak. Exactly. So, DHS tips off Washington Post. Washington Post fires off a breathless report that, you know, the grid is hacked by Russians.

This is quickly analyzed by people who actually know about cybersecurity. And they say, no, this is not what happened. And, of course, the people, the good people at the Vermont Electric Utility were sort of blindsided by this because DHS did not warn them that they would be tipping off anyone or that there would be any media reports about this.

So, you know, they've sort of been the innocent bystanders in all of this. They did everything that they were supposed to do. Turns out it was not, you know, any sort of, any sort of successful attack into the grid. The grid was not in any danger.

It was just a false positive. Now, this also leads us to the DHS Grizzly Step Report, which was released Thursday, a week ago, I believe. So, this was the report that the, you know, put out by the White House about the link between the Russians and the DNC hack.

But it really is light on content. You know, security, well, I'll give you a quote here from Robert Graham. Robert Graham from Errata Security. He said about the Grizzly Step Report, it's full of garbage. It contains signatures of viruses that are publicly available used by hackers around the world, not just Russia.

It contains a long list of IP addresses from perfectly normal services like Tor, Google, Dropbox, Yahoo, and so forth. Yes, hackers use Yahoo for phishing and malvertising. It doesn't mean every access of Yahoo is an indicator of compromise. Yeah, and I read this report and I was just like, seriously?

This is it? It was pathetic. Well, and, you know, people have come to their defense and have said, you know, they can't, they have to be careful. They can't tip their hat too much about, tip their hand rather, too much about, you know, what other ways they may actually know.

Yeah, but it was still a really weak report. I mean, come on. Yep, no, absolutely. And they've really been raked over the coals by people who know about these sorts of things within, you know, the cybersecurity world. So, you know, the other interesting thing about this is when you sort of walk through it, you know, one of the, one of our analysts here at Cyber Wire said, you know, there seems to be a little bit of a red scare going on right now.

And so, you know, anything, anything that could possibly be related to Russian hacking gets the kind of attention that the Washington Post mistakenly gave it. And this is a problem because what it's doing is it's diluting the actual reports that everybody's waiting for about the DNC hacking.

So this just makes them look inept. Well, yeah, it's actually undermining President Obama's attempts to make the case that the Russians actually did what they are alleged to have done in the DNC hack. And, of course, the, you know, the intelligence community is pretty, pretty convinced that, you know, what they say the Russians did, they did.

So not a lot of winners in this one. And this still comes back to the Sony North Korea hack because I still, you know, I still stand by the fact that that was bullshit. I know people inside Sony and they know, they knew who did it. And then the Obama administration came out and said, no, it was North Korea when that was absolutely not true.

And Sony didn't want that to be out there. So, you know, I, you know, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm just on the fence. I'm like, who the fuck can you trust now? This is, it's getting to the point where it's ridiculous. Who knew that, uh, that we'd be agreeing with Donald Trump. He knows a lot about hacking and hacking is a very hard thing to prove.

Oh, cyber, cyber is hard. Yes. He did say so himself. No, I think it's a really good point, Jason. I mean, people are saying, uh, we've been led down this path before with weapons of mass destruction. You know, I mean, trust us, there are weapons of mass destruction. And so, you know, trust us, uh, it was, yeah.

The little boy who yelled yellow cake and then yelled cyber. Right. And so, um, we're kind of glossing over a little bit of what happened there because, uh, we even knew at the time back then that the intelligence community was nowhere near as convinced that it was an administrative decision to push the line on the yellow cake.

So, yeah, we're, I mean, we, we had Rummy back then who was, you know, in that, that whole era, but, uh, that was, that was, that was a whole different thing. But, uh, I just still go back to the, the Sony North Korea thing where I know that, that the administration lied about that, that connection.

So, you know, things that other people don't know, Jason. I, yeah. And this one, this one, surprisingly, I do. So, and unlike somebody else, unlike somebody else that makes that statement, Jason just told us that information. Call me Drump. That's right. I am Drump.

He didn't make us wait. He didn't make us wait a few days. Uh, next Tuesday or Wednesday, it'll be, I will tell you things that I know. Uh, yes, I should have, if I had to put it in a tweet, then I could be on the administration right now. Pretty much. Pretty much. All right, moving on, we have a story about ransomware on TVs.

I just found this funny. Uh, everybody's gotten smart TVs for Christmas or quite a few people. And then somebody did as well, a family member of software developer, Darren Kowthon, I guess you would say, uh, he, uh, that person downloaded an app to watch a movie on his or her LG smart TV and the device froze soon after when it was rebooted, they got that wonderful screen that some very unfortunate people have seen on their computers, except this time sideways.

Sideways, yeah. This is the main reason I put the story in. It's for the photo of the screen that one gets, uh, in, and then the other part I put this in there for, because it says, uh, claiming in subgrammatical English. I just love that phrase. Subgrammatical English.

It's almost like a Trump tweet. Yes. That, uh, device had been locked up for, uh, your attendance of forbidden pornographic sites and send them 500 bucks to unlock your TV. So this stuff, obviously, as we've moved into the world where the app that you can download for your computer or on your phone is now also on your TV.

Your TV is not locked down as well as your iPhone may or may not be. So, uh, this is of course going to start to happen to your devices that one would not think could be hacked. And this was an original Google TV device, wasn't it? And it was running like a very early version of Android. Uh, correct.

Yeah. I think that's correct as well. Yeah. So this wasn't a new TV that he just got off the shelf. This is an old TV that got, got ransomware on it because he didn't patch his TV. He did not patch his TV. And how many times have I said, don't buy a goddamn smart TV because that's right there. Nobody's going to patch their TV.

I have a smart TV and I do do the patches. So that's quite well. And luckily they called and basically just had to do a firmware reset and they were good to go. So it took them a long time to get the codes to get the firmware reset though, because LG wasn't giving up the ghost on the reset code. Well, I mean, first you have to talk to tech support level one, and then that takes five hours because it's seven hours of, did you turn it on?

Did you turn it off? And then you get booted up to level two, but then once you get to level three, then you get back to level one and you have to go back up. Level three, they disconnect you and you can never get back in touch with the person you were socked to the first time around. Okay. Good point. Good point. We've all been down that road. We've all been through that song and dance.

The thing that caught my attention was the, was the line about downloaded an app to watch a movie. Uh huh. Yep. Yeah. With no further description of, you know, like, I don't think it downloaded. Well, yeah, I don't think it was the HBO Go app or the, you know, it's basically sounds like you sideloaded an app and paid the price.

It's the Sweden app. We love that. Buyer beware. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What you're going to do? What you're going to do? So, uh, speaking of the, the smart home and the internet of things, the federal trade commission has announced a prize competition. Ooh, fancy.

Uh, they're challenging the public to create a technical solution or quote unquote tool that consumers can deploy to guard against security vulnerable vulnerabilities. And even those in software on the internet of things. Well, at a minimum, this tool would help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities caused by out of date software.

Well, yeah, I don't, we'll, we'll get to what we can do in the future on this one, but you know, update your software. Uh, contestants have the option of adding features such as those that would address hard coded factory default or easy to guess passwords. So, uh, you can do, I guess, apparently packet sniffing for admin and blank and deny access to it.

Uh, the prize for the competition is now get this guys. Somebody's going to retire on this one up to $25,000 with $3,000 available for each honorable mention. Winners will be announced on or about July 27th, 2017.

So that gives you about, uh, about 13 minutes to go build your IOT solution for the FTC. Excellent. Well, 25 grand. I mean, that's not, that's nothing. No, I, I, I, I, I mean, for something, you know, for this, I, I, I, I, if you had the skills to build this, uh, you'd be doing illegal things that would make you a lot more money.

Yeah, I did ask around here and, and one of, uh, one of our guys here said that it, it's a respectable amount as a bug bounty and that maybe it's intended to be gravy for some startup who's working on a solution that they hope to sell anyway. Um, but you know, for someone to start up, the other thing I noticed when I was looking through this, I thought, well, maybe this is something that could attract groups of students.

Um, so you have to be 18 to enter. So it would have to be college students. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, uh, you know, it's silly. It's hard to fault them for trying, but I, I just, yeah. It kind of is because this is just, this is just, you know, wasting bandwidth.

Honestly, this is just wasting bandwidth and $25,000 of a taxpayer money that somebody's going to win for some, you know, just slap together thing that just beats everybody else. It's, it makes no sense. Sounds like we should put it in an entry, Jason. I think we should too.

If you know what it is, it's a, it's a sticker that you, that we send out to everybody that bought a camera that says, update your damn camera and add, you know, I was going to say that. Yep. Is your item from China? Do not connect. Oh, a little follow up on my cameras, a little follow.

I did take out, I did take out the Chinese router, which we'll talk about later on in the show, but, uh, I did have a security professional try and get into my system and he could not get to my cameras. So I am, I have DMZ'd my cameras properly. Granted, I am in the 0.00001% of the public who knows how to do that.

So what, what could he get to? Uh, just basically my main, he could do port scans on the main machines, but that's about it. Oh, and here's the one thing that I figured out because I gave him, I gave him my IPv6 address and my IPv4 address. I'm on a Comcast slash Xfinity for my home router.

If you go to anybody's home router that has, uh, that you can, you know, find the IP address for the software on the router gives you a list of every device connected to that router. Nice. All my, my phone with the name, all my, uh, at my Apple TV, everything that is connected to that router.

You get a list of it right on the home screen. And I, I, I actually connected through a VPN and backtraced to it to make sure that it didn't know that I was coming from the same IP and yeah, it shows you everything on the network. I'm like someone from, wait, wait, wait. So let's back up here.

So someone from the outside can come in. They can load my IP address in a web browser and see everything on my, on my network. So basically you're handing them a map to where to start. Yeah. Wow. Good times. Thank you.

Thank you. Comcast. Yep. Well, I mean, is that something you can disable in your router? No. Wow. That's the crazy part. You cannot turn that off. And I've got admin on my router. Yeah. So I don't know really how to, how to get around that.

Well, a friend of the show, Fergal sent what may possibly be a solution. Um, over at Norton, they just debuted at CES, something called the Norton core, which if you were looking for a router that made you look like you were in the 1970s version of Battlestar Galactica, this is the one.

It really does. And I was just watching Battlestar over the break. Either that or a big fan of, uh, Epcot. Yeah. Damn right. It totally looks like Epcot. There might be, Disney might come knocking on their door pretty soon. Um, yeah. So they have a, they have a router they're calling the core.

This is a good one to potentially win that 25 grand we were just talking about. They are billing this as the solution to the internet of things problem, a smart router that will be constantly, uh, taking a look at your entire system and keeping it safe and secure. Um, there are some spec sheets going on here that I haven't delved too into, but, uh, we'll see and hear more about this.

Um, you know, now that Apple's gotten out of the router game, this could be interesting. Uh, this is something that I might be looking to purchase in the future. I I'm, I'm going to get one. I mean, it's not cheap and it looks kind of dorky, but, um, the, the deep packet inspection that it's doing and all of the other stuff, the, the only downside is that you have to buy a subscription to Norton antivirus, right?

Yeah. Which is a load of crap. For free, you get the first year for free and then it's 10 bucks a month. Just like a meth addict. Great. Yeah. It's sort of, it's like protection money, right? It is. Well, literally it is protection money. Exactly. I mean, I do, I get, I get what happened to your network.

I get where they're coming from. They've got to pay for the research to keep the updates going on and all that sort of stuff. And to that degree, it makes sense. I mean, I have $300 router. I want a little bit, I want a little bit of extra juice. Sorry. And they don't want to sell you a router that if you don't bother to update and you're not getting the most recent stuff, then it no longer works.

That looks bad for them. So they're promising that we'll keep this updated for you by continually sucking money out of your wallet. You get the first year for, with the purchase price. And it seems reasonable to me for 10 bucks a month to know that your router is up to date.

You know, that's not, that's not a, that's not a nutty amount of money for that kind of protection. Well, and the end of $10 isn't just for the, the router. It's, it's, you're getting the full, you know, software package for all of your devices as well. Well, here's the thing. Well, you don't have to install Norton on your devices, which is worth $10 a month to me for, because running Norton on any of my computers is a no-go ever.

It is the, I'm sorry. Antivirus on my machine has never worked. I lose, I've lost so much time figuring out why is everything crashing? Why am I even on the, on the PCs? Why am I getting a blue screen? Brand new HP laptop I bought out of the box. Blue screened on boot.

Deleted Norton. Worked fine. So. I love that. I love the fact that in our grumpy old geek security segment, Jason is saying, do not ever put any security software on your. Whatever you do. So that's the end of security as we know it, I suppose.

Don't click on stupid ass attachments and go to dumb websites. By the way, if you want to see everything on my network, here's my IP address. Well, 2017 is off to a bang, isn't it? Right. Here we go. All right.

Moving on. Oh, let's talk about a little bit of surveillance. Why bother? I've already got all my windows open. You can just check whatever you want. It doesn't matter. I'm not doing anything wrong.

You do have a big dog, so you got that going for you. See, that's what. Screw the network. I don't need Norton. I got Bam Bam. She's going to protect my email. Right. Bam Bam. Bam Bam runs my DMZ. That's it. So this is the EFF surveillance and self-defense page, and they have overviews, tutorials, and briefings on very many different things about how to keep yourself safe on the Internet.

First up, how to not listen to grumpy old geeks. They need a logo designer. That's all I got to say. Looks like a set of inverted balls. I actually saw Martini Olives there. Martini Olives and really bad meth teeth.

That's what I thought it sort of looked like the old 1950s, you know, atomic little orbital kind of thingies, you know. Because we had many atomic keys back then, yes. Well, just the top half, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right. So that's that.

So everybody, you have to send your money to the EFF so they can keep this going and hire a new logo designer. I think overall, it's fair to say that we love the EFF and the things that they do. Definitely worth supporting. And this is a great resource. It is. There's a ton of stuff in here just for on the basics.

If you just want to learn the basics, go for it. Yeah. This is a great thing. I should probably read this. They might mention something about installing, I don't know, security software on your computers, Jason. Exactly. I, you know, I do have AVG on here. I just have a problem with Norton.

Norton always crashes on everything I've ever installed it on. Okay. You did not specify that when you made your initial statement. I know. I know. But I do have AVG on my computer. All right. Okay. This is a great thing if you want to, you know, when your friends and family ask you, you know, what can I do?

Or, you know, what are some of this, if you have people who are feeling anxiety over the election or, you know, what's to come with our new administration and people are asking, I know, I don't know about you guys, but I've been asked by more than a few people for my opinion on how do I protect myself, you know, against what may come, if anything, this is a great place to start.

There's a great link to send them. It's straightforward. Actually, no, it's not. It's not a great link to send them because they're never going to do it. What you have to do is you have to go here and you have to memorize it so you can then you can just read back to them what they should do and then you will just baffle them with bullshit and then give them the URL and then they'll just say, shut up.

I'll go to the URL and they might actually go to it. But as we all know, that won't work either because what we actually have to do is you have to go to their house and do it all for them. And then you have to be their tech support 24-7 moving forward so that they remember how to keep themselves safe and not screw it all up.

So I send them my private key, right? That's how I get my PGP email back. I give them my private key and then they send me back to public. I don't know how this works. I press the button and it goes and I get my yahoos. All right. Our first segment went off the rails, but hey, that was fun.

Gentlemen, it's been fun. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Talk to you soon. See you next week. We were gone for a little while, so I got to read some books.

Okay. I read. Well, I started off with Nexus by Ramez Nam. Oh, yes. I read this whole series a while back. I'm glad that you finally got around to it. It's great. I loved it. I said it was good. Yeah. You should listen to me. Well, I did. So it was in my to-do list from way back when and I finally got around to it and I binged it.

You know, we talked about not doing that, but it was so good. All three of these back to back and they're not wee. They are not wee books. They're not wee, but they're not rough reading either though. They're kind of popcorn. They are popcorn, but the two, the book two and book three are about 24 hours each.

Right, yeah. So it was a, you know, they're basically the same size as the Washington biography. Yep. So, but man, I loved them. They were very Daniel Suarez, but like, you know, just a different take on it, but very well done. I thought they were fantastic. I keep waiting to see if he's going to write any more fiction and have not seen anything yet.

So he seems to be doing more nonfiction and a lot of speaking at the moment. Yeah, I think he's cashing in on the speaking because you make a lot more doing that than writing books. Of course you do, because who reads except for us? Except for us. Why we love this segment. No, I'm really glad that you liked it. I thought that it was a really interesting concept on taking the whole interface between man and machine and software and drugs and all of that.

Really interesting. Yeah, it was. It was very fun and well-written and had the good action points and none really of your general hatred for the love interest side of things. No, no, it was not the kind of somewhat older professor who sweeps in and gets like crazy blonde chick or whatever.

So none of that happened to us. Yeah, that was a problem you had with Daniel Suarez's book four. Yes. Big time. Yeah, that was right up there on that one. It's just such an old trope and it's been used so many times. Every time I see it now, I'm just like, you're a lazy writer. Yeah, it's basically a fallback.

Yeah. So I also finally finished a book over the break. I dove back into the laundry files after a break in between them and I read the annihilate and shit. Now I can't say the word. Annihilation score. Annihilation score. Thank you. I was like, ever look at a word and have it screw up the way you're pronouncing it because you're staring at it going, is that really how it's spelled?

Is that an nihilist score or annihilation? That's exactly where I was going with it. I was going to do nihilist. Anyways, I finished it. This is the first book where Bob was not the main character. In fact, he was barely in it at all. And the main character was his wife. I thought that would really bug me.

It did a little bit. I miss Bob. I like Bob. Bob's my uncle. But I enjoyed the book. It was, you know, I kind of get it. How many, you know, this is like seventh book or something like that. It's kind of the same story again and again and again. So changing up the characters helps a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, I was waiting for you to get to this book because when I reviewed it, I was just like, it is a different book because the wife is the one that is the protagonist in it.

And I actually liked it more than some of the Bob books. Yeah, I can see that because it was a change of pace. But I do miss, I miss Bob as a character. I want to know what's going on. Well, I liked her backstory. You got to hear her backstory and her backstory was pretty good. He did a good job with that, I thought. Yeah, I thought so too.

The thing that bums me out a little bit is as I finished this one, I looked up the next one and it's a completely different new character. It is. Well, it's not a new character. They go back to the vampires, the vampire accountants. It's also a little bit different, but not bad. And I think Bob's in that one a lot more.

Okay, I'll continue on shortly. But you still haven't read the Bob-a-verse book that I gave you. I have not, I have not. So, if you are needing some Bob in your life, I recommend taking some time and go reading the Bob-a-verse book one. All right, I will check into that.

And then I got a book from my mom for Christmas. I love this book so far. I have not finished it. This is kind of a, this is what Jason would call a shitter book. You just kind of pick it up in the shitter and you read a chapter or two or a little bit. Well, I'm a little more family friendly.

I call it a crapper read. Okay. It's the book of general ignorance, misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the hevo in this humorous, downright humiliating book of re-education. It's quite good. There are a lot of things in there that you, just common knowledge that you think is common knowledge and it's completely and utterly wrong.

So, it's fun stuff and some of this stuff is definitely going to make it into the podcast over time. So, I recommend it. Yeah, it looks great. I definitely want to pick it up. And in a bit of news that I figured belongs in this section because it's about libraries and librarians, two employees at the Eastlake County Library created a fictional patron called Chuck Finley, entering fake driver's license and address details in the library system.

And then used the account to check out over 2,000 books over nine months in 2016, purely to trick the new system in place in libraries into believing that these books were loved and being circulated to the patrons, thus rescuing the books from the automated purges of low-popularity titles. Now, this is fantastic, I think, because they're trying to hack the system to make sure that these books stay in circulation, but that's what they say it is.

Yes. The interesting side of this is that the libraries get funding based on circulation. So, if they're upping their circulation, that means they're getting more funding from the city or state, which could put this into a fraud category where they're trying to get more money. So, there's a fine line here.

Yes. Well, this is why the whole story came out because these people were suspended, and actually, I think that they had to pay fines and things like that, which wouldn't happen just to save a book from being taken out of circulation. It happens because there are financial repercussions to this. Yeah, there are big financial repercussions.

And they named this fictional patron Chuck Finley, and Chuck Finley is a baseball player, which is what they said, but I like to think of Chuck Finley as Sam Axe from the Burn Notice series, who is also Bruce Campbell. So, I'm going to go with Chuck Finley as the secret CIA officer is checking out books and sitting on the crapper and reading the Book of General Ignorance when nobody else is.

Very nice. I just love the story. I thought it was very funny. And the financial thing aside, it's very Robin Hood-y and save the good books from the ignorant masses. Yeah, and I mean, it is Robin Hood-y, but they did raise their funding based on the numbers by 3.6%. So, it's not an insignificant amount of money.

Yes. And speaking of a not insignificant amount of money, the New York Public Library spent over $2 million in a robotic conveyor belt to bring you your research books. Okay. That's kind of ridiculous. Well, you know, hey, robots are taking jobs everywhere, so.

$2 million. I'd imagine a librarian at the New York Public Library probably doesn't make that much money. You probably could have funded one for their entire career. Well, that, and if you look at this thing, it looks like it's made from Lego Mindstorm. It kind of does, actually. Like, that's a lot of Lego.

Like, for $2 million, I expect some lasers and some smoke. Some freaking lasers. Yeah. This is a little boring. Tops and doodads. My first app of the week is Video Rotate and Flip. It costs $0.99 and does exactly what it does.

And you know why I got this app? Why? Because every now and again on your iPhone, it will still record a video in portrait mode. And nobody should ever have a video in portrait mode. It should always be landscape. So, I needed to actually shift some things around and flip it upside down.

And for $0.99, it does exactly what it says it's going to do, and I highly appreciate it. Excellent. No snappy name. Just what it does. Yeah, I'm going to video rotate and flip. I also bought Super Mario Run. You bought it? I bought it. I paid. Well, I got it for free, and then I paid for the upgrade because I finished the free levels.

And I'm like, eh, it's kind of fun. I want to keep going. And it is kind of fun. It's not worth the money, though. I was about to say, I downloaded it for free and actually played it. I'm not a gamer, but I did anyways. And I was bored out of my mind before I even got close to finishing the free levels.

So, I was like, there's no way I'm paying for any of this. Plus, I also don't understand anything that's happening. Okay, well, I played the most fun for me in the game are the rally version, or like the rally levels where you're going against other people. Those are fun. Those are a ton of fun. But you have to get tickets, quote unquote tickets, for those.

And so, you get a bunch of tickets when you pay for it. And then, once you run out of tickets, you get like 40 tickets, and I finished those. And I'm like, oh, so I guess I got to play the game now. So, I start playing the game. And then, every time you finish a level, you get 10 more tickets, and there's only six levels. And I'm just like, I'm on level six now.

I just started it. And I'm just like, ah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little boring. That's pretty much it. I'm like, you can play one-handed. And I'm like, oh, well, there's other things I can do for free for one hand. So, what are you going to do? Yeah. What are you going to do? You don't have to pay for that. And that's free.

So, yeah. So, the Fitbit. I got rid of my Fitbit. I gave it to my brother. He's happy as a clam. And I gained a bunch of weight because I didn't have my Fitbit anymore. And then, nobody... I tried to give away my Apple Watch for Christmas. Nobody would take it for free, which tells you a lot about the Apple Watch.

So, yes. I started wearing it again. And I changed the face to the fitness face. Turned off all of the apps. Got rid of all of the notifications. And I just use it as a watch with the fitness stuff. Basically, the same way that you were using your phone for fitness and all that stuff. And it just tells me when I'm done for the day.

That's it. And it's a watch with the weather on it. The weather is, honestly, one of the most important things. I can look in the morning and say, it's seven degrees. I should put on another coat. Okay. So, that is where the Apple Watch is now in my entire workflow. Okay.

It's back. Yeah. Well, what are you going to do? Fuck it. Nothing. Yeah. All right. I know. I stopped with the humming and hawing. I already told you. You were right. So, shut up and move on. We both are enjoying the Amazon Alexa.

And the one thing, like I said, when I first got it and I was trying it out, I said to you was, I really want this so it can control my TV. So, I could just turn my TV on and off and switch channels. Do the very basic, not, I don't need it to go into my DVR recordings and start one of those.

Just volume, channel changing, on and off for my TV. If this could do that, I'm very happy and I can control a lot of stuff. In theory, then, the Logitech Harmony Home Hub. In fact, they're marketing it as it's completely compatible with Alexa.

The title from Amazon, through the link that I sent to my mom so she could get me a Christmas present because she had no idea what to buy me. I said, I want this, mom. Is Logitech Harmony Home Hub for Smartphone Control of Eight Home Entertainment and Automation Devices, comma, works with Alexa. Fail.

Let me guess. It doesn't. It does not. At the very basic level, you can kind of sort of get it to sort of control some things. I got it to the point where I could turn a TV on and I could turn a TV off, but that alone took about two hours and I had to reprogram the system by using the old remote because it didn't have it all programmed incorrectly.

The other problem being that my TV, my smart TV, is a toggle on and off, so it doesn't seem to understand that. So anytime that I do anything, the first step, and you cannot take out the power on or off step, is always triggered.

So if my TV is already on and I start to do another command, such as change channel, it switches the TV off, then tries to change the channel. It's stupid. It doesn't work. It's not there yet. The time that you spent trying to get this thing to work is more time than you ever would have spent moving your hand from the left six inches to pick up the remote, press the button, and put the remote back down.

That is exactly what my wife said to me. She looked at me and said, you have spent half of your Christmas break trying to program this thing. You're an idiot. Return it. There you go. I like your wife even more now. I liked her already, but she's definitely, she's on my Christmas card list next year.

Yeah. So do not bother with this. It is not there yet. I hope that it gets there at some point. I'm sure that we won't need a third party device that I'm sure the people over at Amazon are trying to figure out how to get this to work with smart TVs without any third party device. It is the one thing I still want to have happen.

Do not waste your time with this. It was a nightmare. Okay. But if you are looking for something fun to do with your Alexa over the break, check out, let's see, what is the name of this guy? Tinkernut. Tinkernut. Tinkernut's site gives you a step-by-step run through of how you can basically shove an Echo or an Alexa into a Teddy Ruxpin and control it with Raspberry Pi.

And it is creepy as F, as they say. I thought it was pretty fun. I dug it. He doesn't make the eyes move, though, which was kind of a letdown. Well, you know, you probably tried to use the Logitech Harmony for that, and it won't work. Eyes front.

My eyes are up here, Teddy. My eyes are up here. If the eyes are on, why'd you turn them back off? No, if you turn the eyes off, you can't move the eyes, can you? This is the conversation I was having with my Harmony the entire week. Yeah, that's pretty sad. I just press the button. The monkey presses the button.

That's what I do. I went back to being a monkey that presses buttons. It's much more satisfying. There's another robot from Ubtek. It's just, or Ubtek. It's a Chinese company, and they have a new robot that will also still do Alexa coming soon.

It's called the Lynx. It looks fancier than a Teddy Ruxpin with a Raspberry Pi shoved up its ass, and it's probably a hell of a lot more money. It looks fancier in that kind of creepy, this is definitely from Japan sort of way. But it's from China, which means it's spying on you, too.

It means that your new smart router will not let it connect to anything. Yeah. And this is what every millennial narcissist needs. A fully functioning smart mirror based on iOS 10, which is so you can look in the mirror and run all your favorite apps.

Yeah, I saw this. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Yeah, this is beautiful. The guy's just sitting there staring at himself in the mirror, pressing buttons, and I'm just like, ah. Now, if you put this in the crapper, it's perfect, because you're a captive audience, and then you can sit there and Snapchat from the mirror.

He doesn't say if he has a camera in it or not, but yeah. Why would you put that in the mirror, you narcissistic fuck? Hey, Bam Bam. Hey, Bam Bam. She says she agrees with us. And finally, there's one thing out of CES that I thought was interesting.

Kodak Alaris, which is apparently a company that has branded the Kodak name from them going into bankruptcy. They're bringing back Ektachrome. Okay. Yeah, film is making a comeback, much like vinyl is, to the point where they're actually bringing back Ektachrome, which is, I think, kind of silly, but a lot of professionals still use it, and it is better than digital.

I will say that after 20 years of using it in the field, Ektachrome, and I wish they brought back Kodachrome, because Kodachrome was even better. It's good stuff. I wish they would have just stopped, not stopped making it. Yep.

Media Candy. The KLF. They may be back. Maybe. Who's the KLF? I'll see. You're not aware of them. The KLF is a duo formed in 87 by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cowdy, also known as the Justified Asians of Moo Moo.

Moo Moo's? They had a lot of super big hits, but they're more kind of jovial pranksters of the music industry, known for doing things like burning a million pounds on an island, throwing a dead sheep on their stage at the Brit Awards when they won, announcing that they were quitting the music business.

These guys are nuts. They may be coming back, and they're exactly what the world needs right now. I can't wait. First off, the music's great. Good luck finding it. Well, you can find it illegally, but because they own their catalog and they decided to never release it anywhere ever again, that's the kind of people they are.

Well, there is a link to one of their songs in the article that we linked to. Yes. It's not official, of course, but like I said, you can find it all out there. The music's great. These guys are great. I highly recommend reading up on them. They are insane and in a great sort of way, and I'd love to have them back in the world right now.

Okay. Yeah. I wasn't a big fan of the song that I heard, but I can see how you would like it. Yes. It's up your alley, for sure. Yes, it is. So over the break, I had a lot of time to get caught up on a lot of movies and films, so we're going to run through these real quick.

We talked about the OA and their advertising campaign on our last show. I ended up watching the show, thoroughly enjoyed it. Okay. Did you watch it yet? I will not watch it. I felt entirely justified in not watching it, because at first it was, this is the show that everybody must see, and then about a week later, because they were all released at once and everybody binged it, there were a gazillion articles going, what the fuck was up with that ending?

It makes no sense, and it was annoying, so I'm not going to watch it. Oh, see, when I went into Netflix, I wasn't going to watch it, and then I saw it had four and a half stars, and I'm just like, oh, well, then people are watching it and rating it, and so let me give it a shot. And it does have a what the fuck ending, but did you like Donnie Darko?

I did. Then you would like the OA. Okay. You would absolutely like it. It's a little weird in the middle, but I went into it very guarded, and by episode two, because I gave it two episodes.

The first episode, kind of iffy. By the end of episode two, I stayed up and watched six episodes, and then had to get up early and watch the other two. All right. Well, maybe I'll give it a chance then. Yeah. Travelers is another new Netflix series, which I wasn't really looking forward to, because I thought it was a TV series that they just repurposed and threw up here, but it's not.

It's a Netflix original. Also, really good. I watched five episodes last night. Just going with my same theory. I'm like, okay, if the first two suck, I'm not going to keep going. One o'clock in the morning, I had to turn the TV off and go to bed because I had to get up. So another one that dragged me in.

I'm actually enjoying it. It's not a five star. It's a four star. But if you've got nothing else to watch, it's good sci-fi. It's really good sci-fi. Killswitch, which is a kind of a retake of the Internet's Own Boy with Lawrence Lessig talking about Aaron Schwartz and security and the things that are happening around us and just copyright and all that crap.

This is kind of a ghetto version of the Internet's Own Boy. It was decent. It's actually got more of a background on Aaron and more stuff from Aaron, like a lot more of his video and more of his points. I liked it.

I give it a three and a half. Okay. Worth watching if you're into the Aaron Schwartz stuff. Train to Busan, a South Korean zombie movie. Loved it. It was very much like 28 Days Later. I loved it. I could not.

I just watched it straight through. I even had to pee like halfway through it. I'm just like, I'm not going anywhere. This is great. All right. Unlock the TV series that we talked about on our last episode about video games. Yep. It's awesome. Totally love it. I would wait for it to come to Netflix so you don't have to pay the $20 for it because it's not $20 worth of TV.

It's really good, but it is not $20 worth of TV. Yeah, definitely. It's eight episodes, highly enjoyable, and a really good background on video gaming, where it came from, where it's at, where it's going. Thoroughly enjoyed. All right.

And you're a Homeland fan, aren't you? I am. I no longer have show time, so I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do about that. Sweden. Yeah. I think I might be downloading the Sweden app for my smart TV and opening myself up to a ransomware attack. Just don't put it through your Logitech to your Alexa.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the show. I'm very excited about it being back. I thought last season was fantastic, and they definitely shook things up again, so I'm really interested to see what they do with it. You shouldn't be, because this first episode was terrible. Oh, damn. Yeah, Mr. Limpet is back, or Mrs. Limpet, as I like to call her.

It was terrible. It was a terrible episode, and just has me not looking forward to the rest of the season at all. Yeah, well, yeah, it's one of those shows that does kind of like really, really good season. Eh, season. Really, really good season, so it might be a, eh, season. Yeah, this one is completely different, and I'm just like, what the fuck?

What? What? Who's the special operator guy that everybody loved? They got tortured at the end of last season? I can't remember his name. It's been so long. It's been like over a year. Yeah, well, yeah, his story in this one is just like absurd.

It's utterly absurd, so it's sad. It's very sad. Peter Quinn. Peter Quinn, yes. Peter Quinn's story is absolutely absurd, and very much turned me off of actually wanting to watch the rest of it, but hey, if it comes from Sweden and it's free, then I'm maybe.

I'll check it out. Sherlock. Now, Sherlock is back, and you watched the first episode before I did, which I did. I was very excited. Well, you have to remember, I binged it. This was all new to me. Most of you have been, people have been waiting two years for this. I just finished watching all of Sherlock about two months ago.

Yeah, no, I've been, I've watched it, I watched the first episode the day it came out, so I've been on the long road with Sherlock, and I did, so I could wait an extra day, so I had the time to sit down, turn everything off. I turned my phone off, turned my Alexa off. I turned everything off, and just sat down and watched it.

And my favorite line is, I delete any text that begins with I, which is one of the greatest lines of all time. But I adored it. I loved this new episode and this new season. I thought it was good. I didn't see, I only saw like one or two people that weren't happy about it.

Oh, I saw hundreds. Hundreds. Well, spoiler, I'm not, nah. No, don't do a spoiler on it, yeah. No, and The Guardian wrote a really nasty review of it, and then Mark Gattis came back with a poem to an undiscerning critic from Mark Gattis, which is a great poem.

And what I really liked about this first episode was that Mark Gattis wrote it by himself. Stephen Moffat wasn't involved. And I thought it was better than any of the episodes that Stephen Moffat has been involved with, because I think he has gotten weak. I loved his stuff in Coupling, his Doctor Who stuff I hated, and I have loved most of his Sherlock stuff, but I always thought it was weak.

And then when Mark Gattis got to write his own episode, I thought it was stellar. And I was laughing my ass off, because it was funny. You got to admit that there were parts in there that you had to be laughing your ass off. Yeah, it was very good. I liked it. I liked it a lot. It was very funny. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm very glad it's back.

I think we have a new episode coming this week, too, right? Yeah, the next two weeks. Oh, that's great. So we get a free movie every week. I did hear that this is probably, unfortunately, the success of Doctor Strange may have killed any chance of any further Sherlock. That's what I've heard. I bet that they will do, unless season or episode three is a wrap on it, I bet they'll do like a Christmas special wrap-up in two and a half, three years.

Yeah, probably something like that. So we had a nice little crossover there of the show that we both watched, and now I can get into some of the things that I watched over the break. Or actually, I should state, tried to watch and probably didn't watch very much of. You were right about the White Rabbit Project.

Wait, wait, say that again? You were right about the White Rabbit Project. Oh, I was right. I was right. Okay. Yeah, I don't have the arguments with you the way that you have with me about these things, Jason. Well, because I don't go, mm-hmm, uh-huh, mm-hmm, uh-huh. Oh, I was right? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Okay, see, you could do that if I said that I was going to watch the White Rabbit Project, and I did watch the White Rabbit Project, and I said I wasn't going to watch it, and then I put it on the shelf, and I said, I'm never going to touch it again, and screw you for ever telling me that I'm going to touch it, and I took it down the next day and watched it all. Then you could say that, Jason. Yeah, but you know how many times I've moved back to Los Angeles.

I'm expecting you out the door any day now. I'll see you at Fins on Friday. So I tried to watch the White Rabbit Project. It's horrible. The elements are all there, and if they just did straight up, you know, build sequences and testing, I would love it.

The let's make it a live action, and let's script it, and let's have actors, horrible. Well, just tell me, tell me, I want to talk to you about that first episode, because that's the only one I watched. Now, when I said Carrie was a big C, was I correct? When she was sitting there shocking Tori over the Italian dinner.

I didn't have as much of a problem with that, because I saw that as the relationship between those two and the way that they are, in the same way that if somebody sat down at Fins with you and me, they would think that we hate each other. Right. It's just the way that we talk to each other. They've got that kind of antagonistic relationship with each other.

I just got that vibe from Tori at the end that he was just not like, that it wasn't a joke anymore, you know? I think it probably might have gone too far, but from what I've heard about productions like that, that's usually the producer's fault, because they say you need to do it five more times, because we didn't get the shot we wanted. He was bitching at the producer on that one, too.

Yeah, so I think it's the producer and not Carrie. You know what I mean? So I didn't get that impression. I still, I like all three of the people. I just hate the way that they are structuring the show. The fact that they're trying to do these recreations with actors is just horrible, and it fails miserably. It failed on every level.

Keep to the science. Do the, if you guys come back for another episode, and of course you're going to listen to our, you know, advice about this. If you come back for another, if you come back for another season, keep it to the science and the real life stuff and get rid of all the rest of that crap, and it might be decent. I watched two episodes of it.

The second one wasn't any better. Okay, and here's the thing. You know, the one that really bugged me was Grant and his, like, you know, just idiot portrayal of a mad scientist. He can't act. No. He can't act at all. But here's his follow-up. Here's my follow-up on that. I heard him on the Adam Carolla show a couple days ago, and I thought he was lovely.

I thought he was really smart, fun, and easy to listen to. But when I see him on TV, I want to stab him in the face. All three of them are very, very nice and good people, and I think that they just need to do that instead of try to act. I agree. I thought that was horrible. The other big problem I have with the show in general, and since, you know, people can binge this stuff, and you only got the one episode, they basically never spend any time together.

They do completely separate. They're like their own individual B-teams. Yeah, yeah. Everybody just goes off in their own area and does the thing. It's not a team effort. It's not a team thing. What made them was the team, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So, big problem with the show. On to another show that I have a big problem with, the Grand Tour.

Uh-oh. You have a problem with the Grand Tour? Now that I've seen six episodes, plus then the special, the Christmas special, which was their big trip one. The Namibia one, right? Namibia. That I liked. That two-hour special was awesome. It felt like the old show.

Yeah. Because they didn't have the same problem that I had with White Rabbit Project. They didn't have the scripted bullshit bits that the regular show always has now. The stupid celebrity thing needs to go. Yeah, that has to go. That has to go. Conversation Street needs to fucking go.

I thought that was fun. I actually enjoyed that, because that's basically them reading the news. Yeah, the lead-ins and the bits like that. They're really bad scripted jokes. Because all the sequences that they go out and shoot now, they're doing the same thing like the White Rabbit Project did. They're doing fake enactments and things like that instead of it just being really what they're doing.

Yeah, but they used to do that on Top Gear, too. Yeah, but they did it tongue-in-cheek ridiculous and not as often. They didn't rely on it, and they rely on it for this show, I think. It's too much for me. I'm not digging it. Okay. I'm not going anywhere with them. I love them to death, so I'm not going anywhere.

I'm still going to watch the show. I'm just bitching about it. Okay, you're allowed. I will give that to you. They're just elements that I don't like that I did prefer the previous show. Yeah, the celebrity thing has to go, and they have to get rid of that stupid American driver. It's ridiculous. Yep, totally forgot about that, too.

It's terrible. Like, don't even bother with it. The Stig was great. That was funny. This is shit, so stop it. Yeah, just get a regular driver and don't even try and infuse comedy into it. I don't want comedy in the actual track. You know what I want? I want the best driver you can get to take those cars around as fast as they can.

That's it. That's all I care about. Agreed. So, Man in the High Castle, another Amazon show, season two now. There's a link in the show notes from Box. The title is, The Man in the High Castle season two is the worst TV show of the year. It's January 5th.

And do you agree with this? I think that this headline can probably stand through December. We'll see, but I'm pretty on board with this. It's fucking horrible. Don't bother. Two episodes in, I gave up. No way. I'm not going to watch this piece of shit. I didn't make it past the pilot. You know, I watched the first season pilot and I'm like, this is, they don't know what they're doing.

This is terrible. And I know a lot of people that had a problem with watching it, saying, I'm trying to find somebody to root for and I'm rooting for a Nazi and this just feels disgusting. It gets weird that way, but I still, at least the first season, once you get past the pilot, was kind of rooted in some sort of reality until the season finale.

And then there's a whole, I'm not going to get too into it, but season two, just, have you ever watched a show and then the next season kind of destroys the entire fabric of the universe of the first season? Yeah. Nothing comes to mind, but yeah, I'm sure I have.

Yeah, it just betrays everything that the show was and it doesn't make any sense and it's just crap. And again, the showrunner left, so it's a new showrunner running the second season. That's right, because they thought that all of his assistants could run the show without him. Exactly, and they didn't want to pay for him, so they got rid of the main guy and it shows.

It's horrible. Don't bother. Yeah, but also, he wasn't that good to begin with because I didn't think that the first season was even worth it, so what are you going to do? You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You're still going to the, you're still going to the gas chambers. Yep. I figured I'd have something a little more punchy to say about that one, but that's okay.

You know, it's the first episode of the year. I'm trying to stay away from the Nazi humor. So my last one is a shout out to Sarah Michelle Gellar because I love her to death. I've always loved her because I was a huge Buffy fan and there's a Daily Dot article where she explains why a Buffy revival is a bad idea.

I'm just going to leave it at that. If you're a Buffy fan, I don't want to even just drag it on because most people aren't Buffy fans, but go read it and find out why that there will never be a Buffy revival and I am so okay with this. Buffy ended perfectly. I still think about the end of Buffy because it was so sad and so glorious and so great for like 18,000 seasons that they did, but it was so perfect and it should never be touched again.

It should just be entombed as a thing. Entombed. I see what you did there. Hunting unicorns. Hunting unicorns. This is a new segment for this year. We talk about stocks a lot on the show kind of abstractly within the tech sphere and things like that and I've always kind of thought in the back of my mind we should do a little game where we basically just figuratively go out and pick some stocks and we see who performs better over some of our favorites and things like that so we decided

to actually do it this time around. I found a site called howthemarketworks.com which lets you set up basically stock market games against each other contests so we set that up gave ourselves $10,000 each to go in and purchase five I said we made the determination to do five stocks two from the Dow and three from you know smaller or whatever not in the Dow tech stocks and then I our buddy friend of the show Mike is doing a control version of the group where he has no tech stocks whatsoever

he's basically just durables so we got our $10,000 $10 trading fee per so we spent 50 bucks on trading fees I actually spent a little more because I didn't do the math right and ended up having to buy like a bunch of stuff a couple times okay well Jason screwed up and I spent a lot I spent a lot extra on trade I think I spent 150 bucks on trading fees so all right so we went then and and did that as if I believe well we opened it up on Monday and I think all of us had our

stocks by Tuesday so Jason went with here's what I got I went with Cisco Intel Nvidia Netflix and Tesla yes you did and I went with Microsoft Apple Sony Electronic Arts and PayPal and Mike the control group is a Citibank Caterpillar Johnson & Johnson Striker Corporation and Berkshire Hathaway Striker Corporation sounds like a bad 80s like hero villain type of thing I'm Striker it sounds like

what the evil guy from Cobra Kai and would have would have started a company because it's Striker with a Y yes it is that's why because it has a Y yep so we all went in and made our purchases and what we'll do is we'll check in once a month to see where they're at in terms of how they're performing against each other with the winner basically getting a six pack of beer from the two losers there we go that's the way it's going to work so as of today when we're recording the show and this is Thursday the 5th I'm currently in the lead yes

this does not surprise me yes it's a point I've lost .03% of my portfolio Jason's down .65 and Mike is down 1.60 so much for that control okay yes so far we're kicking his ass so we'll see and we'll check in more on this as we go along just a little fun thing you can play along if you'd like to get yourself $10,000 go sign up over there start your own portfolio and see if you kick our asses yeah and it has to be evenly distributed we distributed the cash

evenly across all five stocks yeah as much as as you as close as we could get yeah minimum of $1,500 in each stock so so while we were coming up with this idea I was going to buy Twitter stock and Brian's like no you have to pick two from the down you already picked three of the other ones I'm like ah shit okay that would also again be because Jason didn't read the rules when he started I didn't understand the rules because I don't know what the fuck what with stocks I don't this is like me playing fantasy football for the first time so I'm just like

I wanted to get Twitter and because I think Twitter is going to rally this year so I made a side bet with Brian and so I actually physically in the real world actually spent money and I bought 18 shares of Twitter at $16.33 at the end of one year if I have made money on Twitter Brian owes me a six pack yep and because I was a little bit worried about Jason actually winning this and I would be pissed off if he actually made any money I also purchased 10 shares of Twitter so if I do lose that

you cheater you cheater I will cash that out to pay for your beer you motherfucking cheater why is that cheating I picked up 10 shares myself just to you know just in case just in case you got a winner on your hands yeah and by the way I bought it $16.33 and it's now at $1,709 so I'm up it's early days Jason you got a year I know I know and speaking of which I have a link in the show notes on Vanity Fair after Trump will Twitter wither by Nick Bilton

so it's an interesting read to see if Twitter is going to make it well we got another four years of Trump Twitter so and now in about what is it 15 days he'll be moving to at POTUS which just makes me sad it makes yeah well I don't want to lose listeners this early in the year have you listened to the rest of this show too late oh yeah too late Moron of the Week our first Moron of the Week

for 2017 is 28 year old Anthony Armour aka 8booth 8booth apparently he makes his living jumping into pools on YouTube hey man if it pays the bills oh wait apparently it doesn't apparently he doesn't because he screwed up and shattered both his feet while trying to jump into a hotel swimming pool from three stories up recently and now he started the GoFundMe page to pay

for his medical costs hey man if you fuck up get everybody else to pay for it that's the American way now yep that seems to be if anything goes wrong in the world you go off and get other people to pay for it of course that does appear to be the Republican healthcare plan to be fair okay now you're getting now you're getting deep in it so he's looking for $112.2,000 and on his GoFundMe campaign he has reached $2,113

as of right now I just checked it this instant and that's he's got a bit to go yep screw him well that $2,000 will pay for some hospital jello for sure I did not watch the video because I do not I have broken my ankles many times and my legs many times and I don't even need to ever see that kind of thing especially from being a dumbass yeah since we are coming into the 2017 dystopia I would like

to put this website forward wouldisurviveanuke.com lets you put in where you live and the population area and the size of the bomb that will be dropped on you to see where if you're going to make it or not it's pretty interesting yeah this this crawled across my page courtesy of a friend of the show Dr. David Teeter and I think he had a comment along the lines of scarily accurate I'm going to go cry now yeah since he is the nuclear guy

I actually have one of the best gifts I've ever gotten from him is a it's a circular slide rule on nuclear fallout and devastation based on megatons and things like that I love that thing and it's just I keep it up in my on my shelf to remind me that shit can get real at any time life is fleeting life is fleeting it is it really is it's like don't get attached to anything calculator is really what it

is and I've got I've got a sad story for you millennials that don't like to pay for anything January 1st 2017 happy public domain day here's what you could have gotten for free this year but thanks to retroactive copyright term extension you don't get for free and you have to pay for these things include To Kill a Mockingbird Rabbit Run the films Magnificent 7 and The Time Machine most early episodes of The Flintstones the musical Camelot and many many more at this link

that would have been completely free but because of the copyright term extensions not a single thing on this list is free now okay yay interestingly enough for you it would have included some of Dr. Seuss's stuff well not for me and I don't my dad doesn't work there anymore so okay sorry I still have my Dr. Seuss on the wall in my studio and I love it yes I have it in my son's room so yes the booby trap is the one I have which I hope is not in your son's room because mine comes

from World War II talking about soldiers why they should not bang strange women because they might get STDs no I have Sneetches with stars yes and no stars upon thars mine is Snatches with stars oh boy show title this playful lab in a box will teach you how to reprogram life Amino Labs is a lab in a box that allows anyone basically non-biologists to learn how DNA can be used to program living systems to create things and like we are fond of saying

what could go wrong sorry we are now I stepped on it because I hadn't actually looked at this story we are 3D printing the apocalypse thank you very much people oh god that's great yeah way to go way to go people Ed we shit on VR all the time but a Blade Runner fan has gone back and recreated Deckard's entire apartment in VR

somebody needs to get laid I was about to say I wonder what this Blade Runner fan does for anything I'm sure he's building a replicant as we speak there are VR stains on the couches in Deckard's place I'm sure at this point oh boy and courtesy of Science Alert I just found this somewhat unbelievable well you know we think we're now creating and programming life in a box yet we don't even know what's inside ourselves yet

we apparently now have a brand new organ found in humans this is real this is not fake it's called the mesentery it's a new organ found in our digestive systems long thought to be made up of fragmented and separate structures recent research has shown that it's actually one continuous organ we know about the structure yet we still do not really understand what it does great so maybe somebody with that lab in a box can create one that walks around and talks and can tell us what it does

hi I'm from your gut biome I'm here to tell you what I do I am Jack's mesentery I am Jack's mesentery there's your show title feedback loop we have a new Patreon sponsor Dana Wolf thank you very much Dana for supporting us on Patreon and we recommend everybody go support us on Patreon so we can still keep bringing you this high quality content in Jack's Mesopotamia or whatever the fuck Jack's got

nowadays Jack's prime delta is that what we're shooting for there anyways thank you so much Dana and we do appreciate the Patreon subscribers as you notice there is no sponsor for this episode it's just you guys so we are really doing it with your help we have a bunch of iTunes reviews thankfully all of them are five stars this week so we didn't piss anybody off in the last few episodes the first is from clue and vase what do you think I think it's clue and vase clue and vase you're a single listener from Sri Lanka Sri Lanka

not Sri Lanka it's not Sri Lanka you've been even playing with your iPhone too much I think so and I didn't watch Indiana Jones recently either so that's a problem hey guys I love the show this is probably the best tech podcast on iTunes right now I also listen to every episode available evil smile you're a brave man PS told all my geeky friends to listen to GOG PPS your haters are the reasons why aliens don't visit us oh okay okay cool I agree

we appreciate it and if we ever go to Sri Lanka I would love for us to have a beer because I love that part of the world yes so our next one comes from you wrong you rang you rang you rang now I get it oh my god you didn't get that I didn't get it until I read it you rang I was coming from Sri Lanka I thought it was another ethnic name jeez I cracked up the day you posted this in here okay not just another tech

news podcast these guys cover way more than tech news each episode spans a spectrum of topics with just enough details included to explain the story or make the point the shows are fast paced with plenty of humor and sarcasm often is not at their own expense yep that's pretty much it way to sum it up I think that's going to be our new iTunes description that's a pretty good one our next one is from grumpy AI not grumpy machine learning okay old geek great podcast the only one I listen to

thanks for finally looking up the definition of AI it was starting to become a little embarrassing you haven't read Kurzweil I've read tons of Kurzweil I have not also you really need to watch halt and catch fire I'm trying to Mark Cantor was on and he recommended it but Mark's kind of a loon so I'm still not on board with all of his recommendations I love him to death but he's a bit loony but if you're recommending it I'll give it a shot what that episode we did with him is totally normal he's not loony at all

I only had to cut about seven hours of conspiracy theories yeah that was a long recording session this next one comes from SJ Baez great show this show is very funny and entertaining and there was a bacon emoji in it so way to go SJ Baez love bacon thank you our next is from Jossie JC okay Jay-Z I don't know no JC come on thanks cyberwire Mr. Dave Bittner brought me here at first I was

shocked at how salty and grumpy these old geeks were well we do tell people that in advance but once I got used to that I found the material surprisingly dense and not full of fluff and BS side note I would totally get rid of that Chinese rafter so when I read this I literally did a spit take with my coffee I was just like and fortunately I didn't hit my Chromebook which I have since given away but I also didn't spit on the Chinese router but the Chinese router is gone and thank you JC because this really made my morning when we got it

yep you saw that but didn't get your ring I totally see I know I know so we got

at night and you don't want to hit the lights and keep your night vision on when you lift up the lid and there's a beautiful glow from the pot it's awesome for 20 bucks you can't go wrong with an luma bowl yeah unless you actually have a lady in your life they tend to frown on these things no that's not true because I bought one for my who

next comment is from L train one would assume a new yorker as I was listening to security section of episode 190 about Yahoo having billions of accounts hacked I started thinking I had a Yahoo account for years and their security sucks ass which email service do you recommend well Brian you use your own email server which I think after doing security audits on you probably isn't as anywhere near

fairly cheap and fairly secure and has been vetted by the community as it were I still stick with Gmail at this point almost everybody I know uses Gmail at this point they're taking over the world with it and honestly I try not send anything over email if I'm worried about anybody reading it don't send it over email yeah don't nothing nothing secure carrier pigeon get a Trumpian carrier

pigeon and move move on with it yes I'm gonna I'm gonna market a line of carrier pigeons that have crazy like orange hair we're gonna die pigeons orange that's that's where we're gonna make our money in 2017 we finally found it okay friend of the show grim Harrison writes in this seems like an actually useful invention and it is the foldy mate f-o-l-d-i mate dot com and well we had a very vibrant twitter

conversation about this yes yes we did so you can scroll back in and see that if you'd like to thanks for sending that in and bantering with us about it and I still think you're insane it's a machine that basically you stick in your clothes and it will fold them for you yeah and basically the target price is 700 to 850 dollars you might we'll just have a kid well unless you're going to put your kid into slave labor or well that's what they're for Jason they're called errands or

Brian Brian I think you've made it for all the wrong reasons if you want your question or comment right on the show head over to gog. show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air well 2016 didn't go out quietly even after we finished our last show kept killing off people left right and center most sadly damn that's good yeah Carrie Fisher and then

the day later her mom Debbie Reynolds which is I mean that's a one two fuck you isn't it and of course at the very last minute squeaking in 2016 managed to knock out father Mulcahy from MASH so William Christopher also passed away I was surprised about that one because I thought he was gone a long time ago but when I saw that I was definitely bummed I thought he was one of the better characters in MASH I love MASH it's a great show and yeah he was a fantastic character so a lot to be sad about

for 2016 but hey new year I have a link in the show notes Star Wars fans pay tribute to Carrie Fisher with a lightsaber vigil over at Disneyland pretty cool yeah so there you go so and I've got a link to bright lights starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds which is the documentary that they fast track to get out and it's coming out this weekend and I tell you what if you don't have any tissue handy do not go watch the trailer because I was I was

but what I was also emotional about was that Deep Space Nine Jesus Christ Derp Space Nine but what I was also emotional about was Deep Space Nine debuted 24 years ago yesterday and well by the time you listen to it it will be two days ago January 3rd and I love me some Captain Cisco so if you're thinking about watching something that has been around for a while go check out Deep Space Nine because I still stand by the fact that it is the best Star Trek series out there

no no wrong yep absolutely correct absolutely correct next generation all the way hell no hell no Kirk is still the best captain well that's debatable and that's why Star Trek is has lasted the test of time because everything about Star Trek is debatable and my final closing shout out is to President Obama who makes his farewell speech here in Chicago on Tuesday so love of

God don't leave you know I don't agree with even half the shit that he did but man I'm going to miss him he he could at least put a sentence together without having to tweet it he had so much class he had class the best class the best words he had class all right all right until next time and I'm Jason DeFillippo Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks GOG.show is our new home base where you can listen to old shows leave

feedback ask us questions get links to our awesome sponsors and stuff we like if you'd like to become an official friend of the podcast go to GOG.show slash support where you'll find all the ways you can support the show and keep us on the air to learn more about all the people who make the show possible head over to GOG.show slash about show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GOG.show slash 191 we have a new patreon surprise god you take two weeks off

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